Project SnowBird: Exploring The Gaps In Virtual and Physical Commerce Experiences: An Introduction

Curiosities never seem to settle around here and we’re excited to share a little information on some work we are about to take on in the coming months ahead.  Our goal is to extend our imagination regarding the commerce experience through the voice of snowboarders. More specifically, we want to look at how non experts enter the snowboarding arena and the challenges they endure as they try to not only learn the skills to enjoy the sport, but also acquire the right goods to do it well (not to mention look hot).

The reason over this excitement is because this is information that we can share with the public – transparently and specifically – with tangible examples. Previous discussions might have felt nebulous because we were respecting the confidentiality of our clients. However, this being an internal effort, we have more liberties to share, build upon and discuss our understanding.

What to look forward to? We’re in the midst of finalizing our research plan and acquisition of proper equipment to hit the field prepared to capture our observation. The next stage will include an analysis of what we’ve observed and hopefully an open dialog of the claims we make. We’re going to update this stream, as well as on our main blog to keep you informed with materials from the field, so please give us your feedback in the comments!

Later on, we will begin to explore concepts that have been informed from our observations and share them as well.

Sounds pretty typical right? Well you can make that assumption, but we believe there’s a lot of room to be creative within the processes to make this interesting for anyone, not just designers and researchers alike.

Expect another post shortly covering our research approach and what we hope to deliver. Thanks!

5 comments December 5th, 2008