CASE STUDY:
Stratton Mountain App - Redesign of bookings and on mountain stat tracking
Summary
This project was an effort to create a new experience for users of the Stratton Mountain app to allow them to book various activities around the mountain, which is currently handled outside of the application and provided by a few different services.
Another part of this project was adding a feature to allow the application to collect data and showcase your mountain stats for the day, week, month, or full season to see if you are getting your money's worth, or compare stats for friendly competition with friends. This feature is only available on 3rd party applications today.
My Role
Sole product designer creating new app features, that did not yet exist in the current version of the app, which include , booking information for both hotels and activities, and relevant mountain stats. My roles for this project include:
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User Research
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Research synthesis
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Competitive analysis
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Wireframing
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Prototyping
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User testing
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Mobile App design
Problem
The users of the Stratton Mountain app are not able to view and book activities directly in the app, they have to use 3rd party products to do so. They also need to use 3rd party products to view and compare stats from their days on the mountain.
These features help solve issues with users moving from product to product by adding bookings directly within the Stratton Mountain app as well collecting data to show metrics from days on the mountain.
Solution
This project was done in a traditional waterfall design process. The first step of the process was to empathise, which included defining the problem I was trying to solve, creating personas that this problem would be solved for and tested around, conducting competitive analysis, and creating initial user flows.
After the empathize stage was complete, I moved into the ideation phase. In the ideation phase, I created user flows, user journey maps, red routes, and sketches (crazy 8s and solution sketches). The first user flows and sketches created were for homepage view, bookings, and stat tracking.
The next stage of my process was wireframing to allow for my testing rounds. With each step of testing, the wireframes went from lo-fi up to hi-fi in the last rounds. Prototypes of each fidelity were created for every round of testing to allow users to interact with the design as they would post-launch.
My testing was conducted after each step of my process. The first round of testing included a fixed route for each user to progress through and a task presented to each user. This was a behavioral study to track where the user interacts with the prototype when presented with a task to complete. With screen recordings and notes, a research report was written and implemented into the next round of designing and testing.
The second round of testing was a guerilla test conducted at Stratton Mountain. 5 users were recruited with an app or beer at the base lodge. Each user was given the same tasks as the first test and this time they were prompted with the same tasks as the first round. This was attitudinal, which allowed users to talk through the steps they were taking, to finish the task given to them. The users were also screen recorded as well to research the difference in the attitudinal vs. behavioral ways of interacting with the prototypes.
The last round of testing was conducted with a fully working prototype during a moderated usability test. Users were given open-ended prompts to allow the user to navigate through the prototype in the way they see fit. With this round of testing, users were provided a SUS survey to gauge how usable the final prototype was. After this round of testing, a final research report was written and will be incorporated into the next rounds of designs.
Outcome
This project is not a finished product, but there is ongoing work happening. Some of the things I have learned from this process so far are:
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Allow time for testing
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Be able to pivot
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If something doesn’t fit exactly in your plan, have a backup. Whether that be users not being able to test, project timelines changes, or prototypes not working.
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Understand how to collect research data and how to synthesize it.