REI Snow Report App

Overview

REI needed a refreshed version of their custom snow report app. The app allows users to favorite snow resorts and see up to date weather conditions. The current version was aesthetically outdated and also had some UX problems that users had encountered. My task was to audit the app for UX pitfalls and re-design a more usable flow as well as visually design the app for both platforms.

User Feedback

After conducting a usability test with app users we found the following issues:

• App architecture - Some users struggled with how to get back to the home screen because they didn’t have a strong sense of what that page looked like (some people thought it was the search/add page and others were confused by the label resorts in the back button). Other users were confused about how to get back to the search/add view because they were confused by the modals.

• Editing the homescreen - A majority of users missed the edit button on the homescreen. Users were still able to remove an item from the homescreen list by un-favoriting it on a resort-level page, but without seeing the edit functionality they could not reorder the list.

• Favoriting resorts - Some users had a hard time adding items to their favorites list because they were confused by the universal plus icon on the individual resort screens.

• Turning on alerts - Customers wanted to see a way to turn alerts on from a specific resort page.

• Map search - The placement of the map button within search was easily missed.

Sketches

Based on feedback I aimed to make the app more usable by designing a consistent navigation system, clear labeling, and adding features like notification settings from specific resort screens.

Visual Design

To refresh the visual design of the app I took inspiration from the snowy motif while keeping within REI's brand guidelines.