COLORADO MOUNTAIN CLUB
concept brand redesign + iOS app launch
The Colorado Mountain Club is a nonprofit outdoor education organization that has been delivering conservation, education, and recreational opportunities to the Colorado public since 1912. This organization is rooted in history and exploration – it's bread and butter comes from organized events, trips, and classes for members + recruitment of new members. The current brand identity + site wasn't intuitive in supporting these priorities, so it was time to address their web experience to better serve its members, as well as a complete brand refresh.
THE TASK
How might we rethink the CMC's overall web experience to increase event registrations and membership?
MY ROLE
User Research, Field Interviews, Persona Development, Sketching, Journey Mapping, Wireframing, UX Design Lead, Brand Design & Strategy
THE SPECS
iOS Mobile Application Responsive Web Experience
THE PROBLEM
"I'm an outdoor enthusiast and interested in finding organized outdoor events, but I'm not sure where to look or how to find events that are most relevant to me."
Meet my fellow team members: Meredith Motsinger, Jason Holtzhouser & Katie Schmuhl
WHY EVENT REGISTRATION?
When we started this project, we discovered that the Colorado Mountain Club was a legacy brand with a deep history and connection to its members and the outdoors. The organization was founded in 1912 with a mission to connect the vast mountains of Colorado to its people and facilitate the discovery and preservation of the land so many of us call home. On May 30, 1912, the Club conducted its first official mountain trip, a hike to the top of South Boulder Peak. It was with this first mission and thousands of trips to come, organized outdoor events quickly became the bread and butter of this historic group. The CMC hosts over 2,000 organized events a year and supports a variety of outdoor events, so we quickly observed that the opportunity for this project lied in event registration.
You can't start any design without understanding the brand, but more importantly the user, so we started at the very beginning to learn everything we could about the CMC and its long history of members, with a tight focus on the event, trip, and class participation. Our research began with getting to know current CMC members + potential users with a passion for the outdoors.
The big questions we needed to answer:
The methods we used:
WHO are the members of the CMC?
WHAT are their motivations for being a CMC member and/or attending CMC events?
HOW do they find organized outdoor events to attend?
WHAT is their current experience like to find + register for organized outdoor events?
WHAT considerations do they have before committing to a CMC membership?
WHY are they members of the CMC?
Business Analysis
Online Survey
Field Interviews
One-on-One Interviews
Forum Research
Competitive Analysis
Assumption-Led Journey Map
Affinity Mapping
Persona Development
Research-Led Journey Map
The big insights from our research efforts were:
82%
of survey participants attended organized outdoor events regularly
15%
of those survey participants, only 15% have attended an organized outdoor event with the Colorado Mountain Club
BRAND AWARENESS + DISCOVERABILITY are lacking in the current experience and ultimately hindering potential users from finding what they're looking for.
A SENSE OF COMMUNITY is important to current members, as well as a selling point for potential members.
LEVELING UP SKILLS is another reason people join or become a member of an organized group like the Colorado Mountain Club.
EVENT SEARCH + REGISTRATION on the current experience are clunky and not easy to navigate making the key action hard to complete.
HELP ME DO MORE - users are not able to find what they're looking for and were surprised to find all the events, trips, and classes the CMC offers once they knew where to look. The new design should take this into consideration.
SKETCHING + WIREFRAMING
Before we arrived at our final product, it took lots of sketching, design studios, wireframing, testing, etc. to lead us where we needed to go. The design studios and rapid prototyping seemed to be the most effective for coming up with an optimized solution.
The iterations of wireframes looked like:
VISUAL DESIGN + PROTOTYPES
The research showed us that the biggest flaws in their current state had to do with brand discoverability & event searchability, as well as information overload on the current site for the users. This led us to two main solutions: an iOS mobile app focused on membership & event registration, as well as a complete overhaul of their current web experience with a simplified desktop site and accompanying responsive mobile experience.
iOS Mobile App
Event registration & discoverability were on the decline. And from our research, we heard that finding relevant events was consistently the most frustrating part of the user experience, so we focused our first designs on creating the CMC's first-ever iOS mobile app focused exclusively on finding and registering for the 2,000+ events, trips, and classes the CMC hosts every year. See the prototypes below.
Focus #1: New Member Registration
Our research showed us that our first persona (Aubrey) is looking for new ways to be social, as well as explore the mountains, so her interaction with this app is focused on registering an account and personalizing her experience so that she can find activities that are most relevant to her.
Focus #2: Current Member Event Search
For the established CMC member (like Paul), the discovery of new events, trips, and classes are critical because he's constantly looking to level up his skills. This experience focuses on in-app searchability and event registration.
Brand Redesign
After tackling the most pressing issue of simplifying the mobile event search experience, I continued on a solo quest to update the desktop & mobile web experience. In order to create an experience that didn't overwhelm or confuse users, that meant I needed to make updates to the overall brand too. See the prototypes below.
Responsive Web + Mobile Experience
It was crucial for this project to make sure we thought about the end-to-end experience for both the web and mobile. The original CMC website didn't have a mobile experience that's optimized for the device, so we knew it was important to make sure that both experiences were accounted for in our concepts.
FINAL THOUGHTS + REFLECTIONS
Ah, the end of a project. So nice to put a pretty bow on the final deliverable and move onto the next thing. Let's be real, there's never really an end to design if you let yourself keep iterating. This 4-week project unmasked an urgent need to design an experience that will not only refresh this iconic brand but increase usability on the site and encourage new membership - which is a long-term gain for the CMC. But let's talk about what we learned + the next steps.
The things that worked well:
CREATING A MOBILE APP FOCUSED ON EVENT SEARCHABILITY + REGISTRATION
Research told us that this app was not only a nice addition but almost a necessity. With no current mobile experience to find and register for the 2K+ events hosted every year, CMC members are not as active with the organization as they could be. This mobile app offers a solution that will benefit both the CMC and its members.
SOCIAL LOGIN OPTIONS + ONBOARDING QUIZ
The research also unveiled a huge opportunity for the CMC to attract new members as more and more people relocate to the Colorado area. The old experience doesn't appeal to a new user with virtually no awareness of the CMC. By integrating features that make it easy to register (i.e. login with social profiles), as well as a short onboarding quiz to learn about the specific users' goals and preferences, the CMC app experience welcomes new members with open arms.
REDUCING INFO OVERLOAD + RESTRUCTURING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
One of the first things our users noticed when experiencing the old CMC site was the amount of information on-site and in the navigation. While they recognized there was a plethora of information available, it was still incredibly hard for the users to find what they were looking for. By updating the IA on both desktop and responsive mobile web, the users felt like the content was more digestible and easy to find when testing the new designs.
Although this was a concept project, the opportunity that exists for the Colorado Mountain Club's digital experience is obvious. This project really illustrated the value that designing an experience that puts the user as the hero can and will benefit the business in more ways than one.
© 2020 Brittany Innes