Navigating the slopes with friends or family often leads to frustration with issues like getting separated, miscommunicating meetup spots, or losing track of each other entirely. Cell service can be unreliable, and shouting across trails isn’t exactly effective.

NuVue smart ski goggles and  our companion app were built to solve this common disconnect. By combining a way to see members spatially, real-time location sharing, and group coordination tools, we help riders stay in sync, ride confidently, and focus on enjoying the experience and not chasing down lost group members.

It started with a vague idea of "Seamless Navigation for Skiers." My team thought this idea had great potential so we chose this theme to work on. We immediately started ideating on what this product would look like, what it would do, and what experience we wanted to create for the user.

To better understand our potential stakeholders, we sent out a survey to identify what users want, their experience, and potential areas of improvement.

We got 69 responses, surprisingly, mostly from intermediate to expert level skiiers and snowboarders local to the Boston and Providence area.

To gain insight into their experiences, we interviewed 15 ski/snowboarding enthusiasts, 2 professional industrial designers, and 2 ski/snowboarding teachers from local resorts. Almost everyone preferred the HUD Goggle solution to any other we proposed.

Here are some common questions and concerns we considered throughout the design process.

By mapping out the current user journey, we are able to identify at which point our product could interfere and prevent users from getting lost from their group or friends.

It is in between steps 3 and 4 where our product would interfere and help users navigate back to group members.