Loaded Boards Needs an Interactive App
Making Online Shopping Interactive
The Project
The goal of this project was to make an app for Loaded Boards. The app would make their customers’ online shopping experience easier and more exciting through the use of interactive elements such as AR, 360° photos, and tappable images.
My Role
This was a solo project that I did in school.
Discovery
Loaded doesn’t have an app. Neither does any other longboarding company as far as I could find, so I checked out Loaded’s mobile site along with several other longboarding companies such as Bustin’ Brooklyn, Landyachtz, and Sector 9. None of them were doing anything too exciting except Loaded Boards who have 360° videos of their boards. Other than that, they worked like any generic online shop.
Ideation
Once I knew what was out there, I wrote down what makes buying a board online hard. Things such as not really understanding the size differences and not being able to get a close look at different features of the deck. I then wrote a list of possible solutions.
Some of the solutions that I came up with are an AR feature so that users could see the actual size of their board and what it will look like standing on that board, listing the riding styles that match the board, an explanation of different features of the board within tappable images, and I wanted to do something similar to the 360° videos of the decks that Loaded has on their site. Instead of a video, I planned to make it a 360° photo that the user could drag around with their finger.
Creation
Although I was only planning to design the process of buying a deck, I created a site map first. This helped me design the navigation.
I felt that it would be a good idea to include Events in the app. It would make it much easier for riders to keep up with the different events Loaded sponsors or hosts.
As I mentioned before, I only designed the longboard shopping experience which meant that I focused on three frames.
The first page is helping the user find the product that they are looking for. Even the Rider’s Guide ends up leading them to different boards and wheels that they can buy.
The decks and completes page allows the user to easily filter the boards using tags. There are more filter options, but I felt that discipline is typically the most important filter. Because of that, I felt that it deserved its own spot on the page.
Another note to add is that on each product, I tagged it with all of the disciplines it falls under.
Once the user gets to the product’s page, they’ll find a lot of cool features to help them figure out if it’s the board for them. The first thing they’ll see is the 360° photo that users can spin around with their finger so they can see every inch of the deck.
At the top, they’ll also see an option to open an AR experience where they will see the board through their camera to get a better idea of its size.
In that same image, the buttons on the board open up info about the functionality and design of the board.
The user will find more info about the board as they scroll down and see buying options where they can go with a recommended setup for a specific discipline, build their own, or just buy the deck. They will also see customer reviews.
Due to time, I ended my design there.
I created a prototype of this. If you choose to check it out, I’d invite you to “shop” for the Dervish Sama since that is the board I used for the template.
Conclusion
I think that this app would be really helpful to Loaded’s customer base because of the extra value it provides with the interactive elements. This was a fun project to design, and I feel that it would be an overall improvement to Loaded’s mobile experience.
Of course, who really knows since there was no testing done, but hey it looks pretty ;)
