Harley-Davidson approached Mullenlowe with a brief to overhaul and revolutionise their digital strategy and presence as their current demographic is ageing. To mitigate this, the brand is taking its first real steps to reach new markets by leveraging their intellectual property online. Harley expressed an interesting in reaching a younger and more metropolitan audience, which they intended to entice with a new range of electric bikes. Whilst the core of the brand would remain unchanged, Harley was interested in shifting their visual style for online products and digital communication.
There was no rationale, design standard, or regulation in the way that communication behaved concerning Harley-Davidson's services or digital platform. There was no existing visual unity between touchpoints either, with random artefacts and disjointed hierarchy making information confusing and a chore to digest. None of Harley-Davidson's existing brand architecture or activation strategy was digital-first or mobile friendly.
Create a rationale, usage standard, and consistency in Harley-Davidson's brand across its platform and communications. Manage and hand over thorough design documentation and interaction specs to ensure consistent end-to-end implementation of the new designs into Harley-Davidson's communication system. It's also imperative to specify the visual style and align/remove all existing discrepancies between platforms and communications. Lastly, take into consideration the new content and marketing strategies in the design response.
Mobile-First priority
It was unanimously decided that the standardisation of the design would start mobile-first, built from Harley-Davidson's Native app, as that was the most feasible method to push to release. Harleys’ web platform had too many variables, dependencies and stakeholders to wrangle in a short timeframe, making it almost impossible to launch a synchronised design update across its Global domains.
Topography and behavior
Educating the client and content team on a new topography allowed for designers to create a new model of how content cards would operate as components. Meaning and function is given to each layer, creating hierarchy and swappable container/content relationships.
By using cards as a tool, we can easily reorder and personalise content based on relevancy or user affinity and how customers are interacting with Harley-Davidson based on their previous purchases and the product lifecycle.
With user data, we created a system that allowed for a personal experience and relationship nurture chain by surfacing relevant content. For example, if a user had purchased a specific model of motorcycle under a year ago, accessories and service deals would be surfaced as content instead of new models or offers on older models.
CARD
Used to differentiate between distinct content routes. Content served in these is based on the phase of the customer lifecycle based on purchase history, set preferences and interaction model.
Content stack
Used when content is analogous in nature or journey and requires no need for an emphasized visual separation. Content stacks sit at a reduced depth and span in desktop. Often related to utility functions or preference management.
Full-Width Card
Used when the primary content needs to be called out opposed to other extraneous information. There should only be one primary full-width card per page or communication and it must relate to the primary intent of the previous interaction.
Digital Revival
The resulting visual system was a flexible, modular design, reflecting the UX practices decided upon and replaced the existing aesthetic with a mobile-first design that places personalisation at the forefront.
Their new digital identity remains true to the Harley-Davidson brand and allows for emails to be constructed to the suit the recipient. The system uses content cards to deliver relevant articles and interest points to the addressee. These cards are accompanied by revitalised and engaging Harley Brand imagery and snippets of content to encourage engagement. The card system is designed with one corner folded over to play on the UI prompt of clicking to turn a page for more content.
This new design logic also contains a tagging system, giving each content card an appropriate subject tag. This allows users to easily engage with content that's relevant to themselves and their Harley product. As the users interact more with certain areas, relevant content is served as they progress through their digital journey.
The resulting digital brand update has been well received both internally, and in focus group testing (with new target demographics and existing users). The fresh design principles that have been implemented across Harley-Davidson's digital identity has given them consistency and a new UI that aligns their brand heritage and integrity with the future-focused steer they are taking.
The logic and interaction for the new card system is being adopted and embedded in Harleys digital products and all subsequent product and communication releases. It created cohesion, order, and meaning for the use of cards and allowed for the intelligent organisation of bespoke content for users. This has informed the content strategies and the IA of targeted marketing for both converted and potential buyers and matches well with the data-focused approach Harley is moving forward with.
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