Explore

Initially, this project was aimed at redesigning a popular climbing app, the Mountain Project. However, research and user testing pointed to an opportunity for a fresh take on the digital climb guide. My findings from the redesign along with continued user testing helped guide this project to deliver an intuitive and useful app.

The name of the app gives a nod to the place climbers spend so much of their time - rocks, boulders, cliffs, and crags. 

To get an idea of industry standards, and to set a benchmark for evaluation, I set out to find as much information as possible about how competitive products work. I noted and organized commonalities and pain-points across the platforms.

Insight: All the competing apps have an easy-to-access map with browsing features, such as filters and pins, to discover new places.

In addition to a survey dispersed among several Facebook climbing groups, I did a lot of chatting with climbers. I'd frequently pick my friends' brains while exploring outside, and also with climbers at the gym. 

Insight: Surveys are great, and can help quantify certain data to make decisions, like what types of climbing should be in the filters. However, in order to tap into the culture and motivation of climbers, a more in-depth understanding is needed.

Insight: Most climbers interviewed use the Mountain Project when they don't have a guide book on hand, however they have to rely on a high level of proficiency built up over years to navigate the interface. Even to the seasoned user, the Mountain Project can be tricky to use. However, I observed that a lot of the Mountain Project app's quirks have translated into preconceived notions of how any climbing app should work. We will see more of that a little later.

In order to further understand the functionality of exploration apps, I analyzed a few examples, and quickly sketched them out as flow charts. This helped me understand common items and layouts that worked.

Insight: Lots of functionality can be tucked into the nav bar and side menus in an app. As anticipated, the more complicated an app's primary function is, the more complex it is to use. While visual language and layouts are important, too many options on one screen can be overwhelming, and hard to sort through.

Keeping with my strategy to refrain from over complicating the home screen, I focused on a simple wireframe with most of the functionality built into the individual route and area screens. 

Insight: Most users commented on this concept being a huge improvement over other products they had used. Some mentioned it was a little information heavy, and text small to read at times. The map-based navigation mostly a success, but left out climbers who were searching for a climb by name. This concept needed to be pushed further.

My clickable wireframe enabled me to get feedback on flow and functionality of Cragger from real users. I tracked down as many climbers as I could to pick through the screens, and give me feedback. I had them walk me through what they expected from it, and I observed how they interacted with it. 

Insight: While only allowing for finding climbs from the Map screen, it did not give affordance for common journeys a climber might go through when using the app. I needed to add a landing page along with a tab bar nav stack to help users quickly jump in and find the information they are after.

The first round of user testing yielded great insights on general navigation and flow opporrunities, but the project needed a high fidelity prototype to tighten the screws.

In order to get a refined understanding of how climbers most naturally use the app, and how specific movements translate to data manipulation, I created a hi-fi prototype in Principle for Mac.

Back to the drawing board! In order to get more accurate feedback on the ease of use from my group of climber friends, I needed to create some hi-fi mockups. Starting out loose on big paper, I quickly ideated a number of 2D and 3D sketches to visualize the UI. First, I focused on page-to-page animations. and how everything would fit. Second, I honed in on some ideas for how filters could be manipulated on a touch screen.

Insight: There are four main components for the app (plus a weather readout as a freebie). Filters need some work.

Creating hi-fi mockups using Sketch and Principle enabled me to get specific and valuable feedback from real users. I loaded several working prototypes, and headed down to my local climbing gym in Denver. After lots of questions and watching people stumble through my evolving app, I made some of useful discoveries.

Insight: There are two highly effective factors to quickly cut down routes relevant to the search. These are Type of the climb, and Grade of the climb. While there are many other statistics that could be tucked into a filter list, these two sit at the core of what my users were looking for.

Form follows function for Cragger. A simple and legible font is used for quick reading in direct sunlight. Orange was chosen as an accent color because of its happy, energetic, and explorative feel.