REI Camping Microsite - Streamlining the Trip Planning Process

Challenge: Create a website that will help people plan and manage their camping trips. The website will be true to REI’s brand in look, feel, and tone but exist separately from REI.com. The website will:

Allow users to find and book camping destinations
Allow users to discover and book (if applicable) other outdoor activities to take part in while camping
Provide an interactive trip checklist based on location, time of year, age of campers, types of activities planned, number of campers in group, and any other important criteria that arises during user research
Provide a way for multiple campers to plan all aspects of a trip together
Allow users to purchase products available already on REI.com directly from this new website

Solution: REI's Committed to Camping Microsite. This site combines the functionality of REI's existing website (www.rei.com) with an ability to gather and share information about camping-trip related purchases and plans with fellow trip takers. When there is so much competition for people's time, planning a trip should leverage evolving online technology and not become a stumbling block to users’ camping experiences.

Axure Digital Prototype: http://11zp6x.axshare.com/ Video of Prototype: http://paulmoser.tinytake.com/sf/MTc0Njc4XzExMDU4ODM

G.A. Projects Page

Home Page

Look and feel very similar to existing REI website, www.rei.com.

Individual Destination Page

Once again similar to that on the www.rei.com website but with added ability to add it to an individual's "checklist"

Checklist Page - Messages

The user clicks on the "messages" tab and sees a forum which allows them to communicate with other people associated with the checklist.

Home Page

Look and feel very similar to existing REI website, www.rei.com.

1/9

Process:

Market Research I did a little background research to gain a better understanding of the issues and trends facing the camping industry today, and to see how those might impact what I was trying to develop.	Paper Prototypes The bridge between the rough sketches and the digital prototype, this was what I used to start fleshing out the details and to start doing usbility testing.	Design Studio Working as a group to produce preliminary wireframes for the REI microsite
Card Sorting Used to try and start getting a handle on the Information Architecture and how to organize information in the microsite.	Site Map Preliminary thinking through of the structure of the site	User Flows Developing scenarios on how users would navigate the site and how the resulting functionality would be structured
Rapid Wireframing Quick sketches to start envisioning what certain page layouts might look like.	Personas Beginning to send the supplied personas into the new site by setting up potential purchases for each one.	Digital Prototypes Multiple iterations produced and modified using Axure.

G.A. Projects Page

PAUL MOSER

UX DESIGNER

REI Camping Microsite - Streamlining the Trip Planning Process

Market Research

I did a little background research to gain a better understanding of the issues and trends facing the camping industry today, and to see how those might impact what I was trying to develop.

Paper Prototypes

The bridge between the rough sketches and the digital prototype, this was what I used to start fleshing out the details and to start doing usbility testing.

Design Studio

Working as a group to produce preliminary wireframes for the REI microsite

Card Sorting

Used to try and start getting a handle on the Information Architecture and how to organize information in the microsite.

Site Map

Preliminary thinking through of the structure of the site

User Flows

Developing scenarios on how users would navigate the site and how the resulting functionality would be structured

Rapid Wireframing

Quick sketches to start envisioning what certain page layouts might look like.

Personas

Beginning to send the supplied personas into the new site by setting up potential purchases for each one.

Digital Prototypes

Multiple iterations produced and modified using Axure.