Mounteam | DK Works

Back to the top

Project Overview

Project overview

Project Type

Project collab with @JinglunChua (Tracking wristband)

Timeline

September 2022 - January 2023 (16 weeks)

My role

UX and UI lead designer for the Mounteam APP

Mentor

Professor Robert KC Liang (National Taiwan Normal University )

Tools

Adobe XD

Adobe Illustrator

Pencil, paper, sticky notes, coffee

Preliminary research

Problem discovery within the context

In order to define the problem within the context given (Mountain hiking in Taiwan), I decided to dig the internet and see if there any research and data available on the difficulties regarding hiking in the mountains in Taiwan. Luckily, I found a very detailed data from the Taiwan government regarding mountain accidents increase.

From the data retrieved and reviews, I acquired a lot of insights to be verified during field research, such as:

For the past 18 years (until August 31st, 2020), the number of accidents in mountain hiking was increased drastically

Accidents are happening at all types of mountains, even easy trails below 1500m (4900ft)

The major reason of accidents - hikers are getting lost and having injuries

For the period from 2018 to 2020, the number of lost hikers has spiked significantly

Hiking teams is a category where hikers get lost most often

Field research within outdoors activity context + online survey

From user field interviews and online surveys done via Facebook hiking groups I discovered that a big number of hikers prefer to follow someone and let someone to decide where to go for a hike. In short - most of then needed a team leader.

Most of users didn’t have some detailed understanding of the routes and their amenities, such as parking lots, public transportation, toilets, etc. Most importantly, users were having concerns about hiking route safety and what can they do during an emergency, i.e., getting lost.

Another insight is that hikers sometimes would give up on hiking due to the fear of getting lost or lack a good hiking team and leader to rely on. This was noticed especially within responses of seniors (> 55yo).

Questions asked:

How are you searching for the hiking route?

What problems have you encountered during hiking?

What information about the route is crucial to know in advance before going on a hike?

Do you prefer hiking alone or with others?

How do you look for hiking partners?

What are your main concerns about going on a hike?

Personas

MRS. WONG | 61 years old, retired

Mrs. Wong loves to spend her retirement hiking outdoors, but sometimes she doesn’t know where to go and hope someone would suggest a good hiking route for them. She and her husband prefer to hike with other people, but still don’t feel very safe even if there is an experienced team leader with them. Sometimes they can’t follow up the team and feel anxious if he gap is too big and it’s hard to call for other team members to inform about that.

Goals:

Enjoy the hiking without worries
Ensure hiking safety
Understand a hiking route more

Motivations:

Spending a quality time and socialize
Enjoy a good scenery and take pictures
Improve physical and mental health

Pain points:

Not having enough information on hiking route
Feels frustrated if not following up the team
Anxiety of getting lost
Losing motivation of going on a hike

DANNY | 30 years old, product manager

Danny is a hiking enthusiasts and loves going on a good hike almost every weekend. He is aware of a variety routes around and often gathers a team to hike together. However, it becomes frustrating to manage the team when someone gets separated or lost, especially if the trail doesn’t have internet coverage or even reception. He has a strong sense of responsibility, but not enough tools to keep the team together for the better hiking experience.

Goals:

Enjoy the hike with other people
Ensure hiking safety
Manage hiking team better

Motivations:

Spending a quality time and socialize
Acquire a different user experience
Improve physical and mental health

Pain points:

Lack of tools to manage the hiking team
When someone is lost, hard to find due to lack of phone signal
Losing motivation of hiking with a team

Main insights for design iterations

SAFETY: team leaders can user the APP and tracking wristband to find lost members easily

EFFICIENCY & CONVENIENCE: team leaders (or experienced hikers) can schedule a new team hiking activity by looking for new trails, inviting in-APP friends to join the hike and manage team during the activity.

AWARENESS: offer some crucial information within the APP about the trail, such as points of interest (parking lots, toilets, resting area, photogenic scenery), special items to bring, how to get to the trail using public transportation, other hikers' reviews.

Competitive analysis

After making competition analysis of two popular apps among outdoor enthusiasts, Strava and AllTrails, I noticed that they don’t offer any function towards team management and emergency response, so this might benefit my solution in Mounteam.

In addition, Strava and AllTrails offer paid subscription for some basic services like weather and offline maps, in my opinion basic functions for having a safe outdoor activity must be free of charge and profit source should be for features that don’t affect safety.

Design solution

To enhance the user experience of hikers, it was decided to use an APP solution together with tracking wristband.

In collaboration with design process of tracking wristband by @JinglunChua, I started to work on some wireframe sketching and semi-low-fi prototype in Adobe XD.

+

1. TEAM MANAGEMENT

User tracking wristband to unite everyone in one team

Overview team members stats such as their range, heartbeat and exact location

Check on your team members locations on the map

User tracking wristband to unite everyone in one team

Overview team members stats such as their range, heartbeat and exact location

Check on your team members locations on the map

2. EMERGENCY RESPONSE

Send immediate help request to your team leader

Checking status if team leader is looking for you

Using real time positioning on the map to track the location of a lost person

3. ACTIVITY PLANNING

Choose form a rich variety of hiking routes around

Use filters to adjust the route to your hiking members abilities

Add your in-APP friends to the team and send activity invitations with just one click

Wireframe sketching and iterations of app layout

Wireframes based on sketching and user needs

Semi-lowfi prototype 1.0 (team leader and team member flows)

Prototype testing

To test the usability of the first prototype, I have scheduled a remote user testing with 5 people, both having experience as a hiking team leader and team member.

Each user gave a very valuable feedback regarding functionality issues, that I summarized and used in the further improvement of a prototype

Design improvements

Based on the feedback from 5 users and mentor suggestions, I have iterated on the corrections for the initial design and made in total 10 improvements over 3 weeks

Improvement #1

Enhanced the size of icons on the map, important CTA buttons accessibility and improved the overall layout of the control panel of the activity process.

Improvement #2

Made pairing manual look more like a manual rather than step-by-step process guide.

Improvement #3

Improved leading elements in the scenario flow guiding both team leader and lost member what is their next action by replacing emergency push notifications with a more obvious on that slides up from the bottom.

Improvement #4

Updated the user flow by changing “adding new members flow” into schedule planning in advance, team leaders will use inbuilt features to create groups and schedule activity days in advance.

Improvement #5

Brough the activity related controls on the main activity screen so it can be visible and accessible easily, but with consideration of avoiding accidental use.

Improvement #6

Offered an alternative of finishing the activity without leaving the review and offering some sort of reward for leaving one that can be spent on some other features of the expanded version of the app.