Burton
Burton:
Two Week case study
Burton is known as one of the dominating forces in the snowboarding community. The threat of new competition and the aging customer base has forced Burton to pivot from snowboard manufacturer to apparel and clothing retailer to lifestyle guide/tastemaker. We believe that Burton can capitalize on the steady growth of the mobile shopper as well as the more recent emergence of cross-channel marketing with a strong push to the mobile app space, which will both foster growth in new customers and reinvigorate product satisfaction among existing Burton followers.
Problem:
Although Burton is perceived as a staple of snowboarding, they do not have a mobile app to facilitate their need to pivot in the space. Developing a mobile app for Burton will allow them to drive a higher level of engagement with their customers and new user base.
TASK:
Design a Burton-branded iOS + wearable app (Apple Watch) that delights users with:
Personalized gear recommendations
Ride tracking
lope condition reports
MY ROLE:
As design lead conceptualize and create wireframes and prototypes
User testing and iteration direction
Comparative analysis and market research
Creation of technical specification and design document
Presentation creation
Research:
User Interviews:
After conducting a survey and multiple interviews, we were able to see a few reoccurring themes with Burton riders:
They are more likely to buy accessories than snowboards
Slightly more likely to ride with a wearable
The majority of users don’t have any clear goals in mind
Those who do track their metrics are mostly concerned with speed rather than fitness.
The lack of learning tools creates a high learning curve for snowboarding.
Content Blocking:
There are currently a few apps to help snowboarders looking to track their snowboarding activity, with varying features and hardware requirements. The two notable ones we found were Trace App and Slopes. Both have Apple Watch capability.
SYNTHESIS:
Personas:
Primary Persona:
Secondary Persona:
User Journey:
Using the information gathered from our survey and user interviews, we created user journeys to help keep our persona's needs top of mind throughout our design process.
DESIGN:
We started out with pen and paper, doing rough sketches of each page based on our comparative research and content blocking to get as many ideas and options drawn out as possible.
Design Progression:
This was how our designs progressed from pen and paper, into mid-fidelity wireframes in sketch, to fully annotated and hi-fidelity wireframes that we eventually built into our working prototype.
