How might we…
better understand and design the future of eRV vehicles and trip planning?
Winnebago
Discovery Research, Competitive Research, User Research, Product Vision
Overview
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Winnebago Industries is an American company known for manufacturing recreational vehicles (RVs) and motorhomes, offering a range of high-quality and innovative RV options for travel, camping, and outdoor adventures.
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My role, Senior Design Consultant
Hilary Waters, Research Lead
Kristina Woodburn, Senior Research Consultant
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5 Months, 2022
Challenge
Project Goals
Understand the future landscape of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and e-RVs
Understand the market of existing trip-planning and electric vehicle apps
Address Range Anxiety concerns for EV and e-RV owners
Understand customer segments, personas, and behaviors to inform design decisions
Understand how trip planning features can position Winnebago as a leader in digital innovation while sustainably building in new revenue opportunities
Check out this 30 second clip to get a glimpse of what we were designing for
Designing for the Future
Winnebago Industries unveiled their groundbreaking all-electric RV, the eRV2, at the Florida RV SuperShow, emphasizing its zero-emission capabilities, extended "boondocking" capabilities, use of sustainable materials, and integration with a mobile app in response to emerging demand in the market. The eRV2 is equipped with a 900-watt solar capacity and a 48V battery system with over 15,000 usable watt-hours for extended off-grid living.
Assessing the Existing Landscape through Competitive Analysis
We started by evaluating EV and RV trip-planning apps to understand the current market landscape.
Talking to real people, EV and RV owners, to hear about their best, and worst, road trip experiences
User Workshops and Generative Feedback
We conducted workshops with EV and RV owners to gather insights and feedback and leveraged Dovetail for synthesizing the research findings and identifying patterns. With this information, we were able to map out the customer journey to chart new insights and identify opportunities.
Journey Mapping
We mapped the current experience of EV and e-RV owners to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.
Telling a compelling story to highlight existing pains and visualize a better future
Storyboarding
We created storyboards to visualize the existing pains and future experiences of trying to plan an e-RV road trip to build empathy and awareness of needs.
Triangulating Research
Future Landscape Analysis
Explored emerging trends and technologies in the EV industry to understand potential opportunities and challenges in the near and long term.
Reddit Analysis
Analyzed discussions and feedback on relevant subreddits to gain insights from the user community.
Persona Development
Created customer personas based on user research findings and identified 'behavioral atoms' to convey user types and consumer patterns.
Outcomes
We helped Winnebago to set a vision to build an industry-leading travel planning app that embodies their customer-centric approach by seamlessly connecting their RV models with community-led recommendations.
An app driven by a sense of belonging to differentiate Winnebago in a competitive marketplace and inspire others to join in.
Defining Winnebago Trip Planning
In addition to creating a product roadmap, we played a crucial role in shaping and informing Winnebago Trip Planning. This involved identifying key features within the user journey and mapping user stories to the corresponding screens, providing a visual representation of the app's functionality in action.
Help and Troubleshooting
In addition to our range anxiety research, we conducted research around the ‘help’ experience, optimizing how users troubleshoot issues and get the assistance they need to get going.
We worked closely to implement our findings into the design experience.