UX Case Study : Application for High Altitude Trek Planner

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🏠 » Trekking Application for high Altitude

Project Goals

Create an web and mobile application to help people explore, prepare, plan, and prepare itinerary for trekking (especially high-altitude trekking) and “revolutionizes” the overall trekking booking experience.

👉🏻 Success Criteria

The effect of the suggested app can be measured by

• App satisfaction score (Play Store)
• Percentage of trek reservations made through the application
• Completion rate of trek bookings

👉🏻 Assumptions & Constraints

• Availability of Google Maps including GPS in offline mode
• Users can connect and sync their smartwatches through Bluetooth to share health data like heart rate and SpO2 levels
• Trails are regularly checked and updated in the backend.

Design Process

01 / Empathize – Exploring the User’s Needs

👉🏻 User Research – Key findings & insights

Through user research I was trying to gain deeper insight of following points

1. Key actions in booking process
2. Most and least popular trails, Dangerous trails
3. Packages received the highest and lowest number of reviews and views
4. Busiest time of the year for each trail
5. Key health issues faced by past travellers
6. Average budget and mode of payment
7. Competitive apps users using for exploration and booking
8. Required gears, requirement for rented gears
9. Help required on preparation of trekking
10. Issues trekers encountered post trek
11. Why did users leave in the middle while booking?

👉🏻 User Interviews

As part of my qualitative analysis, I recruited 5 participants who are using different apps for trekking exploration and booking for last 2 months atleast. The inputs were collected via Google Forms and consolidated.

We also conducted virtual interviews with 3 of the participants.This gave me a good head start about where to look & how to proceed to the next stages. We also conducted a Survey for Quantitative analysis with 30+ users.

Summary of User Interview

User Age Group: adventure enthusiasts aged between 18-50 years

Users want to speak with the tour guide before deciding on the trek. They especially want to talk about these points: Is this trek suitable for me?

Am I choosing the best time to do the trek?

Users worry about safety, security, and health risks.

Users want to understand the fitness plan they should follow before making any choices.

Many users think the trekking trips listed in apps are too expensive. They prefer to pay in installments or partial payments or want trips that fit their budget.

How can I talk to people who have traveled before?

👉🏻 Competitive Analysis

I looked into the other market solutions for planning trek and trip events. The main companies in the market are AllTrails, Komoot, TrailLink, Hiiker,ViewRanger etc. I examined their structure, services, and user reviews to grasp the basics.

	All Trails	Komoot	TrailLink	Hiiker
Total Usage	10Millon+	1Million+	1,00,000+	10,000+
Cost	Free + $30Yr	Free + $20Yr	Free + $30Yr	Free + $30Yr
Offline Availability	Download trails in free and paid version	No	Download trails in free and paid version	Download and pring trails in free and paid version
Number of trails	200000+	Routes logged by users only	10000+	4000+
Distance/Difficulty	Yes/Yes	Yes/No	Yes/No	Yes/Yes
Other Features	Big brand,extensive trail,trail map, user reviews,offline map, community	detailed user navigation, user generated content, social media feature, Garmin Connect	Favorites, app relies on user input for photos	Only well known trails, good accomodation

👉🏻 User Survey

👉🏻 Affinity Mapping

To synthesize all the information I had gathered from the user interviews, I wrote my findings on sticky notes and created an affinity map. By identifying common patterns across my findings, I was able to uncover key insights which helped me understand who users are and what they truly need

From the major patterns that I identified from the affinity map, I discovered the following key insights which helped me to understand what the user’s needs are:

1. Value & Price
   All people shared how price is a factor when making decisions to book a trekking trip
2. Details Information
   All people shared experiences that they want to have detailed information on factors like how GPS is working while trekking, loading a route,  adding people to “inner circle” feature, what supports devices like ‘Garmin’ trekkers are using etc before booking any trip.
3. Finding the Perfect Trek
   Everyone shared experiences around finding that perfect trekking trails that fits all their needs/wants.

02 / Define – User’s Needs and Problems

Persona Development
Customer Journey Map
User Scenario

👉🏻 Persona

Personas were developed using both quantitative data collected from surveys and qualitative information from user interviews.

I found some trends in my research with the participants. Many wanted an easier way to plan and book their trips, but they were worried about costs and other factors like safety and health concerns.So I created the persona, Sahana Joshi.

Sahana is a Business Analyst with a passion for outdoor adventures, especially high-altitude trekking. Whenever she gets the chance, she hits the trails. Due to her busy schedule, she’s on the lookout for an app that can help her plan and book her trips from start to finish. She’s also a fitness enthusiast and loves chatting with her trainer about fitness plans, especially before embarking on any trek.

👉🏻 Customer Journey Map

👉🏻 User Scenario

Sahana is planning for Goechala trek in Sikkim,located near Kanchenjunga and doing her research. It is a high altitude difficult trek with max altitude 4943 Meter.

She is checking various trekking websites, apps, and books to gather information on routes, maps, travel times, necessary gear, and different pricing options.

She can pay for the trip all at once, but it would be more convenient if there are EMI options available.

Sahana is a bit concerned about her fitness level and wants to talk to some trekking experts about this route. She also plans to be trained by expert before she starts.

She is actively browsing social media and travel websites to read reviews and experiences from past trekkers, as well as watching videos from travel vloggers.

Sahana is searching for a comprehensive solution that offers customized packages for high-altitude trekking, covering everything from preparation to the return journey.

03 / Define & Ideate

👉🏻 User flows and Explorations

For above exercise, we focused on 3 critical user flows during the design ideation phase.

• Scheduling a trek (including rentals)
• Navigation (during a trek)
• Using community feature : Users should be able to post their plans/queries on the forum and respond to other users.

We looked at different methods to do the same tasks, taking ideas from similar apps, before creating the proposed flows.Thereafter, we proceeded to evaluate the usability.

04 / Prototype – Let’s make the Design!

Taking the input from user we started creating prototypes. Our first focus was on key action areas and wanted to get the feedback first.We have done multiple iterations depending on the feedback received and business feasibility.

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Home Page

Trip Details

Testing Prototype and Iteration of designs

We have tested the prototype in 5 to 6 iterations with 6 to 10 users. We received following feedback from users.

• User is not able to find cancellation policy and insurance details
• Will there be any porter option ? this is the common feedback received from user. User want to check the total trip cost by adding various addons in trip details page
• Can I pay through EMI ?
• When is the map last updated ?

We incorporated above changes and came up with the new screen for Trek Details

05 / Test – It’s time to test the Prototype!

We tested the above user flows with 5 participants and identified few edge cases and usability concerns.

Testing Result	Design Revision Done
There should be different payment mode while booking like showing EMI Amount and months for example, so that user can check the cost clearly before deciding for booking	Not Implemented yet, ongoing discussion with business
Product Images are not right, making it difficult for trekkers	Uploading right images
Help line number and chat option with customer care is not properly highlighted	In Progress
Although alerts are shows when required but for very short period and previous notifications are not shown	Notification Panel UI Development in progress
Not able to add to add & sync additional members to existing booking(s)	Option to add & sync additional members to existing booking(s)
When Device is out of network coverage SOS won’t work. Trekkers would need way to the nearest location with network availability.	SOS Button Inactive State is added

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Learning

Through design iterations and user testing we have gathered so much information which were missing in the initial phases.

For examples if business permits we would like to add a community feature for trekkers and a rent options for mandatory gears.

It’s been a wonderful learning experience so far, and I plan to keep it going. Thank You for making it here ✨