I was tasked with creating website that will help people plan and manage their camping trips. The website should be true to REI’s brand in look, feel, and tone but exist separately from REI.com.
Competitor highlights included:
I interviewed a few campers who camp in groups to better understand their pain points. This led me to a theory that planning camping trips with groups could be simplified through an organized list of equipment.
I then used card sorting to gain insight into how people might organize various items into categories. This would come in handy later when designing the product catalog and checklist.
I wanted to cover the journey beginning with choosing a location to visit and ending with the assurance that they would be prepared for that trip in regards to equipment and knowledge.
A person would be able to select a location, consider available activities and amenities at or around that location, and be prepared to enjoy themselves without the worry of forgetting a necessary piece of equipment.
I used Hipcamp as a model for destination search and discovery and incorporated best practices from Amazon for the product page and buy flow.
My main focus was to design a solution that would enable a group of individuals to plan camping trips. The trip organizer would create a trip by selecting a desired location. They would then be prompted to add nearby activities and items they plan to bring.
Additional individuals could then be added to the group and a checklist of necessary items would be populated based on various factors such as climate, activities, and the number of group members. Using the checklists, individuals in the group could then check off items in the list that they plan to bring.
This list will provide information on recommended equipment and supplies and an avenue to acquire items that are unaccounted for.
I sketched out the trip planning start screen and a layout for the shopping cart.
I considered the following flow when designing the prototype:
During the wire framing process, I started with a design and then iterated based on feedback I received from testing along the way. The first iteration for each screen appears on the top and the last appears on the bottom in each of the images below.
Usability testing resulted in the addition of more iconography than text resembling hyperlinks. I changed the call to action during checkout from "Continue" to "Purchase" so that it better described a more final destination/result. Group member addition needed to be more visibly separate and clear. Created a container around the Checklist section with obvious sections included. Changed Jim in checklist to your list to reflect Jim logged in as a user. Added ability to navigate to other products in the product page. Made changes to group section icons added add to cart feedback and various other improvements to the product catalog.
For clickable prototype Click Here
For spec doc Click Here
During the prototyping phase I introduced the color design language and instructions with interactive portions. I wanted to engage the audience by providing illustrated instructions alongside written ones. The idea being with each task after a person performs the instruction within the application feedback is provided to indicate completion followed by automatic advancement to the next task. I also wanted to provide the flexibility to go at one's own pace. There would be options to skip tasks or entire sections and to go back to previous tasks as well.
We also wanted to include additional tutorials for advanced features that would appear after the basic tutorial when the layers or filters features had been selected. A prompt would present the option to continue learning more if the person were interested. This would only appear one time but could be accessed thereafter by selecting the "?" help section on the left panel.
Clickable prototype can be found here.
In the end education was our main focus. Our research led us in that direction. Our goal was to empower people using the application to reach their goal. Our suggestions were well received and we handed off our research findings to the Create team so that they could be prioritized and addressed.
