InstaAdventure
Skills & Tools
About
InstaAdventure is a platform that enables users to reduce the cost to try a new outdoor activity and find guides to teach them the ropes, all while helping the environment through reduced gear waste.
Duration
Spring 2023 - 14 weeks
My Contributions
During the research phase, I helped interview prospective users, which yielded rich, qualitative data and helped analyze this user research data through affinity diagramming. In the design phase, I crafted low-fidelity wireframes, which were later refined based on user feedback. I helped implement the design into a robust, high-fidelity prototype, which was then tested with users through a series of user experiments to identify any lingering pain points within the design and inform platform improvements.
Team
Kaleigh C.
Grace M.
Christine M.
Cassie S.
Overview
To kick off this project, we were prompted to consider problem spaces we'd like to explore. Through discussing problem areas, we realized we all had a common interest in the outdoors. After considering this shared interest a bit more, we started to realize that half the team was very involved in the outdoors and wished it was more affordable and the other half of the team, myself included, love the outdoors but wouldn’t even know where to begin if we wanted to learn, say, rock climbing. This realization launched us into our problem discovery with a focus on exploring gear rental costs, along with an interest in the aspect of what it's like to learn a new outdoor activity.
Problem
What needs fixing?
Outdoor activities can require a significant financial commitment since obtaining the gear necessary to learn and participate in the activities can be expensive. It can also be challenging to find a guide to show a new learner the ropes.
Product Opportunity
What's the value?
For our team, it was all about reducing financial barriers, making the outdoors more accessible, and supporting a healthy environment! We wanted to offer consumers a way to try out new outdoor activities without making a major financial investment to purchase all the needed gear and test if they enjoy an activity before investing their money, allowing people to try new and otherwise unaffordable activities. With our solution, we wanted to increase accessibility to a variety of outdoor hobbies and support the environment through gear waste reduction.
Challenge
How might we...
Reduce the financial commitment required to try new outdoor activities in order to reduce financial barriers and make the outdoors more accessible?
Solution
What we made
A mobile application connecting people who would like to lend their unused outdoor gear to consumers interested in renting gear in order to try new outdoor activities. Guides skilled in various outdoor activities can also use the platform to offer their services to new learners and train others in outdoor activities for a fee.
Design spotlight
Our Approach
1. research
Using competitive analysis, user interviews, and user observation sessions to develop a deep understanding of the problem space, opportunities, and users. Data collected was utilized for affinity diagramming to uncover key insights, develop task analyses, and craft personas.
2. Design
Setting design principles to guide our design process and exploration of potential solutions, followed by crafting low-fidelity sketches of our most promising solution and testing this solution by conducting a series of cognitive walkthrough sessions.
3. Implement
Polishing our solution, addressing issues, and refining our designs based on feedback we received during our cognitive walkthrough sessions in order to develop an interactive prototype.
4. Evaluate
Testing our prototype with a series of usability evaluations to determine the system usability level of our solution and collect feedback via interviews and questionnaires to inform improvements and future iterations.
Research
Heading into the research phase of this project, we had several interests, including gear rental costs, gear lending processes, and what it might be like for people to learn new outdoor activities. Because we were curious about these different facets, we had a lot of different ideas on the direction that this project might go. Would we possibly end up with a rental and lending platform? A community-based platform for building community and swapping gear? A community-finding platform that might mimic a dating app? It was helpful to idea dump, but we knew we needed to do some research.
Through our initial primary research process, which included interviews, observation, and competitive analysis, we were able to collect rich, qualitative data and develop a deeper understanding about existing solutions in the product space.
Competitive Analysis
Research method
We first looked into existing market solutions to examine the existing products and which aspects of the problem space they touch. This process also offered us a better understanding of the features common amongst existing platforms.
We learned that without InstaAdventure, consumers who want to try new outdoor activities must resort to purchasing new or used gear themselves or renting from large retailers, such as REI, some of which only offer shipping. Consumers may also purchase used gear at reduced prices from online resale networks, but this does not afford them the opportunity to try something new without purchasing the gear.
As shown, there are a variety of existing applications that offer gear rentals, but through these applications, there is still a potentially unmet need for finding someone to train a new learner and teach them needed skills. For individuals without friends to show them the ropes for new outdoor activities, they must source a guide, book training services through resorts and activity gyms, or join an outdoor community, all of which have value, but can be intimidating when first learning.
User Interviews
Research Method
To develop a deeper understanding of how target users currently find gear and guides when learning new outdoor activities and identify problems with existing solutions, we decided to conduct an initial round of user interviews.
We conducted four semi-structured individual interviews with users aged 23-40, ranging from avid to less experienced renters and lenders of outdoor gear. We recruited interview participants based on target user criteria, but were intentional to include a set of participants diverse in demographics and experience in order to learn from a diverse set of perspectives.
Goal
During interviews, we wanted to get to know participants, obtain an understanding of their backgrounds, ask them about their prior experiences with renting or lending outdoor gear and finding guides, and inquire about their pain points and any needs that are not currently being addressed. We wanted to develop a sense of any gaps in the capabilities of existing rental operations and find out what aspects of current solutions could be improved, while also identifying which aspects are working well and which features target users would expect to see in our application.
User Observation
Research Method
Rather than rely on our own experiences with renting outdoor gear and learning new outdoor activities, we also conducted two individual user observation sessions. These observations helped diversify our data collection and expand our understanding of the realities facing consumers interested in renting outdoor gear.
Why we incorporated another research method
What people say they do and what they actually do can vary significantly. We knew this could also be true among target users with experience renting and lending outdoor gear and individuals with experience learning new outdoor activities. By also observing the behavior of some participants, we learned about aspects of these processes that were more meaningful in the context of a simulated rental experience.
Determining Key Findings
Synthesis method
We utilized affinity diagramming to uncover insights from the data collected during user interviews and observations. Key findings fell into five themes:
This is also when we discovered the problem we wanted to focus on: there is a fragment in the outdoor activities market as there is currently no existing mobile platform that enables consumers to rent gear to try new outdoor activities with lower financial commitments while also connecting individuals seeking to learn a new outdoor activity with guides that can teach them the needed skills.
Task Analysis
Synthesis method
Based on data collected during interviews and through user observations, we also created a hierarchal task analysis to better understand the current processes experienced when lending and renting outdoor gear through existing solutions.
Personas
Synthesis method
Based on the user data collected, we crafted four persona profiles in order to foster a shared understanding of target users and avoid making generalizations about renters, lenders, guides, and learners. Going forward, we constantly considered how our personas would feel about various design decisions, features, tasks, and more!
The personas we developed were informed and inspired by our interview and observation participants. Their experiences, perspectives, insights, and personal stories shaped their structure. Below we share their background, goals, motivations, pain points, and experiences, as well as context to help each persona feel real.
Design
With the problem to address in mind, our initial research collected, and our personas crafted, we began the process of brainstorming solutions as a team. But given the constraints of our course, it was at this stage that we decided to hone in the solution idea that seemed most meaningful for users (based on the insights we heard during interviews) and most impactful. After lots of discussion, we decided to pursue building a mobile application that could connect people who would like to lend their unused outdoor gear to consumers interested in renting gear in order to try new outdoor activities. Guides skilled in various outdoor activities could also use the platform to offer their services to new learners and train others in outdoor activities for a fee.
Design Principles
Based on the problem space and our key research findings, our team came up with five design principles to help guide the design ideation process.
Ideation
With our research and design principles informing our design decisions, we were able to generate a series of sketches as a starting point for the experience that would be offered by our solution. The sketches developed spanned across four tasks to be completed within our platform, including renting gear, lending gear, becoming a guide, and finding a guide to train with. I tackled the sketches for finding a guide to train with, which are shown below.
Sketches
By sticking to really simple sketches for our initial design, we were able remain flexible with solution ideas and design approaches before collecting an initial round of feedback.
Feedback
In order to collect an initial round of feedback about the usage of our solution and evaluate the flow of the four tasks offered on our platform, our team conducted a series of cognitive walkthrough sessions.
By conducting cognitive walkthrough sessions, we hoped to learn, from an outside perspective, how easy the application would be to learn for first-time users and how well the application would support users in meeting their goals. We also wanted to learn more about expectations at each step to identify any ambiguous or unintuitive actions that could lead to errors. Additionally, our team wanted evaluators to assess if there was enough consistency across the multiple flows offered within the application.
We received quite a bit of meaningful feedback from our evaluators, some of which included:
- The lending flow within our solution was missing a step enabling a user to review the contents of their listing prior to publishing and this step would likely be expected by users
- As part of the initial renting flow, our solution involved a step, mid-process, prompting a user to create a profile and evaluators felt the step was sudden and unnecessary, given that the flow begins with a sign-in process for new users
- Some screens were too text-heavy and could be overwhelming for users
- Users that wanted to request testimonials to be shared on their guide profile were not able to view and edit the testimonial template language as part of the initial flow, which would likely frustrate users and prompt them to skip this step altogether
- Some buttons were groups too close together, which could lead to slips
- When renting gear, the warning that a user’s form of payment would not be debited until their booking is approved did not happen until after payment details were inputted and the booking requested, prompting our evaluators to encourage us to move this warning to the payment details step
Implement
Flows
Based on the feedback collected from the cognitive walkthrough sessions, our team got to work refining the design of our application and creating a prototype. At this stage, we also landed on name for the application – InstaAdventure!
Evaluate
Usability Evaluation
With our prototype ready, we set out to collect another round of feedback from potential users through a series of eight in-person usability evaluations involving a number of different metrics. A procedure guide was developed and participants were recruited. The participants involved in the evaluation were a diverse group of individuals who aligned with InstaAdventure’s target user groups and the personas we crafted.
Goals
From the usability evaluations, our team aimed to learn about three different research objectives:
Tasks
As part of the evaluation, participants were presented with the following rental task to be completed on InstaAdventure and REI:
You are going camping this upcoming summer in July. Rent a 2 -person tent for the trip in Denver, Colorado (zip code: 80202) for 5 days (July 25-30th, 2023).
Later in the evaluation, participants were asked to complete a second task regarding becoming a guide on InstaAdventure:
You are a new guide offering rock climbing instruction in Denver, CO. Using InstaAdventure, build out a guide profile and be sure to incorporate the following details: you will teach anyone within a 20 mile radius of 80202, you will offer 1:1 and 2:1 lessons, and you are open to hosting events, and to wrap up the task, you will add availability.
Following the completion of each task, participants completed SUS questionnaires and participated in brief interviews.
Results
As a result of the evaluation of the rental task, our prototype received an average SUS score of 82.8, compared to an average SUS score of 52.8 for REI. A SUS score of 82.8 indicates that our prototype was considered well above average usability by most participants and having stronger usability than some competitors could help impact product metrics such as platform adoption, retention rates, and conversion rates, for example.
Using InstaAdventure to complete the guide flow, our prototype received an average SUS score of 70.6, indicating the usability was considered above average, but there is still room for improvement.
Participants were also quicker to complete the rental task using InstaAdventure as compared to REI and were also less lost while the completing the task on InstaAdventure.
Other meaningful insights from the evaluations included:
- Users were uncertain on what actions could be taken, what the result of action would be, and which actions were required versus optional
- Given that some users were confused by the nature of the prototype and expected more functionality, we needed to do a better job building expectations with participants about interacting with a prototype versus a real, programmed product
- Users felt the prototype, while not a real product, could have included more error handling to mitigate confusion at certain steps of each flow
Future Steps
Based on the results of the usability evaluations, future work calls for additional design iterations and refining of the flows to address the constructive feedback we received. Additionally, some other design decisions and challenges could also be tackled:
Responsible Design
While not a design principle we initially set out to incorporate, I’ve learned the growing importance of designing products that involve measures to proactively prevent harm to users and society. While we couldn’t predict all of the outcomes that would result from our designs, we can be proactive in considering potential harms and how we might help mitigate them. How might we implement measures to protect users from potential harm? This is a hugely important aspect of design I’m still learning about, but here are some ideas that could be explored further:
Promoting Reviews
With trust and safety being core principles for InstaAdventure, reviews from users of the platform are one vital way of fostering an environment where other users can feel confident renting gear, lending gear, offering guide services, and training with guides to learn a new outdoor hobby. By knowing the experiences of others (the good and the bad), users can feel more confident while using the InstaAdventure platform. So how might we better encourage users to write reviews? Here are some options that could be explored further:
Reflection
How was working on this design challenge?
With a background in economics and finance and a love for the outdoors, this design challenge blended together topics that I personally care about, leading to a really special experience working on this project. The solution we designed would reduce financial barriers, make the outdoors more accessible, and support a healthy environment through gear waste reduction. I love the outcome of our project and this project solidified my passion for creating thoughtfully designed experiences.
Looking back, what would I have done differently?
While I’m so proud of the outcome of our solution, in retrospect, I would have encouraged us to set aside more time to implement a more robust and flexible prototype in Figma. While the prototype is interactive, it was a bit too linear to produce a completely accurate estimation of usability. With more time, I think this is something we would have tackled, but we are now certain of how important a robust prototype is for testing, given some of the feedback we received during the aforementioned usability evaluations.
What did I learn from working on this project?
This project involved my first, major usage of Figma and while I still have a lot to learn, I feel much more knowledgeable about Figma’s functionality and using the software. For me, this project also highlighted the craft that UX design is and introduced me to the number of aspects involved in the process that are necessary to develop a delightful experience for users.
How was my experience working with my team?
Working with my teammates was hands down the best experience I have had working with a group of other students to complete a project. Each team member was involved at every step of the project, eager to contribute. We worked so well together and I had a blast getting to know each of them over the duration on this project. 💚
Acknowledgements
All photos displayed within the InstaAdventure prototype that were borrowed from https://unsplash.com/ or http://www.rei.com/.