Mountain Project

The premier app for rock climbers, Mountain Project helps keep climbers informed on climbing options all over the world, from local gyms to the most remote mountain routes. However, it is consistently criticized by its users for being unintuitive, difficult to use, and, oftentimes, information overload. On spec, my team set out to help amend this, tackling the situation by diving headfirst into the rock climbing world and trying to understand what information was most pertinent to Mountain Project’s users.

Overview

Process:

• Role assigning and team planning

• Competitive analysis

• Design research

• User research

• Surveys

• Interviews

• Contextual inquiry

• Analysis

• Affinity Mapping

• Sketching

• Lo-Fi Prototype

• Journey Mapping

• Testing

• Iteration

• Hi-fi prototype

For our user research, we used a mix of surveys, interviews, contextual inquiry, and reading of reviews, followed by extensive affinity mapping in order to try to find commonalities that we might have previously missed. By posting a Google Docs survey in several rock climbing groups on Facebook, we were able to reach 36 different people, including 32 Facebook survey respondents, of which 6 subsequently gave their emails for more in depth questioning. We also were able to interview 4 people in person. Our respondents emphasized the role of rock climbing as community, the need for quick and nearby climbing information, and the number of sources they often had to consult to plan their climbs.

Chris: The Lifestyle Climber

• Works at an outdoors store

• Much of personal identity derived through affiliation with climbing

• Climbs in the gym on workdays in order to connect with other climbers and stay fit

• Has limited time and wants a way to quickly and efficiently find nearby routes

• Has difficulty identifying routes on rock walls

David: The Destination Climber

• Works in app development

• Type A personality who uses climbing as a competitive outlet

• Plans trips based around tackling new climbing spots

• Documents his travels for friends and social media

• Struggles with planning, researching, and documenting long trips

• Willing to spend whatever it takes to travel and improve

During ideation, we sketched out various ways to streamline the route finding process, allowing for both map and list views, along with providing for account information so that both previous and upcoming trips could be better saved within the app. We also added social components within account information, making it easier for groups to plan and coordinate trips, along with networking with local climbing communities while traveling.

After sketching and ideation, we started to have a better picture of what exactly the user’s experience might be throughout their exploration of the app. Here we delved into both how they would navigate the app, creating a map of different avenues they might go down, along with a broader picture journey map, displaying the full process of how climbers would prepare for a climb, incorporating their use of the app into the full flow. This journey map also opened up opportunities that we could incorporate into Mountain Project, such as ideas on indicating the best parking areas near routes, along with possible public transportation options to the area.