Go to the profile of Norka Avalos
Norka Avalos

REI

The outdoor adventure begins !

INTRODUCTION

This project was about exploring a problem/area of opportunity for an existing brand for two weeks. We were able to choose the problem and brand. Part of the research was also exploring and work with technical constraints along the process.

I worked with two other classmates and we named our team “The tree-huggers”. The only material we had was the project kickoff and our ideas for this project. Our first step was to cross out all the topics that weren’t excited about and at the end we voted to decide what topic we were choosing. We decided to do outdoors/travel.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

REI: Novice and Intermediate outdoor enthusiasts want to go into nature, but they don’t have all the knowledge they need to be prepared. Specific areas they need help include a packing checklist/gear advice, skills training, and trip tips from others with firsthand experience. These users want to be able to bring their skills training on the go, so they can feel secure going into nature with all the support they need.

OPPORTUNITY

REI is the perfect brand to build an app that will help novice and intermediate outdoors people feel confident going out into nature:

  • REI has in-house workshops and events to teach nature skills, get members ready to go into nature and lead outdoors adventures.
  • An app is a natural extension to bring what REI already has into a digital format
  • REI has 350 existing videos that can be immediately put to use on the go

PROCESS

For this project our process included:

RESEARCH:

  1. Contextual Inquiry
  2. Screener survey
  3. Competitive analysis/ Comparative analysis
  4. User interviews
  5. Affinity Diagram
  6. Personas
  7. Technical background research

DESIGN:

  1. Design studio
  2. Low fidelity wireframes
  3. Low fidelity : iteration 1
  4. Low fidelity iteration 1: usability testing
  5. Medium fidelity iteration 2
  6. Medium fidelity iteration 2: usability testing
  7. High fidelity : usability testing
  8. Prototype
  9. User flows
  10. Next steps

After we identified the steps for this project we made a possible timeframe :

Contextual inquiry

After presenting our project proposal we decided to do a contextual inquiry. we wanted to become more familiar with the REI store and identify what makes it one of the most known outdoor store.

Once we got to the store, we had the chance to talk to some employees and some customers, also we were able to take some notes.

SCREENER SURVEY

First we wanted to have a general and quantitive data about how much people is involved with outdoor activities and the most popular behaviors.

For this survey we worked on the questions together, making sure they were open-ending questions and not leading. The questions were in their majority multiple-choice questions.

The question for the survey were :

  • What kind of outdoor activities do you enjoy?
  • What are your main reasons for doing and/or wanting to do outdoor activities?
  • How did you learn the skills you needed for these activities?
  • Where do you get your outdoor gear?
  • What kind of outdoors activities are you interested in, but have you never done?
  • How would you go about learning how to do this new activity ?
  • What skills do you think are important for people going on extended wilderness trips?
  • Have you ever taken an outdoor class?
  • Would you go on a extended wilderness trip by yourself?
  • What wilderness skill level are you?
  • How likely are you to take a wilderness skills class before going on a trip?
  • How far in advance do you prepare for an extended wilderness trip?
  • How do you know what to pack/bring?What’s your biggest concern about outdoor activities?

The screener survey helped us to get more knowledge about the scenarios; how often go people out to nature and what kind of outdoor activities are more popular.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Stores that sell outdoor/nature products

All of the competitors selected offered outdoors/ nature equipment. Aside from selling the same type of equipment the only thing they all had in common was product reviews.

The two competitors that stood out were Eastern Mountain Sports and MooseJaw. Moose Jaw had the most in common with the one difference that they did not offer courses.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

USER INTERVIEW

From the screener survey we were able to interview 10 people that matched our characteristics and behaviors of our future potential users for this new app.

After doing the user interviews, we got really interesting insights about why people don’t go that often into nature and the context around that. Having the insights we could start thinking about what were the must have features for this project.

AFFINITY DIAGRAM

After having these interviews, we were able to do an affinity map. why ? Because it allowed us to identify some trends, behaviors, pains and pleasures of users during outdoors activities.

Once we had all the most important insights from the interviews, we decided to group them for an easier understanding/reading since we had repetitive behaviors.
1 insight per note 1 color per user

PERSONAS

After regrouping the insights and trends of the affinity map, our personas began to appear.

What are personas? and why do we made personas?

A persona is a user archetype that helps to guide decisions about the features, interactions and even visual design. why? it helped us to remind us of who the user was.

After breaking down our information from the interviews, we were able to group some insights and our personas appeared !

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND RESEARCH

DESIGN

DESIGN STUDIO

Why design studio ?

  • Rapid sketching
  • Teamwork building
  • Finalize ideas quickly

LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMES ITERATION 1

LOW FIDELITY ITERATION 1 USABILITY TESTING

We tested with 4 users, the feedback we got was really useful to proceed to make the next changes.

MEDIUM FIDELITY ITERATION 2 & USABILITY TESTING

After testing our second medium fidelity iteration the changes we had to made some minimal changes, overall users were able to navigate through our app and use our features without a problem.

HIGH FIDELITY WIREFRAMES & USABILITY TESTING

PROTOTYPE

USERFLOWS

After testing our final prototype we analyzed a couple of user-flows for our potential users.

NEXT STEPS

  • Expand and validate the climate filter
  • Create suplemental videos to accompany REI in-house workshops
  • Make and Android version and test it

MY EXPERIENCE

This work was really exciting from the beginning, my classmates introduced me to this brand and since the first moment we walked in the store I was sure i wanted to do ahead with this app for REI. I got surprised how the employees were so excited to help us since we walked in and also I got surprised when I knew about the free outdoor classes they offer to encourage people to be more active in nature.

Once we were into feature idealization I fell a little anxious; three of us had these great ideas to implement to our app and at the end we had a big dragon that spits fire and we had to turn it into a puppy to be useful to our users. We had to look up some methods to choose the more useful features and we learned the concept of Minimum Viable Product and we executed it.

The day of our presentation we were really excited and at the same time nervous; this time it was different; we were not presenting to our instructors and it felt like a new challenge. Our presentation went well and we got really good feedback. In my opinion; I felt really confident about this app that we developed but once we got the feedback based on experience it really motivated me to go ahead and make those changes for this REI app.