Discover Boating

recovery and usability

Discover Boating is one of the top boating resources for first-time boat buyers in the US and Canada. Along with referrals, the secondary objective of the site, educating users with original content, needed improvement. The core of their business, manufacturer referrals, had recently diminished and was at risk of experiencing prolonged losses.

solution

We leveraged findings from user testing to make improvements by redesigning a new template on priority destinations throughout the site. The findings showed that mobile should be our primary focus. We also revisited the enhancements we made with fresh ideas and took to user testing again and found a stronger solution that is currently in progress.

discovery to design

My team set out to make critical enhancements to Discover Boating's user experience and create a more seamless path for users to find boats and information. In our research and analytics, including user testing and stakeholder discussions, we found that referrals had plummeted and users were missing out on the benefits of the site.
We formed some hypotheses and came to a sophisticated solution. We learned how to improve the content design and what users are really concerned about before committing to a brand.
I rebuilt a portion of the information architecture of the site to ensure discoverability and redesigned the content layout. The new design offered a flexible presentation of content while balancing the needs of stakeholders and their manufacturer partners.

See the work

design artifacts

pencils before pixels

…or markers
prototype and test

Responsive mobile view from the first iteration. This design improved the performance of manufacturer referrals and the discoverability of the list of boat brands.
design and build

The final design added delightful cues to the brand’s context on water and performs better.
refined features

The process included redesigning how Discover Boating’s user refined their searches using the complexity of data around boats and preferences.