Scout: Making hiking accessible for all skill levels

Project Overview: Gathering our Trail Group

We are five hikers looking for a way to improve communications and safety on our trails. As we came together, we quickly realized our shared passion for safety, inclusion, and accessibility could be used as a positive force to fill a void in current trail travel.

Core users:

Hikers of all skill levels

Roles:

Assumptions & objectives, competitive analysis, web research, proto-personas, research analysis, scenarios, user stories, final persona, prototyping, final presentation

Tools:

Google Docs, Google Sheets, Miro, Figma, Fig Jam, Canva, Calendly, Slack, Monday.com

Team:

Alia Elkady, Juan Gechem, Zoe Muellner, Sarah Stoll & Myself

Duration:

Late October – Mid-December 2022

 

What We’re Trying to Solve

Scout’s mission is to provide hikers of all skill levels easy-to-access and understand trail knowledge so they can plan, enjoy, and share their thrilling adventures with others.

  • Who: All Hikers: Hikers of all skill levels, Visiting hikers, hiking groups.

  • What: The Hiking experience, planning a trip, a safe trip, sharing your trip.

  • Where: People who are hiking in the United States.

  • When: Whenever hikers are planning a hiking trip, are presently on a trip, or finalizing a trip.

  • Why: To improve the hiking experience for all users.

 

The Challenge

How might we create a product that helps hikers of all skill levels locate, choose, prepare for, and enjoy a hike from start to finish so that we can improve our user's hiking experience?

It's not uncommon for GPS navigation to consider safety features, but what about when you are out hiking less navigated paths? Looking to make hiking exciting, safer, and more accessible for everyone, one of our goals is to address this question and continue listening to hikers’ pain points and feedback to gain more grounded insights into their needs. In addition, we will create to improve the adventure a hiker takes on the trail to ensure peace of mind during their trip from start to finish.

Goals and Objectives

  • Encourage hikers of all levels to take up hiking and plan for their trip.

  • Connect users by providing physical and virtual social experiences for users to explore, gain feedback, and share with others.

  • Provide hikers with an accurate and accessible user interface to efficiently navigate their trip from start to finish.

  • Provide environmental knowledge for users to connect and care for our planet and themselves.

  • Make hiking more accessible to users of all levels so that users.

  • Provide users with safety resources with or without cellular service.

  • Focus on the needs and pain points of our hiker.

 

The Process

 

Competitive Analysis

Analyzed 5 competitors: 3 Direct – Competitors providing similar services to our target audience, 2 Indirect – Competitors that users frequent but aren’t offering our same services
Components: Google Sheets Document

Key Competitors

We also analyzed some of our key competitors and identified some opportunities that Scout could take advantage of.

Proto-Personas

We started discovery off with the creation of proto-personas and some empathy maps to remove our worldview, and to put ourselves in the mindset of our users.

 

Research Methodology

6 Qualitative Interviews: 5 hikers of all skill levels, 1 industry professional
Interview Duration: 45 minutes to 1 hr
Components: Screener Survey, Consent form, Informational Interview, and Analysis with card-sorting

Key Research Insights

After completing our research, we analyzed our data using a card-sorting method. We identified key components that helped improve our project.

Safety & Preparation:

  • Hikers want to plan for their hikes and often use an amalgamation of online resources like reviews, comments, and pictures.

  • Preparation is key and can help prevent dehydration, discomfort, and other risks.

Trail Navigation:

  • Hikers want to communicate hazards or points of interest on the trail.

Nature Discovery:

  • Hikers want to know if there is interesting wildlife to see or what conditions to prepare for.

Social vs. Solitary Hikers:

  • Solitary hikers use social media to look at reviews and pictures.

  • Social hikers use social media to communicate and find hiking groups.

 

Our Trailblazer Persona

After analyzing our data, we updated our proto-personas to better reflect our users' wants, needs, and pain points as we focused our project on potential features. we centered our ideation around one user persona for the time being.

 

Customer Journeys

After our personas were validated, we then utilized them to map out customer journeys. This allowed us to understand how a hiker might utilize our product to complete their goals.

 

Story Board Scenarios

After completing our customer journeys, we started writing scenarios to incorporate seamless interactions that addressed the hiker’s needs before, during, and after they finished a trail hike.

As Elise wraps up her hike and cools off her car, she opens up her Scout app, rates and leaves a comment on the trail, and uploads a photo to accompany it.

While looking at her review in Scout, she decides to upload it right from there to her social media accounts so her friends and family can see what a beautiful hike it was.

Finally, she adds the hike to her favorites list so she can find it again quickly for a future hike.

 

Task Flows

Our customer journeys and storyboard scenarios worked together to build the user flow map. This map helped define the natural flow of our new experience and how users might easily navigate the space.

Blue annotations are functions while Red annotations note interactions. View full task flow for all annotations.

 

Information Architecture

Our customer journeys and storyboard scenarios built the site's architecture. This map helped define the natural flow of our new experience and how users might easily navigate the space.

 

Mood Board

Next, our team started identifying our design direction with some Mood boarding. We pulled colors from nature to determine our branding, and Topographic maps informed our choice for minimal graphics and icons.

 

Low-Fidelity Prototype

Once our Ideation stages were completed, we created low-fidelity wireframes from our storyboard scenarios, task flows, and information architecture to visualize the path our users would take throughout their experience.

Later updated to include sign up access as well as quick sign in with Apple & Google accounts.

Later expanded with ‘recent hikes’ and a search bar at the top.

Search was continued on explore page, with new ways to look for trails and parks.

Search results were expanded with more details over images as well as favoriting options.

 

Design System

As some of our team members were working on the Low Fidelity Prototype, Sarah and I nourished the design system to reflect the mission of Scout. We ended up choosing Helvetica Neue Typeface as a nod to Massimo Vignelli’s designs for the National Park Service. We also then focused on making sure our colors were limited to focus on contrast and accessibility.

 

User Testing Methodology

Unmoderated User Testing with Maze

Tested by 8 nonprofit leaders: 6 small nonprofit leaders, 2 large nonprofit leaders
Components: Low fidelity prototype, Maze user test with insight questions, heat mapping, user metrics, & analysis

The Solution

From our design system and wireframes, we built a prototype and set up a user testing plan. Our first phase is set to test the users ability to navigate their profile quickly and efficiently with minimal pain points.

 

Trail Details

Scout needed a way to inform and prepare hikers for what a trail may be like before they take their hike.

Our Hikers Loved

  • Seeing the trail details & amenities provided

  • Looking over reviews

  • Information was accessible and easy to navigate

Heuristics Observed or Improved by Users

Nielsen Norman Group 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

#5 Error Prevention:
Difficulty: 3 of 5
Users experienced frustration clicking the ‘Glen Falls’ selection from the search list as only the image and not the full card connected to the next slide.

#6 Recognition Over Recall:
POSITIVE
Based on recommendations from user tests, Required & Optional notations were added to improve the form flow.

 
 

Trail Notes

Hikers needed a way to inform other hikers of sights and conditions on the trail without overloading them with too much information at once.

Our Hikers Loved

  • The idea of adding trail notes and how they help others along a trail

  • Opening a small ‘Hiker’s kit’ in the corner of the map was an engaging interaction for all testers

Heuristics Observed or Improved by Users

Nielsen Norman Group 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

#7:Flexibility & Efficiency of Use:
Difficulty: 2 of 5
Users experienced frustration when editing the trail note location. Some didn’t know how to add it while some didn’t see the ‘Finish edit’ button at the bottom of their screen.

#2: Match System & Real World
Difficulty: 1 of 5
Users knew what to do when adding a trail note. Adding this and photos was intuitive for our users. Minor changes to editing pin location could improve this further.

 
 

Trail Review

Scout needed a way for users to comment, tag, and favorite the hikes they just took to find them again easier and inform others of their trek quality.

Users Loved

  • Providing their feedback after a hike.

  • Adding tags to their review of the top relevant content related to the trail.

  • Informing other hikers of what they saw so others know what to expect.

Heuristics Observed or Improved by Users

Nielsen Norman Group 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

#3 User Control & Freedom:
Difficulty: 2 of 5
Some users wanted the ability to add the review at a later time. This would allow them some freedom to add a review at their leisure without the pressure of doing it right after finishing their hike.

#6 Recognition Over Recall:  
Difficulty: 1 of 5
Users recognized what they needed to do quickly and followed the steps seamlessly. They had been familiar with this process from other apps they have used.

 

Next Steps

Recommendations from User Testing

  • Resolve the design for editing Trail Note pin location. Pull from existing examples to build off of users’ mental models.

  • Add the ability to skip a review until the next time you visit the app so users don’t feel pressure to place a review immediately.

  • A clearer icon for the main navigation menu while on a hike will help improve our users learnability of the navigation features.

  • A clearer location for where ‘My Backpack’ resides, potentially moving it to a more important location within the main app dashboard.

Next Features to Explore

  • Scout onboarding with quick tags to customize Scout hiker preferences.

  • SOS Systems with safety products.

  • Expanding the ‘My Backpack’ section and Hikers profiles with clear intent.

  • Apple Watch integration to allow hikers to track their hike through their watch.

Lessons Learned

  • Text helps add context to icons.

  • Different mental models can combine to create better UX.

  • Just because something is clear to us doesn’t mean it’s clear to our users.