The Adobe Digital Academy in UX Design is an intensive 4 month training program and includes delivering 4 projects across the whole UX cycle. This is one of my projects I worked on along with 3 other designers.
REI Climb combines route beta, gear reviews, and event booking—powered by REI’s expertise and community trust. After conducting 15 user interviews, mid-fidelity testing and hi-fidelity testing, we created a platform for REI to further share their gears, acheiving 75% task success rate and improving average time to complete a task by 30% during testing.
Prioritize safety, progression, and community building as a motivator to conitinue climbing
Gear discounts tied to REI store events and app activity
Downloadable and share-able REI store event details.
Climbers crave real-world connections—whether it’s gear demos, skill clinics, or meetups. Yet, no app seamlessly integrates event discovery with community and commerce.
The app first takes users to an onboarding process where you get to link your REI account and set up information such as there climbing level, their climbing style and which REI store is located near them.
Our user interview and competitive analysis showed that most climbing platforms and gear recommendations struggle to have resources personalized to specific climbing levels
The home page shows a feed where you get to connect with other climbers signed up with an REI account, see what products they used and see their climbing level
Your own personalized dashboard after the onboarding personalizes your climbing level, your own progress
The competitive analysis led to a layout where you get to track your own milestones with climbing and an online community to share your own climbing level such as bouldering scale and number of ascents
To keep the business goal in mind, we also created ways to share REI's product
The event exploration page shows a list of REI hosted gear demonstration events.
On the event details page, you can unique features such as see friends who are going and the gears that will be demonstrated.
Through user interviews and a task flow analysis, we also found that most climbers rely on friends and people they know for instructional resources. REI's "Climbing Expert Advice" on their website included a list of gear reccomendations and by integrating this with the community of climbers, user will feel confident in having the right resources to progress their climbing skills.
"I want an easy way to find out information of how to improve my climbing for my specific level”
"I need friends to on for climbing recommendations, to stay up-to-date and safe ”
" Seeing and tracking your overall progression in climbing level is a motivating factor
REI wants to be the #1 brand in the eyes of climbers. They plan to create an experience specifically for climbers, providing useful information every single day, regardless of whether the climber is climbing or not. They want to create an accessible and friendly platform for climbers to stay informed.
REI as a company is also known for providing additional resources such as instructional videos, in-store event themed around different sports and articles about their product.
The opportunity:
Many climbers struggle to have a centralized platform to get instructional resources.
REI has many instructional resources but is not clear on where it exists and keeping their customers informed. They are also not specific to climbing.
Our key research process and parts where I took lead was interviewing climbers.
Being a climber myself, I was able to think about asking the right questions to really identify their needs. I then led afiinoity mapping workshops to define their needs.
Key takeaway: Climbers need a centralized hub for education, gear, and community-building.
"I want resources that are personalized to my level and climbing experiences."
"I am looking for instructional resources and technical knowledge to become a better climber"
"I am an indoor boulder" vs "I am am outdoor climber"
"I enjoy climbing with friends because they keep me up-to-date, accountable, and safe."
"I want a community resource where I can connect with other climbers."
"I rely on my climbing friends for gear reccomendations"
"Seeing my progress helps me stay motivated to climb."
"I want the best quality equipment to keep me performing at the top of my sport, but within my budget."
“Carter needs to access tailored guidance and resources to achieve his climbing goals.”
HMW provide personalized resources and recommendations based on a climber’s skill level and experience?
HMW create ways users can connect with other?
HMW create a climbing community where users can connect to help them feel empowered to climb?
