Climb with REI
REI, or Recreational Equipment, Inc., is a member-owned outdoor recreation cooperative that provides top-quality gear and apparel, expert advice, rental equipment, and guided experiences. Founded in 1938 by a group of climbers, REI is committed to helping people enjoy the outdoors and has grown to become one of the nation's leading retailers and resources for outdoor recreation.
REI’s significance in climbing culture extends beyond selling gear to nurturing a community united by the pursuit of vertical challenges. Valuing REI’s expertise and the sense of community that it fosters, we set the foundation for the rest of our project.
Project Type: App Concept
Project Stack: Figma, Notion, Usertesting.com
Timeline: 3 weeks
My Role: Project Manager, UI Designer, UX Designer
Team: 3 product designers
Discovery
Discover target users, groups, goals and user needs.
Methods:
User & Market Research
Competitive analysis
Screener Surveys
Preliminary user/stakeholder interview
Initial Problem Discovery
What problem am I trying to solve?
REI wants to be the #1 brand in the eyes of climbers. They plan to create an experience specifically for climbers, regardless of whether the climber is climbing or not. They want to create an accessible and friendly platform for climbers to stay informed.
Define
Define pain points, and behaviors.
Methods:
Affinity Mapping
Personas
Retrospective Journey Mapping
My Role
As the designated project lead for Climb with REI, I collaborated with three other designers to manage project timelines, lead the team through the design process, and develop the app's visual identity. Our focus was on creating an accessible and friendly platform for climbers, enhancing personalization, interactivity, and overall enjoyment, taking into account the growing trend of interactive features. This aligned with REI's unique business model and values of providing value and quality to its member-owners, as well as its commitment to expertise, community, and sustainability.
Some of my other responsibilities were:
Leading a planned design process
Delegating tasks based on strengths
Conducting discovery interviews
Organizing research discoveries
Conducting user tests
Visual design & interactions
Design
Design features, user flows, wireframes and use cases.
Methods:
How Might We
Prospective User Flow
Wireflow
Wireframing
Testable Mid-Fi Prototype
User Interviews
To gain a deeper understanding of our target users, we worked on using a mixed-methods approach that included surveys and user interviews. Through surveys, we gathered quantitative data on demographics, climbing experience, and app usage habits. We then invited a subset of survey participants to participate in in-depth user interviews, allowing us to dig into their individual experiences and pain points. By combining data from surveys and interviews, we were able to create comprehensive affinity maps and user profiles that informed our design decisions.
After we wrapped up our user interviews, my team and I drew out an affinity map to group our findings into categories. By grouping similar notions together, we were able to discover themes such as preferences, motivations, and safety.
Our Design Process
Wireflow
Using the design studio method, we sketched out wireframes for our app. Our initial design focused on the onboarding and user profile creation process, but we ultimately decided to skip this part since it was not directly relevant to the problem statement. We also decided to add a "find a climber" flow to more directly address the problem statement.
Partner Flow
Usability Testing
We conducted remote moderated usability tests with five participants. We gave each participant two main tasks:
Imagine that you are a climber and are looking for other climbers to establish a connection with. Show me how you would do that.
You are a climber who enjoys bouldering and you want to find a fun way to spend your time with others. Show me how you would do that.
We achieved a 100% task completion rate during our mid-fidelity user testing. We also received a few critical insights as shown below:
Finding 2: Event Restriction Clarification
Observation: Users expect clear event restriction information within event descriptions.
Severity: Mild
Finding 4: Skill Level Tag Complexity
Observation: Users, especially beginners, find the skill level tags confusing.
Severity: Moderate
Solution
Our primary goal in mind moving into delivery; was to create a specialized and user-centric experience that caters to climbers' needs, offering valuable information on a daily basis, whether they are on the mountains or planning their next ascent. By establishing an accessible and welcoming platform, we aim to keep climbers informed and connected.
Our design directly solves the problems faced by individuals like Calvin, who seek compatible climbing partners to ensure safety and trust while pushing their climbing boundaries. We've tackled the challenge of facilitating social connections among climbers and making it convenient for them to book climbing events, all in one place. Our high-fidelity design introduces several key features and improvements, including proximity information within user profiles and event details, logging climbs and viewing fellow climbers recent climbs, clear day-of-the-week indicators for event availability, and a refined skill level classification system indicating levels from beginner to advanced.
One distinctive aspect of our design is its focus on fostering a strong sense of community within the climbing world. Users can anticipate the ability to RSVP and view event details, as well as the convenience of adding and messaging fellow climbers.
Final Design
During prototyping, we integrated our branding and visual design into our wireframes. We used Climb with REI's visual motif to highlight certain elements, similar to that of REI’s real life application. We used neutral colors for the background and a few neutrals and green for the call-to-action buttons to avoid visual clutter.
Climb, connect, conquer.
Reflection:
Lessons Learned
Deliver
Design high fidelity prototype and deliver.
Methods:
Test Planning
Usability Testing
Findings and Recommendations Matrix
High Fidelity Prototyping
User and Market Research
To identify areas of opportunities for intervention, we embarked on a comprehensive user and market research study. Our findings revealed a significant gap in the current market for climber-centric apps, as existing options primarily focus on route discovery and challenge tracking. Climbers, however, seek for a more holistic experience that extends beyond mere route finding and challenge logging. They seek a digital platform that fosters social connections, enabling them to locate compatible partners and share their climbing adventures with fellow enthusiasts.
Given the decision to develop Climbing with REI as a mobile app, we carefully considered the inherent limitations and legacy constraints associated with this platform.
Competitive Analysis
We analyzed the current landscape of climbing apps comparing their features and noting their respective strengths and weaknesses to identify missing gaps and key takeaways that we could incorporate into our own design.
Mountain Project
Kaya Climb
Vertical-Life Climbing
Common areas we discovered among the competitors include categories for climb to-do’s, climbing history, and interactive maps. We noticed that these apps were focused primarily on route finding and tracking with little to no social aspects to them.
Personas
Through our research, we identified two distinct personas representing the diverse types of climbers: Climbing Calvin, the social climber seeking a platform to connect with compatible climbing partners, and Hardcore Henry, the focused and driven climber primarily interested in tracking their progress and achievements.
After careful consideration, we decided to prioritize the needs of Climbing Calvin in our app's development, as his persona closely aligns with the majority of the individuals we interviewed.
Key Findings
Climbing is perceived as a mental puzzle that engages both the body and mind.
Climbing is a social activity, and many climbers prefer to climb in groups.
Climbers use both indoor gyms and outdoor sites to climb.
Climbing provides a sense of personal improvement & achievement to many.
Based on our research findings, we created our problem statement:
Calvin needs a way to find compatible climbing partners based on their skill & experience levels because he wants to be safe while testing his climbing abilities with people he can trust.
How might we…
By combining the insights we were able to gather from our research methods, and findings we managed to distill our focus and primary goals for the next week of prototyping our MVP to the following points:
How might We create a secure platform for climbers to connect and establish trust before deciding to climb together?
How might we suggest potential partners based on users' profiles?
How might we enable climbers to specify their preferred climbing styles to connect with like-minded partners?
User Flow
We developed a user flow to ensure that our solution flow would be smooth and uninterrupted by further following Jakob’s law, we aimed to preserve and present as much familiarity with existing social platforms as possible to users.
This led us to two overarching phases: Finding a Climbing Partner and Finding an Event.
Given that our MVP was contained within this flow, this was where we wanted our users to spend the majority of their time. Whether a user is finding a climbing event or searching for climbing partners to go to events with, they have all the required controls readily available to them.
Wireframes
Our next iteration for user testing included the 4 main navigation items:
Home: To allow the user a preview of the features the user can take advantage of in the app; finding a climbing partner, attending climbing events; organized by REI or experienced climbers (or adding a climbing event), and REI’s climbing blog.
Messages: Where users can view their messages and send messages to other climbers.
User Profile: Allowing the user to edit and view their profile information including name, profile picture, bio, recent hikes, and events they will be attending (which can only be viewed by their friends)
Saved: Where users can view their saved events or saved blog posts.
Event Flow
Finding 1: Day of the Week Clarity
Observation: Users express confusion when only event dates are provided; they want to see the day of the week.
Severity: Mild
Finding 3: Proximity of Climbers
Observation: Users highly prioritize knowing the proximity of other climbers.
Severity: Moderate
Strong MVP > Having a bunch of features
Having a targeted objective helped our team stay on track with the brief and accomplish our goals within the tight time frame.
Good designs are backed by research
Every design decision needs to have a logical reasoning behind it. The more proof, the better.
Value of teamwork
Understanding your team’s communication styles, different perspectives, and different priorities, we were able to overcome these challenges by focusing on our common goal and by being willing to listen to each other and to compromise.
Highlights:
Leveraged strengths
Leveraging the strengths of our team members in research, visual design, content, and more, we were able to complete our work efficiently and effectively.
Technical knowledge
By investing the time to learn and improve our technical skills, we were able to create a product that was both user-friendly and visually appealing.
Effective communication
Utilizing communication and compromise throughout our process, our team was able to accomplish our goals in the best interests of our users.
What I could’ve done better:
More user insights and validation
Conducting more user interviews and another round of user testing would have helped us cross-reference pain points and motivations, validate the feedback we received from our high-fidelity prototype iterations, and potentially discover new pain points that we missed.
Focus on building a collaborative and productive team environment.
By trusting my teammates more, I could have freed up my own time to focus on other important aspects of the project, such as strategic planning, risk management and overall improvement of the quality of our project.