UX CASE STUDY
Bombardier
Ski-Doo is a brand name of snowmobile manufactured by Bombardier Recreational Products. The Ski-Doo personal snowmobile brand is so iconic, especially in Canada, that it was listed in 7th place on the CBC's The Greatest Canadian Invention list in 2007. This UX case study was an opportunity for industry and academic institutions to create a experiential real
time learning experience with students. The collaboration process is to help Research, Design, Build, and Test an innovative solution to an applied user experience problem, in our case, the Ski-doo dashboard display.
This was our second industry collaboration school project at the UX Design Program. It involved research, user interviews, wireframes, visual mocks, prototypes (Adobe Xd, Photoshop, Premier Pro), and a finalized mock-up, completed in the span of 2 weeks. This case study documents the process of the 2 week project period that we underwent.
Team: Saif Elmaghraby, Inderjeet Singh, Cem Guler, Mert Demirhan, and Michael Fernandez
THE DESIGN SPRINT
The Challenge: Design a digital interface for recreational ski-doos by incorporating both digital displays and AR technology.
This UX case study was completed using the Design Sprint methodology. It explored both Augmented Reality and multimodal interactions with a traditional graphical User Interface. Following the steps of a typical design sprint, we split our days into 5 sections:
Understand: Discover the business opportunity, the audience, the competition, and the value proposition.
Diverge: Explore, develop and iterate creative ways of solving the problem, regardless of feasibility.
Converge: Identify ideas that fit the next product cycle and explore them in further detail through storyboarding.
Prototype: Design and prepare prototype(s) that can be tested with people.
Test: Conduct 1:1 user testing with (5-6) people from the product's primary target audience.
This was our first design sprint experience, and although it flowed smoothly, there are a lot of things that, we as UX designers, took out of this experience. Following each step of the Design Sprint methodology allowed us to formulate a proper understanding of an efficient work-place assignment.
DAY 1: THE UNDERSTANDING PHASE
To start off our project, we needed to learn more about our product. That meant researching several different factors that would affect the success of our design. We divided the work equally amongst each other, each group member had a topic to research. Topics ranged from business/marketing perspectives, to technological opportunities/limitations.
After research was done, we decided to make our research tangible, by putting important/influential points on a whiteboard and placing sticky notes with research points under each research topic section. This allowed each group member to get caught up with what other people had also researched.
How Might We's:
Each group member was asked to walk around the room and write down a HMW regarding every sticky note. This would allow us to look at "problems" in a more "redeemable" perspective. Documented below are some of the important points that we took into consideration.
Technological
Opportunities
What they said >
Technological
Opportunities
What they said >
- Touchscreen Interactivity
- Needing a medium to project Augmented Reality.
Business
Perspective
What they said >
Business
Perspective
What they said >
- AR is in its early technological years.
- By 2021, the AR market is expected to reach $83 billion.
Pain
Points
What they said >
Pain
Points
What they said >
- Distracting display, and AR features.
- It can be costly for the manufacturer.
- Early tech, real-time problems
DAY 2: THE DIVERGENCE PHASE
After finishing day one of the design sprint, we decided to spend an appropriate amount of time at home getting inspiration from other companies we've researched at home. The Diverge Phase of the design sprint included multiple individual sketches, sticky notes, discussions, and solution sketches. This individual research would make room for a divergent thinking process, which is vital for an influx of creative ideas.
Each group member was given a piece of paper and asked to fold it into 8 frames. We then spent a minute a frame sketching possible solutions for the HMWs. Documented below are pictures of the Crazy 8's sketching process.
After spending some time discussing our drawings together. Each group member was then asked to walk around and draw a tick on ideas that they think really stood out. This allowed us to narrow down some important ideas from the crazy 8's sketching process to take up solution sketching. 30-90 minutes were spent creating a three-panel storyboard oh how their ideas can be applied. Documented below is the solution sketch.
DAY 3: THE CONVERGENCE PHASE
After the second design sprint meeting, each group member was asked to go home and research ways they could build upon their storyboard sketches. The same sketches were brought to our third design sprint meeting day, and taped to a wall. New ideas were written underneath them, and were discussed with the rest of the group. The aim of this converge phase was to incorporate several ideas into one viable, desirable, and feasible idea.
After taking some time to discuss our ideas and how they can be applied to our design. We voted on ideas that were worthy of making it to the next step of the design sprint. These ideas were to be combined to form our final design. The circled items below were the ideas we chose to incorporate:
DAY 4: THE PROTOTYPING PHASE
After the third design sprint meeting, each group member was asked to go home and research ways they could build upon our final prototype. This meeting was designed specifically for the prototyping phase. We divided our work equally into 3 main tasks. Each task was tackled by a pair of group members.
Task 1: You are renting the Ski-doo for the first time, discover its features.
Task 2: You are done exploring the snowy plains, use the navigation system to find your way back to the rental shop.
Task 3: On the way back, a potential hazard appears, how does the Ski-doo warn you about that?
Dashboard Features:
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Navigation System
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Bluetooth to connect to your devices.
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Weather.
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A speedometer, and a fuel gage.
AR features:
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A simplistic look that does not cause a distraction.
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A navigation arrow and potential hazards are displayed on the windshield
DAY 5: THE TESTING PHASE
After the fourth design sprint meeting, Each group member was asked to go home and look for user testers. This meeting was designed specifically for the testing phase. A room with a TV was booked. An Adobe xD file connecting all the tasks together was made. The computer containing that xD file was hooked up to an HDMI cable.
Each user tester was asked to complete the three tasks in the span of 20 minutes, while talking out loud. Each user tester was asked to be as critical as possible. This was repeated 5 different times for all users.
*All 5 user testers had their voice and screen recorded for feedback purposes.
Discussed below are the steps taken towards the completion of this design phase.
Future considerations based on recorded feedback:
1. Change the fuel-gage colour.
2. Voice interactions should be activated using a phrase (Hey Ski).
3. AR arrow colour should be brighter