Much Better Adventures

MBA work with selected local experts to craft life-changing adventures. All the logistics are sorted so you can just show up and have a blast in the wild with good people. I was Lead Designer for around 3 years until 2020.

Objectives

Collaborate with the tech & marketing teams to design new features or improve existing ones to drive sales & growth
Provide brand & art direction updates, building a library of reusable assets to support the marketing team’s activities
Collaborate with Product to research & identify opportunities to improve sales

Scope of Activities

Brand Direction
Art Direction
Ethnographic Research on trips
User Interviews & Qualitative Analysis
Quantitative Analysis
Competitor Analysis
Wireframing & Prototyping
Custom icon library
High-fidelity UI design
Illustration
WordPress theme design & deployment for content site

User Experience Design

Collaborating with the product, sales, and content teams I redesigned the product page to cater for a small, curated collection of trips. Our focus was on increasing conversion through compelling content and reducing the burden on customer service teams by providing close to 100% of available information.

The challenge here was to provide a gut-level feeling of what the experience might be like alongside all the important details that a potential customer may need to know before deciding to commit to a booking.

Early prototype screens created in Principle, which allowed for a rich experience we could test with users for qualitative feedback.

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We identified that customers wanted to know both what an experience was like and the standard logistical details. We determined social proof was the best way to satisfy the former and made judicious use of the many photos customers would send us.

Art Direction & Ethnographic Research

We gathered insights from our hosts and I also travelled on trips to participate and observe first-hand how our customers and guides experienced the trips. Travelling with a photographer we were also able to gather a wealth of marketing material in a cost-effective way for social advertising and use on the site.

Brand Updates

We undertook an extensive brand research project and identified that customers who enjoyed out trips most, and would make repeat bookings, were those who valued genuine human connection in wild, remote places. Our brand became intentionally rough-and-tumble, playful and personal. We juxtaposed carefully curated imagery of diverse groups of people enjoying an adventure with hand-drawn elements and friendly copy.

Custom icon library all designed as vectors and used in both the UI and marketing material. Templates were created so that type and graphics could be combined in different ways without the need for bespoke creative for every campaign or message.

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I developed illustrated content to match the brand’s adventurous spirit. Hand-drawn elements were both quick to produce and befitted the human nature of a true adventure.

Outcomes

Sales doubled in the first year I joined MBA and then quadrupled the next year.

User Experience & Brand improvements were an important component of a successful £1.2m raise in 2019.