Developing a value proposition for a listed Chinese outdoor brand.
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The team partnered with a leading Chinese outdoor manufacturer known for its OEM expertise at a pivotal moment — when glamping (aka. glamorous camping) emerged as a major lifestyle trend in China. Recognizing the growth potential, the brand sought to reposition itself and explore new opportunities for market success.
Grounded in human insights, we leveraged design as a strategic tool to create a future-facing brand for the glamping era. Our comprehensive approach spanned value proposition, brand architecture, visual identity, marketing communications, and product portfolio strategy.
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The Challenge
The client needed to shift from a product-centric to a brand-centric focus — which meant helping internal teams embrace a fundamentally different, more brand-driven mindset.My Role
I designed an immersive, experiential research approach spanning a diverse range of camping styles, outdoor enthusiasts, and inspirational consumers. The resulting insights informed authentic storytelling and brought the human-centric brand vision to life — reshaping how the client understood their own customers and worked internally.My research design also led to a key strategic framework: mapping "outdoor landscapes" by their contrast to urban life, which became a grounding anchor for prioritization and decision-making with the client's founder and team.
In the final phase, I translated these insights into design principles for product development and communications, and partnered with external teams to integrate them into a unified brand video across all touchpoints.
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The research began in blank-slate mode — exploring the relationship between urbanites and the outdoors at an ideological level, before narrowing toward brand-specific direction.
Client stakeholder interviews — to ground the research in internal context
Immersive on-site camping across 3 locations in China — participating and observing firsthand, not just asking questions
Interviews with 20+ outdoor/camping enthusiasts and KOLs, spanning classic outdoor to glamping, amateur to hardcore
In-store visits — to understand the existing retail and brand experience
From this, I mapped key outdoor scenarios by their level of contrast to urban life — a framework that became central to client discussions and decision-making.
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The research phase reshaped how the client understood their customers and changed their internal ways of working. The resulting value proposition and brand visual identity — delivered as a brand book — were implemented across the client's online and offline channels, and guided the launch of their new flagship store in Ningbo, China.
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“I’m very impressed with the co-creation process. The presentation of user interviews, photos, and stories helped us understand their needs and aspirations and influenced the way we work. Over time, we’ve become more attuned to the needs and challenges of our collaborative partners.”
- Director of Distribution Center“In the past, when we made products, we would often rely on our own perceptions. But now, we conduct user consultations, such as collecting feedback from loyal users on platforms like Xiaohongshu, to better understand where the real pain points are. IDEO’s early-stage design research gave us a lot of inspiration. Later, our team began to conduct user interviews on our own, speaking to users face-to-face. This process ultimately influenced our product development workflow and mindset.”
- Director of User Development -
The official case study of the project could be found at IDEO’s official wechat article in Chinese: