Project Logistics

Timeline: 8 weeks / Role: UX & UI Designer and Researcher

Design Solution

Through Hiker, travellers are able to plan for hiking experiences when on vacation, discover the trail that’s right for them, and access practical tips from other hikers to inform their hiking experience.

To view a key flow of the app, please feel free to view the InVision prototype.

App Functionality 

While Hiker provides travellers with full support from planning, finding, navigating to, and recommending a hike, it has three key features that sets it apart from other hiking apps:

Tips & info from other hikers

Users are not only able to look at how other hikers have rated the trail (on a 4-star system), but they can also read helpful tips that others have left behind, discover images of the trail, as well as trail traffic averages per month (i.e., is the trail usually busy in June).

Filtering by trail feature

While users can search and filter for trails based on length and difficulty, a key part of finding the right trail for their hike also rests on the type of features or terrain that the trail has to offer. Hiker allows users to filter for trails that include features such as waterfalls, lookout points, mountains, rivers etc.

Recommending and sharing hikes

For many hikers a recommendation from someone they know plays a large role in making a decision on a trail. Through Hiker, you can recommend and share trails, and by connecting with friends and other hikers, users can see where these people have hiked and browse a selection of trails that users have dubbed “hidden gems” or “must-hike trails.

Research 

Methods:

Secondary research was also conducted through travel/hiking industry reports and academic studies of trail usage.

1. People care about the length and difficulty of a trail, but after that, they just want to hike the “prettiest one.”

2. Even a great hike can be ruined by factors like too many people on the trail or not being well equipped.

3. Travellers trust friends, locals, hosts and hotel/hostel staff for hiking suggestions over online recommendations.

While some research spoke directly to the hiking experience, other research suggested insights from millennials’ travel experiences and planning.

trips were made overseas by Canadians in April 2017 to countries other than the US.
(Statistics Canada)

of the fastest growing sectors in the travel industry is adventure tourism.
(Lonely Planet)

of people look at up to 20 hotel reviews before booking. (Worms University)

Using the interviews that I conducted, I created a persona as a representation of the data, with the pain points and travelling goals draw directly from the interviews. Using the persona, Jennifer Keel, I was able to put a human face on the problem as I began to map the user journey and create the wireframes.

Biography

At 27 years old, Jennifer works as a nurse and lives in downtown Toronto with her partner of five years.

They love to travel once or twice a year in another country, usually reserving a day or two for hiking. She enjoys straying off the beaten path for local food, culture, and hiking, but also makes sure to see the major sites. And though she’s not an expert hiker, she does enjoy a hike every month or two close to home during the summer. Her ideal trail includes waterfalls, scenic lookout points and mountain views.

Travelling Goals

• Disconnecting in nature and quality time with her partner.

• Going on one to two stunning hikes while on vacation.

• Finding the hike that will give the most enjoyment.

Pain Points

• Too many people on the trail while she is hiking.

• Hiking to a lookout point only to find the view disappointing.

• Getting lost or getting eaten by bugs on the trail.

During the early stages of sketching and creating early wireframes, I encountered several challenges that helped me pivot and brought me to an overall learning outcome: the need to experiment broadly and determine when to make drastic versus incremental changes.

“And how is this sorted?”

When users first looked at the explore screen, they didn’t understand how the hikes were sorted–why certain entries were appearing above others. While I subsequently revised it several times, it was a slow process. User feedback at each stage still came back to the question “how is this sorted?”

I needed to address the issue more holistically, instead of making a series of small changes.

After a series of sketches and wireframes, I identified a key task flow and primary screens that would act as main entry points for anyone using the app, including: Explore screen, filter screen and hike details screen.

01 Explore

Images give an immediate idea of what the trail looks like, together with important planning info: location, length and difficulty.

02 Filter

After length and difficulty level, trail features were an important aspect of trip-selection for travellers, so these are prominently featured.

03 Hike

In addition to overall trail description and details, hiker-inputted info such as trail traffic was included, along with trail reviews.

A task flow was generated of a primary task that users were looking to participate in: searching for a hike and saving it to go back to when needed.

After establishing the visual identity and building out the UI Components, I created a UI library to ensure consistency across the app. The below is a condensed version of the full UI library.

User-Testing

User-testing took place throughout the creation process, from early wireframe iterations to high-fidelity prototypes, informing and pivoting the design as needed. The last round of user testing was at the high-fidelity stage. Below are some of the significant changes that were made.

Before: Explore Screen

In user testing of the Explore/Search page, I found users were confused by the “Friends’ Recent Hike category, the rating system and their location on the page.

After: Explore Screen

To solve the confusion in the Search/Explore page, I added clarity around the category (through use of friends’ profiles) and rating, and added colour to signify section location.

After: Hike Screen

Added in relevant information (such as map location, and introduced a new format for some sections.

 Learning Outcomes

The project helped strengthen my ability to translate user interviews and user testing insights into an interface that would help users achieve their goals and reduce pain points. It also gave me an awareness of the importance of generating multiple ideas and experimenting with alternative interfaces from which to choose the best one for the user. 

I recently pitched Hiker to a small group of people interested in working on a side start-up together, and whether or not that possibility will come to fruition, I’d like to continue to design the My Hikes and Profile sections, and then conduct another round of usability tests. In tandem, I’d like to gather insights from talking to hikers and observing a few hiking trips, to make sure we are building out the most functional features first.