REI: THE COLLECTIVE
Seattle, Washington
Location:
UI & UX Design | Product Research
Services:
REI has developed a brand centered around outdoor recreation with an emphasis on community and environmental awareness. Although they have an events calendar they do not have a way to connect community members within their app.
The Team:
I worked with my partner Megan to create this app. My duties involved interviewing, providing support in information synthesis, ideating for the prototype, and working within Figma.
Megan led the branding research, created a schedule and individual role guide, mind mapping, information synthesis, and prototyping.
My Duties:
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Create interview questions
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Schedule and conduct interviews
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Synthesize our findings through individual and partner affinity mapping
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Journey Mapping
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Research competitors and comparators
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Create wire flows, wireframing, and prototyping
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Deliver the prototype
Our Approach:
To understand how we could bring REI closer to the community we interviewed rock climbers of all skill sets, gaining information on their habits, regiments, and motives pertaining to climbing. For two weeks we dove into brainstorming, synthesizing, and ideating a way to harmonize REI and the climbing community. We presented a detailed design and app for REI by the end of week two.
Analyzing competition:
We analyzed competitors in the realm of fitness and outdoor recreation as well as competitors in online retail that also provides group events. We discerned what functions similar companies were using and what we might improve on.
We found that REI only includes events pertaining to their company or companies they worked with. Their calendar only focused on sponsored events. We saw the first flaw in providing valuable information for the community to come together.
My first assumption is that climbers want to see what else could be going on in the community in terms of gym events, climbing events both indoor and outdoor, and possibly even some meetups.
Understanding the brand:
Parallel to synthesizing our data from interviews we did some research on the preexisting website through heuristic and task analysis. From here I wanted to make sure we provided an intuitive landing page for classes that is well organized with proper imagery to depict exactly what each page represented.
In addition I wanted to add more comprehensive information about the classes that REI has to provide. Noting that reviews were a main feature to REI’s online store catalog I decided it would be a great feature for the classes.
To make sure we matched perfectly to REI’s current design we were able to find their brand catalog and implement their color tokens for text, CTA’s, and other essential design principles into our prototype.
Our goal was for anyone familiar with REI’s website or app to have an easier time learning the new features we created. I implemented REI’s color palette for CTA’s. REI has two different types for headers (Georgian) and for body text (Helvetica Neue). Adding these curated aesthetics gives users an ease of navigation and promotes learnability.
Talking with the community:
We talked to climbers of all skill sets to find out what is most important to them in rock climbing; why they climb, and what brought them to the sport, and what the benefits are.
Our assumptions were; that climbers wanted to use technology to track their progress in climbing, find information about outdoor climbs, gain information about fitness, and to learn more about the sport and all its facets.
What we did learn is that the climbing community told us that they use climbing as a way to relax and meditate as a form of practicing mental health, to keep active, as well as to socialize with others.
With the use of affinity mapping I was able to pinpoint a few trends:
Meet the User:
With all of the information gained we created a persona and a journey map outlining the process a climber might go through while using a climbing related app.
After the creation of our main persona we were able to learn that the user may struggle with how they might gauge their current skill level and if that aligns with a class they might choose from REI’s list of classes.
In empathizing with the struggles of branching into a new hobby looking for activities or new friends can be daunting. I created an understanding of how a newer climber could go about finding a class to partake in to delve into climbing.
We see that Lauren, our main persona, when booking an online course, wasn't able to take from the information provided about the class if her skill set matches the requirements of the class. I created a CTA with a hover feature that describes exactly what the skill level requirements entail to give the user a sense of security that they will be choosing the right class.
The Problem:
Climbers need a platform where they can connect with other climbers because engaging with the community helps motivate them to keep up with climbing which improves their technique, mental health, and keeps them social.
Functionality in Design:
I then created a wireflow to showcase an idea of what a user might see when using the navigation CTA’s. We decided that the navigation CTA’s would include a home, community feed, calendar, local climbing gyms in the area, and a profile button.
Aligning with our wireflow process we decided on features that would transcend a few different screens.
The functions include:
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Option to change location by area code - I wanted the user to be able to change their area in case they are traveling or moved, they would have easy access to resources pertaining to local areas and people.
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Change the sport of interest - I wanted the user to be able to change their area in case they are traveling or moved, they would have easy access to resources pertaining to local areas and people.
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Interact with user posts such as a like button and user reviews - I created a review system and a like function to posts and reviews to give the user a way to share their personality and personal experience with the community on the app.
Giving Life to the Idea:
Prototyping is by far my favorite part of the design process. Creating something and seeing an idea come to life gives me a lot of joy. I also enjoyed working with a company that I relate to. This fueled my excitement for the production of this app.
The most challenging thing about prototyping for this project is not having a lead in a two person group. My partner and my ideas were not always aligning. We solved this by working an equal amount of screens and giving each other feedback until we created one cohesive prototype.
Beyond the Horizons:
When we tested the product we observed a few design flaws as well as building on some features to the app. The navigation icons were not well representing what their function was. The testers mainly used the CTA’s on the landing page to navigate because of this.
I would like to add a chat feature so users can interact with one another outside of the community posts. One thing I did not build into the app is the ability to look at outdoor climbs near you. Though we did not hear from all of our interviewers that they would use an app to find information on outdoor climbing, a few did.
Adding a way to also showcase REI’s catalog of climbing gear and other climbing related products would benefit REI as a company as well as expose the app’s users to products they are not familiar with or have any exposure to.