The Challenge
Whether you are creating and designing an experience for a physical product like a snowboard or for a digital product such as an app, you’ll find that both share many of the same steps and process. There is business and market research, ideation and iteration sessions, testing and validation loops, etc. You’re always designing for the end user. In this case, the demographic happens to be young, male snowboarders. There were a couple of unique challenges we encountered up front. First, there was age. Finding sample users from this demographic to help us brainstorm, validate and iterate was challenging. There is no contact list and it was difficult to schedule something. The turnaround and budget was also very tight. We realized early on that we had to go to where the users were – on the slopes. To get inside the minds of these riders, we shared a book and tablet of sketches and images and asked them to circle and rate the ones they liked. The common themes from the test: Rebellious attitude, skulls, plaid, and both bright and dark colors.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
– HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The Solution and My Role
After several successful guerrilla validation and testing sessions at coffee shops, snowboard stores, ski slopes and on sidewalks around Boston, we had what we needed. The vision was to create two board designs, a plain black and a plaid. Because slick over-produced graphics would not resonate, we created a set of grunge-styled elements comprised of degraded type, deckled edge boxes and the Madd Mike’s name which had street credit with these riders. Even the K2 logo had to be changed to the same typeface as the rest of the elements. Both board designs were produced in a variety of sizes and because of K2’s reach, these boards were being ridden on slopes across the country. The project and product were considered a success by Madd Mike’s, K2 and all the riders who faithfully purchased the boards.
I was involved in all phases of this project from conception through testing to production. One of the more interesting challenges was the creation of the Tartan pattern. This was not a stock art image or illustration. The pattern was created line by line in Illustrator. Even the most current computers would be challenged to render this pattern.
