Riley Gerszewski
Polaris wanted to create a cohesive, unifying experience for owners and so we set out on a 6 month product research initiative. In the end we established the framework for an ecosystem and launched a MVP update to the existing Polaris Account Portal.
During an initial define phase, Polaris identified 40 feature ideas that resonated with vehicle owners. I was charged with creating a prototype to show all 40 ideas so that we could get them in front of additional vehicle owners. The goal was to identify and rank top features.
Each feature consisted of 3 to 5 images. I used Sketch to create mockups and stitched them together in Axure.
Feature Example:
Vehicle 101 - list page of How-To videos, linking to a sample video, linking to a share with friends page.
After identifying the top 15 features I was next tasked with creating a fully functional high fidelity prototype - tailored to different types of vehicle owners: snowmobile, recreational UTV, commercial UTV, and motorcycle. We then travelled to regional events to meet with different types of owners and let them explore the prototypes. The goal was to create a product roadmap, we discovered an opportunity to crate the first power sports ecosystem.
We were able to identify the experience owners want to have with Polaris and balance those desires with the business needs of the organization. This led us to the foundation of an ecosystem that will have unified touchpoint across websites, apps, in-vehicle technology, dealerships and future ideas.
The first step towards a broad ecosystem was to create an owner portal that brings together features and functionality that were previously disconnected to the owners and within Polaris.
I was the lead designer within a “super-sized” scrum team. The MVP launched with the 15 core features and is now expanding. The product launched in June of 2020 and has garnered a lot of usage and positive feedback
