overview

Minnesota Hiking Club Mobile App Design and Development

The Minnesota Hiking Club is a favorite among hikers, but manually logging hikes in the easy-to-forget booklet isn't. Hikers need an easy way to discover new hikes and track their club progress so they can focus on what's important: the joy of being outdoors.
This mobile app offers an accessible and motivating solution for hikers to record and revisit their hikes, as well as redeem rewards for earning Hiking Club trail mileage.
In User Tests, all hikers successfully found a hike that met their needs and logged that hike, updating their progress within the club.

CLIENT

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

MY ROLE

Research, Persona, Problem Statement, Storyboarding, UX Design, Development

TOOLS

Adobe XD, Figjam, Figma, Google Forms, Trello

COPYRIGHT PENDING

DISCOVER

How does the Minnesota Hiking Club work?

1. Choose your hike. Choose from 69 club trails in Minnesota's state parks. Trail descriptions are located in your Hiking Club booklet, available for $15.
2. Find the password. Find the trail's sign, about halfway through your hike, with a unique password to remember.
3. Update your log. Log the password, state park name, and trail mileage in your Hiking Club booklet.
4. Earn rewards! Present your hiking log booklet at any state park office to get patches and free nights of camping! The more miles you hike, the more rewards you can earn!
Wooded area with a sign that reads, "Hiking Club. The password is continental."

Learning about stakeholder goals

PARTICIPANT

Veronica J. with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

OBJECTIVE

Understand Veronica's goals for the hiking club

FINDINGS

Veronica has three main goals for the club
Icon of two pine trees
GET PEOPLE OUTSIDE
Increase park awareness and introduce new users of all skill levels to the parks system
Icon of human's mind
MAKE HIKING A HABIT
Help residents establish healthy habits and increase returning users to parks
Icon of mobile device
EASE AND ACCESSIBILITY
Make it easier for users to participate in the club and log their mileage

Learning about our user

I had a main role in creating the team's research plan. User research consisted of a survey and six user interviews, including two current hiking club members.‍
OBJECTIVE
Uncover how users discover new hiking trails, develop and maintain hiking habits, and how they prefer to track exercise and health data. ‍
SURVEY FINDINGS
Pie chart showing 81%
pie chart showing 91%
81% use smartphones will hiking
Pie chart showing 68%
68% keep track of mileage
91% are ages 25-45
Interviewing users allowed us to gain further qualitative data and learn deeper insights about their experience and behavior. Asking them to share their worst hiking experience not only loosened them up to talk, but uncovered motivations and frustrations.
INTERVIEW FINDINGS
Motivation Icon with hiker
Rewards icon
Finding Trails Icon
Inspiration icon
Pain point icon with question mark
MOTIVATION
REWARDS
FINDING TRAILS
NON-COMPETITIVE
PAIN POINTS
They enjoy time in nature with family, a small group of friends, or dog.
They think physical reward are clutter, but enjoy small digital rewards to reinforce healthy habits.
They find trail inspiration on social media apps, spending additional time researching trail details and conditions.
They aren't very competitive. Instead, they're inspired by their own goals and progress.
They dislike feeling unprepared for a hike, including seasonal conditions, difficulty ratings or poorly marked trails.

DEFINE

Meet Amanda

User Persona. Amanda Pearsons relaxes on a hiking trail, looking earnestly at the camera.

Problem Statement

Minnesota Hiking Club members like Amanda want to feel prepared for each new hike as they make progress in the club.

Amanda is currently conducting her own trail research on multiple platforms, collecting hike inspiration, trail descriptions and safety conditions. In addition, she's manually logging her hikes in an easily forgotten booklet.

How might we help Amanda streamline the planning and logging processes so she can focus on the joy of hiking?

DESIGN

Key Features: How can we help Amanda reach her goals?

In order to prevent scope creep, our team used a feature prioritization matrix to narrow our vision, focusing on both Amanda's and the organizations's needs and goals.
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While necessary to progress within the club, hikers don't actually like to take the time to log their mileage. The task of logging mileage is a cost that users pay to reach their goal of progressing within the club. Therefore, the process of logging each hike needs to be as quick, intuitive, and delightful as possible.
Feature Prioritization Matrix, with User Importance on the Y Axis and Developer Complexity on the X Axis

Amanda's Story

I created this storyboard to tell Amanda's story and encourage empathy from stakeholders.
Storybook panel one: Shows Amanda and her friends at the trail head. Amanda says, "Shoot! I forgot my hiking club booklet."
Amanda's friends are ready to hike, but Amanda realizes she forgot her Minnesota Hiking Club booklet. She feels unprepared and isn't sure she'll remember to log her hike.
Storyboard panel two. Amanda says, "Oh yeah, there's a hiking club app!"
Amanda remembers another hiker told her about the Minnesota Hiking Club app.
Storyboard panel three. Shows close up of Amanda's phone, displaying the details of a trail desceription.
On the app, she reads about the trail conditions and difficulty rating. The group decides they're prepared for today's hike.
Storyboard panel four. Amanda holds up her mobile phone with a map displayed.
Amanda also downloads a map, in case they lose phone service along the way. She now feels completely prepared.
Storyboard panel five. Amanda and her friends walk on beautiful trail. The trail's password sign is in view.
Amanda and her friends enjoy the hike together, taking in the beautiful new scenery. Amanda snaps a photo of the hike's password, confident she'll log it later at her convenience.
Storyboard panel six. Amanda holds up her phone, which displays a big green checkmark, showing that she has completed her hike. Her friends are supportive.
When Amanda regains phone service back at the trailhead, she easily logs the hike using the trail password. Because she can view her club progress at a glance and easily search new trails, she's motivated to plan her next hike!

Sketches to Wireframes: Bringing ideas to life

Bringing the existing club into the digital world was an interesting challenge. It was important to remember not to create a literal translation of the booklet, but instead always keep Amanda's motivations and goals in mind.‍
Minnesota Hiking Club booklet, with hand-written annotations and folded corner
Sketches for trail results screen, both list and map views
Low-fi wireframes for trail results screens, both list and map
Detail: Progression of Hike Search with Map/List View, from booklet to low-fi wireframes

A pause to reflect on requirements and constraints. (This is where things get messy.)

The project required our team to present a developed product. We knew our skillset was too limited to fully develop and code an app, so we looked into app builders and content management systems. We landed on Glide Apps, an app builder powered by a Google Spreadsheets database.
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As we translated our wireframes to Glide Apps, we encountered a constraint: our UI design was not supported by the app builder's templates. We were forced to make some design changes. Would these constraints limit our users? Would the app builder work for our client? We relied on user testing to validate our modified design.

Glide Apps Testing Prototype

Making design choices based on the limitations of the app builder templates instead of the user data was not ideal. The translation came with some compromises. For instance, Glide Apps doesn't allow the user profile to be included in the global navigation.

We wouldn't know the impact of these compromises until we performed user testing.

My role was to ensure that the app is fully functional for testing, including micro-interactions and other UI choices.

With spreadsheets of real data provided by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, testers are now able to log any hike using its unique password, automatically updating their hiking log and user profile.
Four screens from the Glide apps prototype, showing trail results in map and list view, state park details page, and downloadable maps screen

User Testing

Moderated user tests with the Glide Apps prototype, asking users to perform three tasks: searching for and choosing a hike, logging a completed hike and viewing club mileage progress.
Testing Results
100%
All testers successfully searched for and selected a hike.
No substantial changes needed.
88.3%
Most successfully logged their hike, but some had trouble completing the task. Testers were confused by the floating button in the lower right corner to log their hikes.
Change "List" icon on floating "Log Hike" button to the conventionally accepted "Plus" icon
37.5%
Most had trouble viewing their mileage and club progress, located in User Profile. Only 37.5% were able to easily view their progress.
Add User Profile icon to Global Navigation. Users couldn't find it in the hamburger menu in upper left. Unfortunately, Glide Apps does not allow this placement.

DELIVER

Interactive Prototype

This video shows a quick "click through" of the fully-functional app built in Glide Apps. The video walks through finding and selecting a hike, tracking the hike using the password, and viewing user progress within the club.
This QR Code allows you to download the app to your phone so you can try it out for yourself!
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You can also go to https://mnhikingclub.glideapp.io/ to experience it on your desktop.
QR code to access the app

Prototype Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Although the team was largely satisfied with the app we built in Glide and the testing metrics it generated, the design template prevented us from enacting all the changes suggested by our user testing. The following is an Adobe XD prototype these changes, as well as adhering to the State of Minnesota's existing style guide and accessibility standards. However, this prototype requires further user testing before it can be validated.
Further user suggestions and possible next steps include:

User Flow

This user flow is based on the Adobe XD prototype and reflects several iterations, including creating multiple ways for the user to log a hike.

Initially, we planned for users to log their hike directly from that hike's Park Details page. We learned through user testing that users also want to update their hiking log directly through the Hiking Log page.
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Phase Two will include a flow from State Parks Details Page to a downloadable map.
User flow that follows the user from opening the mobile app to finding and logging a hike, to viewing progress within the club
Thank You!
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