Harley–Davidson.com
ROLE: SENIOR DESIGNER WHERE: DROGA 5 CLIENT: HARLEY–DAVIDSON YEAR: 2020
Since the birth of the 1900s, Harley-Davidson has been a staple of the American ethos – representing independence and an enterprising desire for freedom. But like most things from the early 1900s, things grew a bit stagnant, and H–D had found that their core riders had aged out and the industry was facing a crisis.
So, after a successful overhaul of their branding and strategy, we rebuilt the H–D.com digital experience from the ground up - re-platforming to AEM and Hybris and implementing a design system that accommodated 46 global sites serving 108 countries. This put Harley-Davidson.com at the center of their customer experience by providing content for die-hard riders (while educating new customers) and serving as their most important conversion tool, accounting for an ever-increasing portion of the business’s revenue.
Process
In order to be able to deliver on tight deadlines, close collaboration with other designers, developers, and stakeholders was vital. My role was to assist Design Leadership in creating and maintaining a unified workflow throughout the project’s sprint cycles. We did this by first establishing a visual design system that was scalable across the full range of devices, and compatible with 29 languages. To maintain consistency within the design team, a combination of Sketch (Cloud) and InVision was implemented. This helped to keep all of the team’s files up-to-date with the most recent component designs, and allowed for clients to easily reference and review component and key flow designs.
In rebuilding the component library, we implemented Harley-Davidson’s brand new visual design system — a combination of layering, open space, and a little good ole Harley grit. The library of over 150, fully-responsive components accommodated 29 languages and was designed to be WCAG 2.0 AA compliant.
The integration of Adobe Experience Manager and SAP Hybris platforms gave us the tools we needed to build a dynamic site that included Search and Promote implementations, reorganized product taxonomies and allowed for a smoother checkout process.
