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When it comes to snowboard design, foot size is an important issue! Julia Carlson found standard snowboards too big for her feet. Donny Mills found them too small.

To get the right fit, Carlson and Mills became snowboard designers.

"I got here from testing a lot of boards and having a lot to say about it, and [by] writing a lot of memos about what I thought," says Carlson. She thought the boards were too wide to accommodate the smaller size of most women's feet.

"In the beginning, it was 'narrower, narrower,' she explains. "All boards were eight feet long and the average width was two feet. There was nothing under a foot and a half, and I'd say I want this and this." Riders want snowboards to be just the right width, and Carlson finds they work best when the board is just wider than the foot.

Carlson was in a good position to comment. She was a snowboard racer for a company that makes snowboards. "I was riding for them a real long time and competing, and I didn't like everything. I wasn't 100 percent happy. I would write all these memos with complaints and ideas, and send them to the factory. Eventually, they started sending stuff back to me with changes!"

After a few years, Carlson quit racing and moved back home to Vermont. She applied for a job at the factory and was hired as a designer and tester.

Jason Moore, a North American boardercross champion, has been snowboarding for many years. "I just tell the specs to my designer. I tell them how I want it pressed, the shape and the stiffness." His board always comes back the way he wants it, he says. "My board is designed exactly to my weight and my height."

Mills says standard boards aren't made for snow conditions in Alaska.

"Up here, sometimes we'll get two and a half feet of snow every night. Sometimes every night for a week!"

The wider the board, the less likely it is to sink. "I've got some that are 16 inches wide, and they just float!"

Mills grew up working around his dad's construction company, so he was used to building and making things. The design was simply a question of trial and error. Mills' first snowboard was one foot wide and seven feet long.

"I nearly killed myself," he laughs. Back to the drawing board!

Later boards proved easier to ride, but too heavy. "There are no resorts around here," he explains. "Any snowboarding you're doing is all hiking."

Lighter boards are easier to carry and more likely to ride on top of the powder.

After four years of experimenting with different glues and different core materials, Mills felt he had a design he could market. He started building and selling boards out of his basement. "Everyone who's ridden one of my boards has bought one," says Mills proudly.

Carlson takes pride in the fact that most of her company's snowboards, boots and bindings now come specially designed in women's sizes. "I played my little part in development," she says.

The industry has really changed since its early days when snowboards were designed with a one-size-fits-all attitude. "What we build is a reflection of all kinds of people. My job is to listen to all those people and say what I think," says Carlson, who doesn't have an engineering degree.

"Most people who are board designers are engineers," she admits.

Carlson has always had a good sense of how things work, and what she didn't know she's been able to pick up. Her strength is her knowledge of how boards work on snow, and her ability to ride. Part of her job is riding the snowboards and testing their performance.

Any way you look at it, it's a sweet deal. "Especially on a powder day when, instead of driving to work, I get to drive to the mountain and test something," she laughs. "I like to test each board in a bunch of conditions to see how it's going to behave."

After all those hours on the slopes, Carlson has several favorite snowboards. "It always changes," she says. Basically she keeps one for the half-pipe, one for free riding and another for jumping.

Carlson had some big shoes to fill when she stepped into the job of a snowboard designer. "There are lots of people trying to get in," she warns. "You've got to pay your dues."

She says the rewards are worth it. "I just got done trying four new boards. It was great!"

Moore has some solid advice when considering the field of snowboard design. "It's a great business to get into, but starting from scratch would be really tough. So, you need to get together with a good company and learn the techniques. And then you could go out on your own."