Kalt-tra is an ecommerce business concept that allows people to try on a personalized selection of climbing shoes from their home. This emerged from my experiences watching rock climbers (such as myself) struggling to sort through the overwhelming amount of different factors to find the right pair of climbing shoes. It became a solo 20 weeks project at the SVC UX Certificate Program in Seattle, WA.
Climbing is a multi-billion dollar industry and the typical climber spends an average of $170 on each pair of shoes. I have personally spent hundreds of dollars trying to find the right pair, and that number isn't surprising to the average climber. The American Alpine Club reports that $168,989,622 was spent on climbing gear alone in 2018, and shoes comprised 25% of all climbing gear sales, totaling $42,159,525.
On average, climbing shoes only last around 3-9 months for people climbing once or twice a week — it's economically beneficial for people to find the right shoes sooner.
Climbers are overwhelmed by the large number of different factors to sort through to find the right pair of climbing shoes. There are around over 200+ climbing shoes on the market. Choosing the wrong type of shoe or fit can hold the climber back. The shoes that are needed will vary depending on the user’s style and comfort level preferences. For instance, bouldering requires a more aggressive, downturned style of shoe, whereas a flatter pair of shoes would be more suitable for spending hours climbing on a multi-pitch wall.
What are potential pain points? How should I write the survey and interview questions? What about the layout of the site? These were some of the initial questions I kept in mind during my research. I wrote down a brain dump of ideas, theories, and concepts to figure out key points and organize my earlier thoughts. I recruited, interviewed, and performed a competitor analysis with 6 climbers, and ran usability tests with 5 more. All were people who had recently bought climbing shoes either online or in-person.
Main audience: Beginner level climbers who don't have enough knowledge about climbing shoes.
Broader audience: Anyone in need of climbing shoes.
To understand the strengths and limitations of the shopping experiences my next step was to see what was out there. There are already several places that sell climbing shoes. However, these options leaves a gap for their users. The end to end user journey could be improve by tailoring the shopping experience to meet climber's individual needs based on their fit, style preferences, and climbing experiences to narrow down the options to present users with a few personalized selections of climbing shoes.
I conducted interviews at the Seattle Bouldering Project climbing gym to a targeted set of participants varying f climbing. Participants were asked series of questions related to their experiences with their shoes (such as fit and style preferences). I then took the responses through a card sorting exercise to find common themes amongst the respondents.
I found insights on their requirements, pain points, and motivations for making their selections and purchases.
Beginner level climbers don't know what they need and don't understand the product terminology. Typically, the participants would either go through a slow trial and error or just pick their first pair based on a recommendation.
Result: The site needs to highlight extra details and educated users on product specs.
Final decisions for picking climbing shoes were typically chosen based on their fit and comfortability after trying on the shoes rather than required technical specifications alone.
Result: Climbers need the ability to try-on multiple pair of shoes before making a purchase.
Shoppers wants an improved way to compare different brands/specs.
Result: The site has a compare button under every product to allow for quick comparisons between different shoes.
Based on what I learned, I created multiple variations of low to medium fidelity wireframes and a mood screen. I focused my design process on making sure to meet the needs of my research participants, eventually settling on a direction for the prototype.
Constructing the solution with my research in mind, I started building the site. Starting with some rough sketches on paper, I drew up some ideas on paper, sought feedback from my peers and users (through early user testing) and then brought the final ideations to life in Sketch.
I conducted five user testing sessions to ensure that the designs made sense.
I found that 4/5 users had a hard time finding the comparison toolbar because it was out of view on their desktop browsers.
Users were asked to navigate from the product category page and look for more information about delivery.
I found that users did not engage with the search bar on the FAQ page since they felt that it was already easy to navigate.
3/5 users didn't realize the FAQ page's search bar was not the same as the main search bar on the site.
2/5 said that they would not use the button to leave their own questions.
I made improvements to the comparison user flow to address the pain points my users found on other site's product category pages.
“ I need this in my life! This would've saved me a lot of trouble trying to find my climbing shoes. ”
- User from usability test
If this site were published, we would reduce pain points in the online shopping experiences by providing a more economically beneficial and convenient way to compare and find the right pair of climbing shoes sooner.
Based off of user feedback, I felt that this project was successful in solving some of the issues my users were having with other climbing sites.
Some of my next steps:
- Implement changes
- More user testing
- Do more research to develop the quiz
- Create the quiz element of the design