The App

Guthook Guides is an app for hikers of long-distance hiking trails around the world. It launched initially in 2012 for sections of the Pacific Crest Trail and since then has expanded to over 50 hiking trails and bikepacking routes worldwide. The mission of Guthook Guides and its parent company, Atlas Guides, is to help hikers safely and confidently navigate long distance trails and all the logistics that such a hike entails.

Survey

When I joined Atlas Guides, the team already had a survey in place to collect quantitative data about our users. However, the survey wasn’t generating very many responses, and I wanted to collect more data from a wider variety of current users as well as non-users who fit into our target user groups.

I created another survey and sent it out. I made sure that this new survey also contained some open-ended questions so that I could gather additional types of data from respondents.

Synthesis

I used data from the existing survey as well as my new survey and distilled the results into a variety of new insights about our three main existing or target user groups: thru-hikers, section hikers, and day hikers.

I pulled this into a presentation to share with the rest of the team, highlighting motivations, traits, and direct quotes from respondents. I also created “cheat sheets” for each user group so that the rest of the team could continue to reference easy-to understand data to make more informed decisions.

Persona Creation

Based on the data collected in the surveys and from user interviews, I created a variety of personas to help myself and the rest of the team talk about our users. These personas also aided in further design thinking activities such as Empathy Mapping, Needs Statements, and, from there, Priority Grids and Experience-based Roadmapping

Design Thinking Workshops

When I joined the team, none of my coworkers were familiar with Design Thinking exercises or methodologies. I was able to facilitate both in-person and remote workshops to help all of us better understand our users and come up with possible solutions to their pain points. Later in the process, we were also able to successfully use Experience-based Roadmapping to decide on a way to move forward with some of the UX recommendations I had provided.

Pain Points and Areas of Opportunity

Through my knowledge of our users as well as the experience audit and workshops, I was able to define some areas of opportunity as well as some pain points for our users.

Discovery

Discovery was definitely an area of opportunity. For most of its existence, Atlas Guides had not actively marketed its app, instead relying on word of mouth within the hiking community.

Proposed solutions: website and SEO update, social media marketing, event attendance

Onboarding

The onboarding experience was another area of opportunity, especially from a legal perspective. The onboarding experience should be a relatively quick experience (time-to-value) that leads users through any setup needed to effectively use the app.

Proposed solutions: onboarding redesign including abbreviated terms of use

User Profile

The user profile is currently very basic. This presents an area of opportunity to expand social features and offerings within the app. Thru-hiking os often social, and there are already aspects of social interaction within the app.

Proposed solution: expansion of user profile features

Purchasing

The purchasing system is currently a major pain point for both the user and for the company. Frequently, users cannot find the trail they would like to purchase, or do not even know that the company offers a particular trail guide. Improving this user experience will result in increased sales for the company as well as for a smoother experience for customers.

Proposed solution: Redesign of purchasing system, separation of purchased trails and available purchases

Route Creation

The ability to create a custom route is something that is beneficial to a majority of our user groups, especially section hikers. This feature exists in the app, but can be difficult to find and use. There is also a social area of opportunity here for users and hiking groups to share their favorite or planned routes.

Proposed solution: route creation experience redesign

Wireframes

Utilizing knowledge gained and artifacts created in previous phases of the project, I created a series of wireframes geared towards improving user experience and solving existing pain points.

The Trail Guide

Mobile App | Experimental Project

A mobile app for long-distance hikers that offers maps, planning and guidance, a social community, and ways to record data about their hike.

User Testing and Interviews

The first step to testing my wireframes was to add them to an interactive InVision prototype so that participants could more easily interact with the wireframes remotely. This way, I could also step back into a much more observant role during the testing sessions.

Before starting any sessions, I developed a testing protocol and tasks so that I could compare sessions. I also made sure to recruit a variety of participants from across our range of users.

Always eager to gain more information about users and potential users, I also used this time to interview participants about their hiking experience and preferences.

Synthesis

After testing, it became clear that there were a few aspects of my design that needed to be updated. I made these changes to wireframes before embarking on further user testing.

Recommendations

Based on my research and testing, I synthesized my results into a list of detailed user experience recommendations for the team. I also crafted a presentation that went through some of the key pain points and proposed solutions.

Many of these recommendations will enable hikers to use the app less often and find information faster when they do need to use the app.

UI Component Design

A major feature of the Guthook Guides app is the ability to see waypoints along the trail. These waypoints help hikers navigate confidently to their destination. These waypoints were also a major part of the redesign. Though they functioned reasonably well for most people, there were ways they could be improved. The original waypoints had small images that were often difficult to read, and beyond interpreting the icon/image, there was no easy way to understand what was located at that waypoint.

The redesign here had a couple parts:

First, all waypoints were organized into one of about 8 categories. These categories were then given a color. Thus, even if a hiker did not recognize the icon, they would know that a blue icon was a potential water source or that an orange icon was a place offering resupply options.

Second, the icons were redesigned to be one color against the contrasting category color. By making these compliant with WCAG AA guidelines, we ensure that more of our users are able to easily understand the waypoint icons.

High-Fidelity Wireframes

Using the wireframes that I had already created as well as the new company brand and new UI components, I drafted a series of high-fidelity wireframes for use by the rest of the team.

This process included extensive feedback from the rest of the team, including technical feasibility discussions and discussions around data model updates.

As a note, the images displayed here are more recent as the features and capabilities of the app have continued to evolve since the inception of this redesign project.

GUTHOOK GUIDES Social

Mobile App | New Feature Project

A tool to help hikers stay connected, the social features of the Guthook Guides app allow hikers to send updates to those following along with their adventure.