Wanderr: App for Trekkers, Hikers & Wanderers
By: Ajay Bedwal
Tags: UX Design, Case Study, Ux Portfolio, UX, Trekking

Wanderr: App for Trekkers, Hikers & Wanderers

How did it start?

Learning UX has enabled a sense of looking ‘through’ things around me. When I came across the ‘Trekking’ topic through some of my friends, I realized that very less tools were available for the aid of trekkers even in this digital era. This gap coupled with my sense & triggered this UX project.

Challenge

After skimming through app stores, I found very few solutions useful to trekkers. My goal was to design a product that will offer seamless trip planning & reliable information to trekkers who are always up for new adventures.

Role

As it was an independent project, I was the sole person involved in carrying out the design process. I played the role of researcher, UX designer, UX writer, and on & on. The whole process took me a period of around 1 month.

Solution

Wanderr is an app that can be used by trekkers/wanderers for exploring treks/trips, joining trek events, & getting reliable information for planning a trek including routes. The app can also be used by trekkers to connect with other trekkers and share updates & experiences with the community.

The process

I navigated the whole project through 4 stages of my devised design process. Understand, Define, Conceptualize, Design were the four phases under which I executed various UX methodologies to achieve the deliverables.

Understand the User

After starting the project, the first thing I did was to learn about users & their goals/needs. Also, I had to get known with the context of trekking, trip planning, the existing solutions, and interacting with users.

I applied User Research techniques such as User Interviews, Surveys & Market Research to get a hold of the whole scenario.

User Interviews

I interviewed two trekkers with varying expertise in the trekking-trips stuff. My interaction questions were focused on uncovering information about how the whole thing works; the planning, routes, the destinations, the tools used, problems faced, etc. This gave me a good head start about where to look & how to proceed to the next stages.

‘Trek planning is more difficult than the actual trek itself’. -Participant Trekker

Survey

To get a clearer picture & refined insights to work upon, a user survey was conducted. The questionnaire for the survey was based on the insights learned from the prior interviewees.

Data sampled with 20 participants

Market Research

This is the thing that I used throughout the process, but as I started it earlier, it seems right to place it in the first phase. I studied the existing solutions used for planning trek/trip events. Major players in the market being AllTrails, Komoot & ViewRanger. I studied their structure, service & user reviews to understand the baseline.

Define the Problems

In this second phase, I defined users, their needs, and their goals. I analyzed the data obtained from the first phase & then worked on the touchpoints. User Personas were formed followed by Customer Journey Map to illustrate the users' goals, actions & experiences.

This phase defined what is to be done? what is expected? What should be done?

User Persona

Based on the research done, I formed three distinct personas whose goals revolved around the same context but had different needs & goals.