Younger consumers have stopped wearing timberlands, instead opting for hipper brands. Timberland needs to find a way to appeal to the Millennial and Gen Z customers to stay relevant in today’s crowded shoe market.
Young Americans have embraced the active lifestyle like never before. To bring timberland back into the spotlight, we needed to go back to their roots: Hiking.
Introducing, ahikersguide.com — a website for beginner and non-beginner hikers to get the most out of their hikes! Site visitors will find preparation checklists, trail recommendations, and hiking advice — all for free!
The final piece of the puzzle was to collaborate with Clif Bar, a modern brand that also champions the active lifestyle.
Collaborated with a Team. We utilized our individual strengths to create a beautiful and easy to use app, while staying ahead of schedule.
User Research. Performed high level user research to determine the best way to appeal to hikers and provide value.
Designed Rough Wireframes. Establish the basic structure of a page and included content and functionality, which took into account user needs and user journeys.
Created the Final Visual Design. Building up from the rough wireframes, I added color and images.
Prototyped and User Tested. Used Adobe XD to create a working prototype, which we used for internal user testing.
We created three personas during our user research phase. We determined there were two main groups of hikers.
Group 1 - The Beginner Hiker. Interested in hiking, but feels overwhelmed and unfamiliar because this person never went on a hike before.
Group 2 - The Experienced Hiker. Already went on a few hikes and feels comfortable hiking. This person is looking for a hiking community to get involved with and to share their experience and stories.
Pain Points of Beginner Hikers
We wanted the website to be streamlined so we chose to focus on making the best site for beginner hikers (group 1). We started researching the pain points of new hikers. Here's what we found:
Can't Find Hiking Trails. New hikers don't know where to go to find a good hiking trail. They want to feel like they're getting a custom trail suggested for their needs.
Feel Uninformed. New hikers know they're uninformed about hiking, and they want to have a better understanding of what to expect before going on their first hike.
Don't Know What to Wear. Beginner hikers want to be comfortable on their first hike, but don't know what clothing they should wear to be safe. Long pants or shorts? Light or heavy? Does sock material matter?
Need an Item Checklist. Since beginner hikers rarely hike, they have no context for what they should take. Water, rain jacket, walking stick, backpack, tent... You get the picture.
We wanted the design of the website to reflect the same beauty that nature evokes. We used white space and unconventional layouts to create that feeling of nature.
Additionally, the website is fully responsive. Here's an example of the home page switching between phone, tablet, and desktop.
We decided to make trail discovery the focus of the website because that was the biggest pain point of new hikers. We created two core features to help users find a trail.
Feature 1 - Trail Feed. This is the main page of the website. Here users will find top rated trails with images. Users can expand the trail information to read a short description and then read reviews if their interest is piqued.
Feature 2 - Trail Quiz. This feature supplements the trail feed by suggesting the perfect trail to the user after they answer a few questions. This feature addresses the pain point where users want a find a trail that fits their unique needs.
We wanted to supplement trail discovery with 2 features that beginner hikers need.
Feature 3 - Expert Blog. We aimed to help new hikers learn the ins-and-outs of hiking. We decided to include a blog page in the website, where users can read other experts' articles about hiking.
Feature 4 - Equipment Checklist. The final feature in the website provides a comprehensive checklist that users can save and share. The checklist page is divided into three categories: Clothing, Food, and Equipment. Furthermore, users can filter to the season they're in because each weather type has vastly different checklists.
Sitemap
We kept the website streamlined so it would be accessible to all users.
Don’t neglect user testing. After completing the design, we could’ve spent more time on the user testing step. Looking back, the Checklist feature could've been implemented to be more intuitive. If I would redo that feature, I’d make dynamic checklists for each trail. The user would choose their trail and hike date, and the website would provide a comprehensive checklist based on that trail’s natural features and weather forecasts. There’d be no need to choose the season anymore because the checklist would be based on weather forecasts for your selected date. Additionally, the website would let you know if the forecasted weather changes.
