Boulder buddies
Bringing climbers together-Case study
Problem: How to make the transition from indoor bouldering to outdoor bouldering easier and more accessible.
Solution: Boulder Buddies allows you to find experienced outdoor climbers near you, as well as locate routes you didn’t know were close by.
My role: UX Designer
Process: 5 stages of design thinking
Empathize
“super dangerous first time outside by yourself”
To fully understand the problem I conducted user interviews with experienced outdoor boulderers. Going into the user interviews Boulder Buddies started out trying to solve how people who want to boulder outdoors for the first time by themselves. After the user interviews I quickly understood that is not the safest or smartest way to go about bouldering outdoors. Over and over again the users talked about how outdoor bouldering is different than indoors, it's much more dangerous and can be very challenging. Then the big realization came when every user interviewed discussed how friends took them out for their first time. They talked about how the best way to make the transition is by finding someone with experience to show you. To really understand what was important for making the transition I put together an affinity map using all the information the users gave me in the interviews.
Empathize
Understanding Lydia and John
Knowing that each user I interviewed started out as a indoor beginner climber that either had no interest or little in climbing outdoors, I knew that is one type of users for Boulder Buddies. The other type is going to be the experienced outdoor climber that each user interviewed became. Through that knowledge I was able to define two user personas I would focus on designing for.
Empathize
Figuring out the problem statements
Using the Lydia and John I came up with five how might we problem statements that would ultimately redefine my initial problem. Those five how might we problem statements were:
1. How might we boost confidence in indoor climbers?
2. How might we make it easy for outdoor climbers to help newbies?
3. What can we do to make outdoor climbing accessible?
4. What can we do to make the transition easier?
5. How might we make safety best practices easy to understand and apply?
Ideate
Initial sketches of Boulder Buddies
Sketching out possible solutions, I started to define what Boulder Buddies as an app would look like. You’e one stop shop for everything that is outdoor bouldering.
Highlights from the sketches
-finding a buddy to climb with/take you
-page dedicated to carpool or getting the gear needed to climb outside
-map of all spots you can climb
-safety secton, that has everything a new climber would need to know
Define
What are red routes and how do I sketch them?
Running with the sketches and thinking of how Lydia and John would use the app, it was time to focus on the top three user flows that are critical to my design. Those three flows are:
1. Find a buddy
2. Find a route
3. Climb a route
Define
Losing sight of the original problem
This was my favorite part of the process, I conducted guerrilla usability on 5 participants and the results were not what I expected. It was a complete disaster of a prototype, not one participant could easily navigate through and complete the tasks I had them do. But it was the best learning experience I could have asked for. I realized that I had lost sight of the original problem and focused too much on the fancy bells and whistles the app could do, instead of what the app is meant to do. I learned that wording plays a huge role in how users experience designs and never lose focus on the original goal of the design.
Ideate
Back to the drawing board
Taking what I learned from the guerrillas usability testing I simplified my design and focused on the original goal of the app: How can we get indoor climbers outdoor to boulder?
Design changes from sketches to wireframes:
1. Changed overall wording throughout design
2. Removed Gear section
3. Removed the request a buddy section
4. Put more emphasis on “find a buddy” and “find a route”
Define & Prototype
HI-Resolution screens into the prototype
Using the wireframes as the base I started to design Boulder Buddies hi-resolution screens for the three red route user flows. It was during this process I created a prototype to be tested.
Test
“People don’t like having exact locations”
The first round of usability testing for the Boulder Buddies prototype went great in finding usability errors I overlooked. Each interviewer provided great feedback.
List of most critical errors:
1. Buddies exact location.
2. Buddies/Route map icons not clearly visible.
3. Addresses for routes not shown.
4. Confusion between location and directions
Ideate
It’s all coming together
Focusing on the critical errors found in the first round of testing:
1. I got rid of the buddies map all together to give more privacy to the user.
2. Changed the color of icons used in the map view to be more visible.
3. Added an address for the boulder route.
4. Changed location and direction to How to find the route.
Test
“Pretty straight forward and simple to use”
The second round of usability testing was just as important as the first round. I may not have found severe problems this round, I still found some problems that the first round did not find. I found these two rounds of usability testing to be very helpful in making Boulder Bros more user centered. Some main things that stood out to me in round two of testing was how “Add Buddy” was almost a back thought when looking and trying to climb with someone. Everyone's first instinct was to message the buddy first instead of adding them as a buddy. Another usability issue is when adding a buddy you just add them, one of the users said why doesnt it say pending and make the buddy accept the add, how other social media apps are.
Ideate
Final minor design edits
1. Added recently climbed by to the Route profile page.
2. Added mutual friends to the Buddy profile page.
3. Added a ‘looking for’ section in the Buddy profile.
Reflection and Learnings
What’s next for Boulder Buddies?
What I learned throughout the design process of Boulder Buddies is staying focused and doing usability testing is key to designing a solution to the problem you set out to solve. Without the users to guide you in your design you will end up designing something with your own information bias at the forefront. The next steps for Boulder Buddies would be conducting a few more usability tests with experienced outdoor climbers, the majority of my usability testers were beginner climbers and the reason I focused on them was because I wanted to make sure the core users that would benefit the most would understand how to use the app. Bouldering Buddies is the app that wants beginners to find that experienced buddy and the route in their area to go outdoors bouldering.
Update
Fixing Errors
After revisiting the Boulder Buddies App when I completed the Springboard course, I could see some very simple errors I made. Errors like Spacing, Visual Hierarchy and inconsistencies throughout the app. So as it being a passion project of mine I wanted to go back and redesign the app with those design mistakes and some of the user testing from earlier.
Simplify
First edit was to change the navigation bar, the original one was not user friendly because I assumed user would know what each icon meant in it.
The second edit was to simplify the Buddies, I got to complicated in having a buddy list and not allowing users to decline buddies if they wanted. So to solve that I removed the “My Buddies List” and kept it just to sending messages to Buddies to climb.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy in an app is very important and I had none in my original Boulder Buddies design, so creating a Hierarchy was important so the user was focused on what I wanted them to focus on. On the first design all the buddy information was the same color and size. On the new design I focused on most important buddy name, then distance from you and lastly the experience of the climber.
wHats the focus?
In the first design what do I want the user to do? Add buddy? Message them? It as not clear what the Call To Action was, in the new design it is to ask a buddy to climb. The problem I am solving for is to get new climbers outdoors by helping them find/talk to experienced climbers.
Guidelines
Spacing and following IOS or Android guidelines was not a priority when designing the first app. Keeping those in mind I was able to update to provide a clearer, consistent user experience.
consistency
First edit was to remove the confusion of two same colored CTA buttons. I made it so if you wanted to add the route to your favorites or save it for later you click the heart icon.
Second edit was to once again provide a Visual Hierarchy, making it easy for the user to process and scan all the information on the Route profile page.
