Email: Bnishio@gmail.com
REI Ready
Case study
Project Type Group Project
Date May 2024
Location San Francisco
REI Ready was a recent, collaborative project that I worked on in May of 2024. Our project was to create a companion app that would complement an outdoor adventure taught by REI, and boost them to top of the market as the number one outdoor retailer.
We thought that the most applicable users were those who traveled on the trails, but who were they really? 🤔
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As researchers we found people who would have been defined as regular hikers, and for us that meant that they went for a hike on a dirt path more than once a month
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We wanted to know if they had any routines that they would practice before the hike and during the hike
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In addition to this, we wanted to know if they had any regular pain points that would arise during their experiences of going out into the wilderness
Let me introduce you to Jimmy, the Solar Engineer! 👷♂️
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Jimmy lives in the Bay Area, he’s a social individual, a huge planner, and an adventurous soul. His habits and behaviors consist of posting his hikes on social media, tracking his hikes on fitness apps like Strava, Apple Watch, and preparing for his hikes the night before
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He has some frustrations such as getting confused about where to park at trails, the fact that many outdoor apps are paywalled, and stressed that online information isn’t always up to date - specifically hazardous conditions
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Jimmy needs updated information about potential hazards on the trails and hikes he plans on pursuing ahead of time because he wants to be prepared and able to enjoy his time away from his traditional 9-5 job in the city
"I always load up a water bottle and some snacks in my backpack so I don’t get hangry at the halfway point of my hike"
We needed to understand how Jimmy would use the app. 🤳
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For our first goal, Jimmy wants to plan and be as prepared as he can be, by checking the weather/conditions, making sure he’s packing the right things, and has the right amount of information about the trails so that he can enjoy his journey to the fullest
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We created a user flow that would allow him to easily get all of this information and prepare him for any conditions he may run into on the mountain
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We created our second goal for Jimmy who wants to report hazards during his hikes to keep hikers informed on the community feed
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We created a user flow for this where he reports a hazard that he runs into during his hike, keeping his fellow hikers a little bit safer
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🚨 Warning!!! turbulent brainstorm ahead! 🚨
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We knew the functionality of our app now, but we needed to come up with a design for how it would look
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We ran Chaotic Design Studio where we focused for 20 minutes on sketching any design that we thought would fit our product based on the user flows that we had created
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From there voted on the frames that we thought would be great for our Low Fidelity product, then reiterated
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We looked at our sketches and built out components based on the repeating elements
We may have created the perfect prototype!? 👀
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We were able to build out our Low Fidelity wireframes and prototype them within 2 days
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When we were ready for user testing we created some goals for our users
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Task 1
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Finish the task in under 2 minutes
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Make less than 5 errors
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Task 2
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Finish the task in under a minute
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make less than 3 errors
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After testing we gathered our results
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Task 1
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Averaged 1.75 errors - Pass
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Averaged 2:19 to complete - Failed
(potential outlier of 4:26 to complete)
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Task 2
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Averaged .5 errors - Pass
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Averaged 0:27.5 to complete - Pass
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We were successful on all fronts except our time goal for task one. We had one outlier that took twice as long to achieve the goal, but she gave very good feedback which allowed us to clear up possible confusion with our labels
Let’s make it consistent with the REI’s Brand 🎨
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I looked up the design system that REI already had in place, created a style library for our figma file, and briefed the team on how REI had used these colors on their website and application.
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I worked with the lead designer to create consistency throughout the app, brought in products and user feedback provided by our lead researcher
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We Prototyped it and prepared it for presentation
The end product! 🙌
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With countless hours invested into the final product, I’m proud of what we had created.
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There are several stretch goals that we could have worked on if we had time.
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It is a seamless and efficient app that I’m sure REI would be happy to have.
