Two wins for aequilibrium
We are excited to announce the iOS mobile app we built for our amazing clients Sneaker Con won the 2018 VanUX Awards for ‘Best UX for Product’ and overall ‘Best UX’ for the year. The winner was decided based on a jury vote by industry leaders in Vancouver and a lightning-round demo of the product we did as a Finalist last month. We are very thankful to our talented and dedicated team who worked on the project and took home both category wins.
Mike, Karen, Matthew, Kehuan, Olivia, Angie, Luara at VanUX Awards Gala on Thursday, November 29
Special shoutouts to Matt, Director of Product Design and UX; Liv, UI/UX Designer; Mike G., Project Manager; Kehuan, Lead Full-Stack Developer; Angel, iOS Mastermind; Karen, Director of Planning and Operations; Angie, Senior Marketing Manager; and Laura, Marketing Content Specialist. We’d also like to thank the team at Sneaker Con who entrusted us with creating their first mobile app and teaching us the ways of the sneakerhead.
Ticking all of the (shoe) boxes
VanUX Awards recognizes the elegance, clarity, innovation, impact, and emotion in the experiences brands and digital product agencies create. In addition to “nice design”, judges base their decisions for “Best UX” on how the user experience design achieves the actual solution, the seamlessness and consistency of user interactions, the emotional connection between the user and its intent, and what problems we are solving for both the end user and the business goal.
Innovation and impact play a key role in decision-making criteria, particularly when awarding “Best UX for Product”, which aequilibrium brought home. Innovation speaks to what’s new, different, or exciting about the work, and how it stacks up to current conventions and patterns we use today. Impact addresses the results that can be attributed to the user experience and the measurable ways it has impacted the business and people.
Double win, at the VanUX Awards “Best UX” overall and “Best UX for Products” category.
A Sneaker Con event, digitized
aequilibrium partnered with Sneaker Con to build an iOS mobile e-commerce app for buying, selling, and bidding on shoes. In addition to creating seamless and functional UX, security was paramount in an industry known for fakes.
We worked closely with them to transform their experience, learning from the subject matter experts first-hand and further elevating their brand and culture for shoes built from their existing events-based platform.
Our job was very complex from a cultural perspective. We considered how we would capture the unique energy of the event, and translate the language, terminology, and values of Sneaker Con into a mobile experience while still maintaining a robust feature set, security layers like Fort Knox, and not end up looking like another marketplace app.
A big part of the process was immersing ourselves into the Sneaker Con culture. By doing what UX designers do best, we understood the users wants and needs while adding value by thinking outside-the-box when it came to utilizing technology. After endless research and observing what some other industries have done recently, we created a new way of authentication. We used NFC, or Near Field Communication technology, typically used in retail stores, and attached these to every sneaker. Sneakers with NFC chips were then branded to Sneaker Con’s LEGIT authentication process, thereby verifying every sneaker on the marketplace, in-person or on the app.
“We had essentially solved the security issue, created a new branded physical component that looked rad to the sneakerhead, and introduced a whole new technology…”
Director of Product and UX Matt Corstorphine described it as a “great eureka moment” the solution for a new omnichannel experience was set. The Sneaker Con iOS app currently has over 100,000 App Store downloads since it’s release just a few months ago.
