Summit is a responsive web-app designed to help outdoor enthusiasts safely forecast avalanche and weather conditions in order to safely venture into backcountry terrain.
UX/UI Designer
- wireframing
- prototyping
- UX design
- UI design
- User testing
October 2018 - July 2019
I was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada. I grew up skiing at the local mountain, WhistlerBlackcomb, and that meant that part of my life revolved around snow, weather, and safety. Before moving to Berlin and during my last winter in Canada, I took an avalanche safety training course in order to ensure that I was aware of the dangers and risks involved with being in the backcountry in the winter months.
There was a website that accompanied this course that shows the avalanche safety levels for various regions in Canada. It’s updated a few times a day and has a large network of contributers. It’s also the only site like it in Canada! While this site is fantastic for what it does, the information was hard to understand without any prior knowledge and quite frankly the design was outdated and not mobile-friendly. This is where my inspiration came for the Summit app.
1. What do people like about Avalanche Canada and what schedule do they check the site?
2. What info is most valuable to people at various awareness levels?
3. What are other ways people stay informed outside of the Avalanche Canada site?
Respondents typically check a collection of data sources to make their own complete avalanche and weather reports. Respondents agreed that the current data available is easier to read with training, but would be hard to read for the regular user and requires a certain level of knowledge to understand what is happening in the reports. There was also a general emphasis on risk assessment for under-experienced backcountry users. All respondents said that knowing before you go is imperative.
Once I knew more about my potential users, I came up with 3 user personas to help me personify the problems. Each user persona brings a face to the problems that the app attempts to overcome.
- Sarah is The Planner
- Chris is The Risk Taker
- Pete is The Seasoned Pro
After defining who my personas were and what problems they had, I was able to finally begin to define some user flows which help conceptualize the first pieces of the Summit app. By understanding the way each user thinks I can predict how they might move through the app and design a flow with this in mind.
Sarah is a busy professional who works long hours but explores the backcountry on skis in her off-time to unwind.
She wants to set an alert to keep her abreast of the conditions in the region she plans to visit this weekend so she doesn’t have to check back all the time.
Hand drawn
Created with Balsamiq
Created with Axure
Now that my wireframe was in a prototype format, using InVision, I was finally able to begin User Testing. I created a test plan and a test script in order to ensure that my testing was succinct and consistent. I tested with 6 different people, all with varying levels of familiarity with both backcountry sports and avalanche awareness. By testing with a range of people, I was able to see issues with both the usability and the actual portrayal of information and how relevant it was to what was needed to know before embarking on a backcountry trip.
The testing and subsequent evaluation of the test results highlighted 5 main issues that needed to be addressed.
1. Users could not find the Create Alert page.
2. Users thought the app would be easier to understand with colour (maps, icons, danger levels).
3. Many users could not understand the iconography and illustrations used to represent avalanche danger at various elevations.
4. Users could not always navigate back to the home screen from various points in the app.
5. More experienced backcountry users were looking for more detailed information on the weather reports page.
Created with Adobe XD
Designed and built by Jessica Hurford in 2024 using Webflow.
