Trail

Trail makes it easy to explore and keep track of trails and parks you want to visit. Discover awesome places to go hiking and do other outdoor activities that match your preferences and level of experience.

As a result of Covid-19 and the rise of social distancing norms, it seemed likely that there would be a shift towards outdoor social activities. I’ve also always enjoyed going for walks and hikes (although I don’t consider myself an expert hiker by any means!). With these two factors in mind, I was inspired to design Trail.

For this project I wanted to conduct a reasonably sufficient base level of research prior to transitioning into the design phase. First, I did quite a bit of competitive analysis, looking into a wide variety of North American competitors with varying missions, mandates and solutions. I then conducted a number of user interviews to get a first hand qualitative sense of potential users needs and expectations. With the interview results I developed a persona.

During the design phase I first focused on information architecture and user flow before creating the wireframes. I then converted the wireframes into a high fidelity interactive prototype.

One of the bigger challenges of this project was to differentiate between user segments with significantly different levels of experience. Features / information which may be critical to advanced hikers (or experts of other outdoor activities) may not be relevant to more novice or leisurely users (like myself).

While analyzing competitors, a number of ‘industry standard’ commonalities began to emerge. The use of a map for searching, specific search filters, photos, particular data points presented for a trail, user reviews / comments, and more, were features and information present amongst a majority of competitors. These insights provided a solid foundation upon which to base my interview questions (and they would also ultimately provide guidance / inspiration during the design phase).

After conducting a number of interviews, I came to the conclusion that users with significantly different levels of experience do indeed have different needs and as a result would emphasize different features. For example, while a more advanced hiker may be more concerned with extensive and continually updated map legends and trail paths, less expert hikers focused more on social features, like the ability to follow friends and share their experiences.

All the information gathered from the research phase allowed me to enter into the design phase with some confidence that the solution I was creating was in line with the needs of the user segment / persona I had developed. However, it should be noted that given the opportunity, I would have liked to conduct more interviews and to have developed at least one additional persona based on more expert hikers. Furthermore, for the sake of limiting the scope of this project, I didn’t include one key additional feature, which, based on the interviews, I definitely would have also liked to incorporate: the ability to track a handful of metrics and gps data for personal use and for use in the continuous maintenance and improvement of trail information.

Overall this project was a fun experiment which provided great insight into how technology can facilitate and enhance time spent in nature.