the Major

designed for Bern Helmets

A highly ventilated, MIPS exclusive, comfort-forward, and stylish helmet. A helmet designed based on research to create the opportunity to appeal to a wider market of people looking for high ventilation, comfort, style, and safety while keeping core Bern customers engaged.

Implementing Research-Based Design

In working with our Harvard Public Health & Safety co-op, we were able to further bring knowledge on helmet-wearing behaviors and how this affects the safety of riders across all demographics.

By implementing an entirely new research phase in the design process for Bern, we were able to ground this project in actionable data that helped our design team and the rest of our company to better understand customers, the market, and ultimately buying behavior. This data was found through:

Consumer test protocols
Market research
Existing sales & sell-through data analysis
Public health research

Research in Practice

While the brand appeals to a wide range of income levels, the largest growing audience had a limit to the amount they were willing to spend on a helmet - showing us the financial limits of what we could design.

Our customers engaged in a wide range of activities, and some do multiple types using the same helmet. We wanted to continue to serve the core Bern audience while still appealing to a wider range of activities.

In order the Bern customer priorities are: Fit, Comfort, Style, Safety Standards, and Color. These were top of mind when developing this helmet.

Through looking at data sets from the Bern website, the survey respondents, and location analytics from our social media we found that the warmer-climate markets were widely underserved domestically. When we were making sales in warmer clients it was our most ventilated and lightly colored helmet, which was being discontinued.

Overall, these new insights informed much of the physical design of the product. The helmet had to be highly ventilated, stylish, had to include MIPS, and most of all the fit & comfort had to be the top priorities.

What Makes it Bern?

Bern helmets have always had distinct style lines giving the helmets a skate feel. This design language had to stay alive while also appealing to a non-skate-focused market.

Mixing skate & sport

Inspiration drawn from mainly from car design & new approaches to time-tested products. The aesthetic pulls from quick sporty lines mixed with approachable every-day style.

The final chosen design keeps the Bern design language alive while bringing it into a new, sporty, more widely appealing era.

3D CAD & Prototyping

To ensure proper fit & comfort, I added a user-testing portion of our design process. Prototypes were modeled using surfacing in SolidWorks and 3D printed on a Z18 then fitted with compass (dial) fit systems, a MIPS low friction layer, and padding to test on a diverse set of bike riders.