Camping is intimidating if you don't have experience. A friend came to me with this challenge- she had loved the few camping trips she'd been on, but she wasn't an experienced camper and she had few friends that were. This made it hard for her to plan camping trips, and the prospect of leading a trip herself felt unsafe. I approached this problem and sought a solution that would make camping more accessible to the many people who struggle to navigate exploring the great outdoors.
Going off of my initial user conversation with my friend, and considering my own experience with camping, it seemed obvious to me that the biggest hurdle to going on a camping trip for beginners was simply not knowing enough experienced campers to take them. Without an experienced friend, campers would feel unsafe going on their own or with an inexperienced group. My initial direction was to create a social platform where campers could connect through mutual interests in activities and sites.
My research showed that I had jumped to conclusions. While there was interest in meeting fellow campers, users' current journeys showed me the major issue occurred when trips dissolved because planning and organizing became too overwhelming. I shifted direction and focused on a product that would let users discover campsites and utilize a trip planning feature within the app.
Wecamp users can browse through campsites and sort by information like location, activities offered, and user reviews. Users can find directions to sites, and are able to navigate to the external booking site to find open dates and permit information.
User can collaborate in-app and centralize their trip planning for a simpler, streamlined process. Select dates from the campsite profile page to start planning out a trip. Campers can also view and message other users who are interested in their campsite.
Users can easily invite friends to their trip, share internal messages, and start planning what to pack by going off of a list of suggested items. Users can upload photos, and archive their trip plans as a memory to look back on within the app.
While users could ultimately become discouraged by more detail-oriented aspects of the planning process, I saw that users loved the excitement of the early planning stages. They loved searching for campsites, seeing beautiful photos, and researching the activities available at each location. I wanted to harness this high point of excitement with my product and replicate it with discovery.
I reviewed my ideation sketches from the speed round and identified the areas I wanted to focus on. I referred back to my persona and my revised goal; I needed to keep a social aspect so users could collaborate with each other in app, but I also wanted a focus on the trip planner. I needed a way for Annie to discover a new campsite, and then start planning and organizing a trip with her friends.
I considered which panels could create this flow, and I built a beta wireflow happy path for Annie that included the essential screens. After a few rounds of testing on the paper prototype, I determined the flow was intuitive for users.
Participants were excited about the prospect of sharing campsites with their friends. However, they all wanted to be able to share sites externally.
I created the option to share the campsite as a link, allowing users to open their contacts and send the site outside of Wecamp along with an invitation to the app.
Users tried to “Book” on the campsite profile, which would take them to an external booking site and lose the value of the trip planner.
I shifted the hierarchy and moved "interested campers" and the trip planner to the forefront to encourage these actions.
It took users a bit of digging around to find "Open Trips" on user profiles.
This was a key feature of the app to promote planning. I enlarged the section and made it more prominent on the user profiles.
Upon login, users are immediately greeted by Wecamp's discovery-focused home feed. Designed to excite users off the bat and encourage planning and exploration, campsites are displayed in appealing categories along with prominent, scenic photos of the sites.
Users can scroll through a feed of local spots organized by filters like activities, distance, and popularity. Location and user reviews are easy to spot at first glance.
The campsite profiles lead with eye-catching images of each camping location and provide essential information like address and amenities.
Users are also able to "Share" the campsite with their friends on the app or share externally through a text message. They can also mark their interest in a site so that other users are able to view their profiles and reach out to them.
The app allows group members to collaborate and plan their camping trips from within the app. The planner is linked to the campsite profiles and allows users to write internal notes, create packing lists, and post photos of their group.
Users are also able to post their trips for other users to view if they are open to adding new members to their trip. Users can view "Open Trips" from their home feed as well as through the profile of the campsite.
Users can display their bio, interests, hobbies, and express their personalities through the user profile. Profiles offer engaging question prompts where users can answer fun questions about camping.
Noting my interviewees' desire for verified information on a profile for safety reasons, the profiles display basic information, recent photos, and linked social media.
The "Trips" view is where users can quickly view the camping trips they've planned through the app.
Since users were gathering useful information in the Trip Planner, instead of simply deleting it once the trip is completed, users are able to "Archive" trips. This leaves them with notes, photos, and information to look back on.
If users spot a campsite that looks amazing but they aren't quite ready to plan a trip yet, they can easily save it into their "Favorites" tab to keep it in mind for the future.
By clicking into the tab, users can easily scroll through the campsites they've saved and get inspired to plan a new trip.
My next step is testing the hi-fidelity prototype and seeing how users respond, particularly whether users are more inclined to act socially with the "Open Trips" and "Interested Campers" iterations.
With the scope of my project, I wasn't able to tackle the flow for leaving campsite reviews and photos. Participants enjoyed this feature, so given more time I'd build an easy and potentially incentivized way to submit reviews.
An idea that came during speed sketching was a knowledge base offering basic camping tips and safety information. I felt this could be a great way to empower users, and is something I'd love to explore in further iterations.