The Delve Treksafe Collection
Briggs and Riley, a premium travelware and luggage brand sought me out as a consultant for six months ideating and generating new ideas for products.
While not a digital UX project, my previous career as an industrial designer equips me with many transferable skills:
Designing a desirable, marketable, and functional product. Working with engineers to take an idea to the real world.
Cross-functional team collaboration with other departments.
Team
Designer (Myself)
1x Project Manager
Procreate
Adobe Illustrator
Tools
Skills
Market Research
Ideation
Design Sketching
Stakeholder Relations
Design for Manufacture
The project had three requirements.
Based on research.
Design decisions were to be validated by both qualitative and quantitative research.
New product category.
This was to be a novel product category for the company, not just an update to existing products.
Under $250.
With an emphasis on quality and lifetime warranties their products, this was to be one of the most affordable Briggs & Riley products ever.
Concept 1
A sling, crossbody bag with copper hardware to emphasize the anti-virus properties of the material for the coronavirus pandemic market.
Market research identified that crossbody, sling bags are heavily featured by competitors, but Briggs and Riley didn’t have one.
Increased mobility and quick, easy access to contents inside make sling, crossbody backpacks increasingly popular for urban commuters.
Crossbody backpacks are in the messenger bag family with an emphasis on staying tight to the body, increasing mobility.
Why Copper?
“Exposure to copper destroyed the virus completely and irreversibly, leading the researchers to conclude that antimicrobial copper surfaces help reduce the spread of respiratory viruses and protect public health.”
-The National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Princeton University.
Concept 2
A cooler backpack with features and aesthetic qualities emphasized for road trips.
Early on in the pandemic when this project started, people were foregoing flights for road trips.
Another trend discovered through market research is cooler backpacks. However, these all had an emphasis on camping and outdoor adventures.
Concept 3
A washable sleeve for laptops that prevents coming into contact with public surfaces.
Inspired by iPad Smart Covers, this was a quick “throw it at the wall” idea I had for a product as possibly useful for laptops.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, interactive mockups are worth a million. These were vital throughout the design process.
Tech packs to describe dimensions and design intent to factories and engineers were created.
