Patagonia

Learning a new activity never been easier

Patagonia, Inc. is an American company that makes and sells clothing and gear for outdoor activity. The project started with the following question:

“How might we guide and provide for environmentally conscious people trying a new activity?”

My role
This project was made during the immersive UX course at General Assembly. I had a part in the whole project, from research, synthesis, ideation, sketching, usability testing, and Hi-fi Mockup.

duration
2.5 weeks

Tools
Figma

Project partner
Karuna Gurung — UX/UI designer
Kiera Schultz — UX/UI designe

Results
The Patagonia app provides some advantages highlighted by our users
and observed in the usability testing
Connect the new starters to the related community

“Starting a new activity is much easier now”

People learn about new activities from many different sources

“Throw me into the community”

“Start with researching what I need to be prepared for. It motivates you to do it. “

“I try to learn about it. From the internet and YouTube videos and blogs”.

We spoke to physically active people to find out how they start new activities and approach trying new things.

We found that there is not currently a place that people can go to find everything they need to know about new activities.
People go to different mediums — online videos, blogs, they speak to experts and need to do lots of time-consuming research online.

Searching for information from so many different sources is frustrating

Sometimes they are more susceptible to injuries because of a lack of knowledge or proper equipment.

Meet Matthew
He’s interested in surfing but doesn’t know where to start

Matthew has tried surfing a couple of times and now wants to start taking the hobby more seriously. He feels put off and confused by the many different resources online and is starting to think that he’ll never be able to become a surfer.

Patagonia can help Matthew and others like him to start new outdoor activities easily by providing integrated service with everything they need to get started including training materials, must-have equipment, and related community.

We started with the idea of having 3 main sections on each activity page

• Tutorial videos
• Must-haves item
• Meet Patagonia ambassador

users wanted more than just one video, so we decided to add a section of the app with many videos.

“Watch videos” button is too tiny to catch attention.

“I am a beginner surfer, I don’t want to see other filters all the time.”

Drop-down is the solution!

Removing the experience-level filters

Filters are still the problem since it doesn't make sense for some items.

3/5 users claimed that

“Do advances surfer use different items?”

Showing the must-haves item with the “More info” button makes the activity page more published.

Seeing all the information beside each item makes the page cluttered. the solution is to put the “more info” button underneath each item that takes you to the product page.

“meet our surfers” wasn't helpful so we replaced it with the Join community section that helps you find out about upcoming events as well as tips that other surfers share.

By joining the community you are able to post as well. But to join you need to signup and create an account

Final Prototype

**screen-video**

We also did Hybrid card sorting, and we found out people categorize the items almost the way it is in the current Patagonia website, so we kept the current Information Architecture.

Matthew is now ready to start surfing!

The Patagonia app help the new starter to

• know necessity items to start the activity
• Meet the related community
• Inspire them by showing the related videos.

Learnings

• Getting the right design before getting the design right.
• Every idea is valuable. With A/B testing we can learn from users and mix and match the ideas

Next steps
People would like step by step tutorial videos but Patagonia had inspiring videos