All designers: Marie Balloué, Designer UX/CX at Decatlhon

The carreer of a Designer UX/CX at Decatlhon

Marie Balloué began her career in product design with a 2-year BTS technical diploma. Her Master's level degree in Care Design from L'École de design Nantes Atlantique enabled her to specialize in user experience.

This interview is part of the publication "All Designers" launched by the school to highlight the inspiring career paths of 18 alumni and discover their vision as designers facing technological, environmental and societal challenges. This publication was published in September 2024.

"The designer brings a global, user-centered vision to the table, enabling informed strategic decisions to be made."

Marie Balloué

CX/UX designer at Decathlon

The designer's strength: simplifying complexity

After an end-of-studies internship at Seb in Lyon, where she had the chance to come to grips with product design in the field of small electrical appliances, it was at InProcess that she truly found her calling as a UX designer. This agency, which brings together a wide range of skills in ethnography, consulting and experience design, has developed a user-centered methodology and works in a variety of sectors such as healthcare, agri-food, cosmetics and public services.

Her experience at InProcess led her to work with Decathlon, a company undergoing a major evolution in the face of a shift in the way people consume sports. Her mission was to help Decathlon understand the motivations and behaviors of its customers, and to create new personalized customer paths.

Following this experience and the natural connection that developed, Marie joined Decathlon as a UX/CX designer. After an initial experience in the company's Retail Lab, Marie is now a member of the head office marketing team, based in Lille, working to define a more global vision of customer journeys. Her two main missions are to understand customers expectations in foreign markets and adapt Decathlon's offers, services and paths accordingly.

Marie then worked on creating and disseminating methodological tools internally to all stakeholders, to promote the user experience approach and harmonize user paths.

Marie Balloué, CX/UX Designer - DECATHLON

Design at the heart of strategy

Marie is convinced of the growing role of design in fields traditionally reserved for others. For her, the designer brings a global, user-centered vision to the table, enabling informed strategic decisions to be made. Her approach to design is based on several pillars:

User-centered design: identifying users' underlying behaviors and motivations.
Data-driven design: validating, iterating, optimizing and measuring the impact of design at every stage of the project.
Systemic design: taking into account the interactions and interdependencies of several parties within a complex system, both internal and external to the company.

For Marie, one of a designer's key strengths lies in his or her ability to simplify complex systems and make them understandable to all. This is an essential quality for supporting Decathlon in its challenge to innovate and adapt to new uses.