Boris Klaydman
WorkApple

The device guide behind $1B+ in upgrade revenue

Apple Guide, formerly Sherpa. A partner-facing app that walks a customer to the right device to buy, comparing what matters to them instead of listing specs. It generated over a billion dollars in upgrade and platform-switch revenue.

Client
Apple
Role
Design and Product Manager
Year
2019 to 2021
$1B+upgrade and platform-switch revenue
120%content engagement increase in channel training

The problem

Choosing a device in a retail conversation is a comparison problem, and spec sheets are a terrible interface for it. Partners needed a way to guide a customer from the phone in their pocket to the right next device, in the customer’s own terms: performance, camera, battery, what they would actually feel.

Where the work started: research sessions and workshops with the retail teams who would run these conversations

Day in the life research on the whiteboard, distilled into the Golden Thread: one customer’s path from browsing to a confident purchase

Early sketches: choose your device, compare what matters, and let the story sell the difference

What we built

A guided comparison experience. Pick the current device and a candidate, and the app walks through what changes, demo by demo, in plain language with live examples rather than numbers. It worked as well for a customer switching platforms as for one upgrading in place.

Side by side on the sales floor: iPhone SE against iPhone XR, opened on a live demo instead of a spec sheet

Each comparison is a demo you can run: performance shown through the actual experience, with the steps to reproduce it on the device in hand

Battery told as a story: 14 hours against 26, with what that difference means in a day

The picker covers the whole lineup, including Android as a starting point, so a platform switcher gets the same guided path

The tablet experience: comparison cards a partner can hand to the customer

The same program included the channel training system that kept retail staff current, which lifted test scores 30 percent and content engagement 120 percent.

Impact

Over one billion dollars in upgrade and platform-switch revenue attributed to the redesigned experience.