How might we transform AllTrails into a platform that makes solo female hikers feel genuinely safer while maintaining the iconic branding and familiarity of the app?
~47%
of women are "always" or "sometimes" concerned about assault on trail vs. ~8% of men
3/5
average AllTrails safety ratings from users in our preliminary interviews.
6/8
interviewees said they are interested in an emergency alert feature within AllTrails.
We interviewed 8 frequent hikers to understand safety behaviors, current app usage, and unmet needs. This helped my team and I visualize the best design opportunities within AllTrails.
What other apps get right, and miss.
The solo safety loop
SOLUTION
Transforming the experience through 3 key design features.
With many different redesign opportunities, I struggled with finding the most optimal solution. However, through collaboration with my team, we came up with different options that helped up break the system down.
Solo-Safe Mode
My team and I integrated a feature made to target solo hikers that allowed them to efficiently find hikes that focused on safety elements.
Community Safety Reports
To emulate trust in our safety feature, we created a safety reports feature where users are now able to find real reviews for trails that they can feel good about.
Pre-Hike Risk Summary
Adding a risk screen before starting a trail allows the user to reduce their chances of risk on the trail, resulting in lower stress levels.
2 in depth user testing interviews, here's what we learned.
We began our testing with preliminary questions about their experience with hiking, and focused on letting the user
Our risk card and cell signal feature had highly positive feedback, with cell signal as the #1 valued feature.
Interviewees had trouble with navigating to safety reports and wished to find more choices for alternative trails when weighing safety factors.
Participants held high trust for peer reports, showing authenticity in safety notes.
DESIGN REVISIONS
After careful consideration from our user testing, we made 2 revisions that created a more efficient flow and catered to user needs.
Safety Reports
Before You Start
WHAT I LEARNED & MY IMPACT
Working on this project showed me how to design for a specific user, but still build it for everyone.
This project taught me that designing for a specific, underserved group, can produce solutions that can still cater to a larger audience. We sought out a problem where a solution could save lives. Working on a project we cared about kept us grounded when we hit obstacles.
Our largest obstacle was pivoting ideas mid-project under a tight deadline. Making that call, committing to it, and seeing it through taught me to be more assertive as a designer, while being deliberate about taking ownership of the decisions I make.
Click me to view my other works!