SaferTrails

Role Tech Category Year
UX Researcher and UI Designer Adobe XD Fitness, Wellness and Travel 2021

Executive Summary

Hiking is an excellent activity that presents a unique opportunity for individuals to exercise, enjoy nature, socialize, and take a mental break from the chaos of everyday life.

The goal was to create a product that decreases the users' logistical and safety concerns, allowing them to focus on the hike more than the planning, scheduling, coordinating and communicatiion.





Problem Statement

No applications are offering services that are created for the purpose of helping hikers select hiking locations, schedule hiking trips, and promote mindfullness.

"Hiking is the answer, nevermind what the question was."




Research and Ideation

We began interviewing hikers to learn about how often they hike, their hiking preferences, how they prepare for hikes, ensure safety, and what devices they carry and use when hiking.

User Research

All participants lived in Georgia and are college age individuals (19-27). Different genders, races, and personality types are represented in this group.






Interview Method #
Online Survey 11
In-Person Interviews 3
In-Person Interviews 3
Phone Interviews 2
Online Research 4

Sample Questions


● What devices do you bring with you while hiking? How do you use technology before, during and following a hike?
● How do you ensure your safety during a hike.
● What are the excuses people use to avoid hiking?
● What additional activities do you like to participate in while on a hiking trip? (e.g. climbing, kayaking, biking, camping, etc.)
● How often do you hike throughout the year, and what factors motivate your decisions?
● How many hiking trips do they schedule and ultimately cancel each year? Why?
● What are the factors used to determine which trail you choose? (eg. location, difficulty, trail completion time, views, landmarks, etc.)
● Do you prefer to hike in groups or alone? How do you coordinate hiking trips? What are associated hurdles?

Data Visualization


Analysis



The most popular website and mobile application providing services for event planning is Facebook and for hikers on and off the trail is the mobile hiking application AllTrails.


One individual interviewed has a friendly competition with a friend relating to tracking their physical activity, so we could see competition being a small factor for some users.

● 78% of interviewees did not like using their phones during hikes.

● A few people liked to track their steps and calories on the trail.

● Everyone liked hiking with at least a small group of friends.

● All participants liked hiking with at least a small group of friends, and all individuals interviewed stated that they like to hike because they enjoy being outdoors and the activity positively impacts their mental health.





Personas

















Affinity Diagram









Design Criteria from Data

Convenience
- Users want to find trails that are nearby, easily accessible, and trails that meet their requirements (difficulty, trail length, river, etc ).

Seclusion
- Hikers do not mind using technology in preparation for their hike. However, when on the trail they like to use technology minimally or ubiquitously. They want to be "in the moment" and "aware of their surroundings."

Community
- Hikers strongly prefer bonding and sharing unique outdoor experiences with others.

Safety
- Some users were very invested in ensuring that their prospective trails were low-risk and that in case of an emergency they will be able to receive assistance.





Ideation

There were two 45 minute-long ideation sessions that produced 110 ideas. The objectice was to come up with as many judgement free ideas inspired by the design criteria as possible.









Idea Selection

To select the final design concept, I looked at the ideas generated, and analyzed them in terms of whether the concept meets design criteria and what has the potential to meet market/user needs. Community was the most important design criteria, as determined from the data.


After creating the ideas I separated them into main categories. Green sticky notes indicate the most relevant categories, and the blue sticky notes beneath highlight the most relevant ideas.
Finally, it was concluded that planning a group hiking event and finding people to join you in your hike, satisfied our design requirements and met unsatisfied needs.

Finally, the idea for SaferTrails was born and I began outlining features inspired by findings and began prototyping concepts.





Design Criteria Integration

Focus on Community and Convenience - Our interviewees liked the social aspects of hiking but struggle with planning hikes. This website will provide features to the user to help them plan and obtain information regarding their hike in a centralized location.

Users - The most relevant users would be enthusiastic hikers looking to hike with groups of individuals. Primarily this appeals to our John Brooks persona. Our target demographic consists of enthusiastic hikers 25-50.

Mobile-First, iOS and Android compatible




Hi-Fidelity Prototype





Key Activities

● Create an outing, either public and private and invite others

● Discover hiking locations, upcomming hikes, read reviews, comment and view geotagged photos.

● Dashboard - users can view calendar, Accept, Decline, view Reminders regarding outings. If a user selects “Going”, it will be added to the user’s calendar.

● Each user will have their own profile (public or private), displaying photos and preferences.

● Users can list favorite locations and obtain information regarding events in those locations, manage contacts, follow different users, read blog posts.


Key TakeAways

The majority of our subjects were able to navigate our application, however some of our design choices need to be refined to make the experience more intuitive to all users.

Next Steps

Next steps will include gaining additional data, and critiques to further refine the prototype.