THE RANCH
The Ranch is an equestrian club in India that gives horse riding classes, offers stabling facilities, and conducts various programs for families, corporates, and individuals. The Ranch also conducts the biggest horse show in India, catering to 4000 people with 20 horse events.
WHY NOW?
While launching the horse show, we noticed an interesting consumer pattern: people were hesitant to pay to watch horses but felt immense pride in telling others they were attending a horse show. Instead of generalizing this behavior, I decided to test it during horse riding classes. I reached out to my coach to learn more about the user personas of the riders, and I found that all of them shared one key trait—horsemanship. This contrasted with the broader audience's perception of horses as "powerful," "elite," “elegant and sophisticated,” yet "strong," and "magnificent," where riding a horse was seen as a way to feel "superior" or in control.
Horse riding is unique in that it requires two minds to work in harmony. This gap revealed a deeper issue: the tendency to view horse riding as a means of control rather than a way to communicate with another living being.
USER PERSONA
The users in this study primarily consist of individuals who have visited the riding center and expressed interest in riding classes or the horse show. Their insights will help determine whether the perceived real-life gap translates to an auction app.
An auction app was deliberately chosen because users associate it with ownership, which fosters a sense of superiority.
Real-life Perception
Some people truly connect with horses or learn horse riding because it makes them feel superior
App Perception
The app aims to give users a sense of control.
DESIGN CONCEPT & USER ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY
The design uses animations to highlight power, elegance, and sophistication—qualities often associated with horses.
Placard Design
To understand user interaction within the design, long cards were introduced with three different scenarios:
Horsemanship is more important than the chance of winning.
Horsemanship and the chance of winning are equally important.
The chance of winning is more important than horsemanship.
It is important to note that the chances of winning include an aspect of horsemanship; however, it is an experiment to see how users perceive both when put next to each other.
This setup was used for A/B testing to see if users would click on the placard based on their judgment of these scenarios. The goal is to create a bidding funnel, tracking which placard the user clicks on, whether the user reaches the bid section, and then eventually bids. how users move from selecting a placard → clicking on a bid → interacting with the bid section → finally placing a bid.
Bidding Section
The bidding section was designed as a leaderboard, showing the latest bid to encourage competition, a gamification technique to keep users engaged in the platform. To further nudge users to click on the bidding section, a notification button below the placard displays the number of active participants, creating a sense of urgency and excitement.
The entire design is to understand whether the consumers react to the design in the same way as they respond to their perception of horses and their willingness to pay for riding or to see these creatures.
