This was an R&D project where I lead four engineers and a product designer through a part of the discovery process, including upfront generative user research, ideation, evaluation and prototyping. I was asked by our growth team to explore the consumer tech space for snowmobilers, and in five weeks we converged on a product concept and built a prototype of our solution for further validation testing.
User interviews
To help us understand the needs of snowmobilers I conducted 1:1 interviews with 7 snowmobilers located in Quebec, Ontario and British Colombia. I recorded and transcribed these interviews using Otter and then synthesized our research in Airtable.
User interviews
To help us understand the needs of snowmobilers I conducted 1:1 interviews with 7 snowmobilers located in Quebec, Ontario and British Colombia. I recorded and transcribed these interviews using Otter and then synthesized our research in Airtable.
Opportunity framing
By using our research insights and customer profile I generated opportunity frames in the form of How Might We questions. These frames would help ensure that our ideation is grounded in the needs of snowmobilers.
Team ideation
I designed a workshop with my team using the how-might-we prompts and generated a high quantity of ideas.
After the workshop, I imported our sticky notes into Miro, and used this virtual whiteboard as a space to synthesize the output by doing some affinity mapping to identify common connections and themes.
Concept Development & evaluation
I took the groupings of similar ideas and developed the concepts into value propositions and related exemplars that would help me to evaluate them for product impact and effort.
Caravan
Caravan acts as an agentive co-pilot for group touring sports that helps riders stay together by reducing unnecessary communication and confusion over hand signals and enhancing the ability to find one another and keep pace with one another.
Group creation flow
Snowmobilers are able to quickly see other users who are nearby and create ad-hoc parties.
Functional prototype
Caravan acts as an agentive co-pilot for a group touring sports that helps riders stay together by reducing unnecessary communication and confusion over hand signals and enhancing the ability to find one another and keep pace with one another.
Group creation flow
Nearby users are detected and an ad-hoc party can be created.
AR view
When the device is lifted an AR view opens up to show the approximate distance of the other party members.
Status notification
The team coach will send voice prompts to various members to try and keep the team within the selected radius.
Wearables experimention
Sometimes a rider may miss a status update from the voice assistant. This could happen while they're focused on driving or listening to music. A simple RGB LED light can communicate group status in an ambient way as a minimalist heads-up display without causing the distraction that an actual screen might.
Status
Distance warning
A proactive prompt is given to caravan member who is falling behind
Distance warning
A proactive prompt given to caravan member who is falling behind