A sticker that reads “design like you give a damn” is fixed to the conference table at Nemo Equipment’s Dover, NH office. Its honest maxim stuck with me while architecting the e-commerce experience for the brand new family of Nemo sleeping bags. Nemo has built a brand rooted in beautiful and well designed outdoor equipment. Engineering innovations like AirSupported Technology and integrated foot pumps surpass the status quo of the industry and continue to earn Nemo national recognition. Yet at the heart of the organization, “giving a damn” means having empathy for the consumer and their bond to the outdoors.

“Adventure gives us purpose and perspective. It makes us humble and proud. We believe meaningful adventures are possible for everyone, anywhere.”

Since 2002, Nemo tents have provided a shelter to which their owners may return at the end of an adventurous day. Sleeping bags are Nemo’s newest layer of comfort from the elements. Almighty was tasked with creating a platform to share that story with potential customers. We jumped right in.

From inside each bag, I could understand the intended usage. Looking down at all the bags together, the variations design felt obvious and easy to appreciate. From fitted sleeves which allow integration with sleeping pads to the proprietary “spoon” shape of some models that maximized both warmth and knee space, every detail had a purpose.

It was immediately clear that creating a common e-commerce layout for Nemo was a disservice to the products. Relying on a grid of thumbnail images and meta-data filters would place the priority on the quantity of features (and price) of each product and may create the perception that “more” equates to “better.” What visitors to the site deserved was an experience that emphasized the utility of each product more holistically, just as standing amongst the bags had offered me.

My early sketching envisioned a site that quickly put each product in perspective with those around it. I imagined the user rapidly flipping through bags as if viewing a slideshow. Organizing bags by their intended purpose, from snuggling by a fireplace to a polar expedition, a user could rotate through quickly and self-identify with the type of adventure on which they looked to embark. In this approach, choosing an adventure led naturally to choosing the bag best suited for the job.

On paper, it was an elegant solution. Unbound by any pre-fabricated e-commerce layout, I was free to tell each product’s story with a grace that would prove irresistible to consumers. Throw convention to the wind.

But what about the sticker? “Giving a damn” means living outside the limitless pages of my sketchbook. It means that I must ask myself when, where, and why I should have the gumption to demand that our users learn something new. Accepting something to be right is easy if you never try to prove it wrong.

Building a working prototype allowed me to test my ideas by weighing each detail against the question, “Am I truly adding value or causing friction for users?”

Developing a mock-up from a hand drawn sketch was my reality check. The process led me to seek out an existing examples and I then built a library of feasible inspiration. Once coded, the Nemo experience felt intuitive, even fun. Our approach to storytelling did not disrupt usability. Even with only content zones represented by grey boxes and a placeholder image, browsing was enjoyable.

As the project progressed from architecture and content strategy into visual design and copy, the prototype was passed along. With it came foresight into subsequent questions of interaction. How quickly can all products be browsed? What content transitions through animation? Does navigation persist as you scroll? How does the page load? Speculating over flat comps makes simple questions like these hard to answer. Avoiding decisions until the development phase results in hasty solutions. Clicking through a working model proved to be an efficient decision making tool for everyone on the team.

The humble prototype was a heavy lifter in Almighty’s work with Nemo. It was there to validate ideas, to answer questions, and to foster a sense of empathy in the work. It’s a tool essential enough to possibly even merit a sticker. “Prototype like you give a damn”. I like the ring of that.