Strava Routes Research
Over 2 months, as part of the product team planning, the growth team researched the value of Routes.
Is this existing feature something Strava should invest in for the future? Spoiler Alert: YES!
Role: Facilitator, interviewer, designer
Team: Director of User Research, contract researcher, product managers and design partner on the Growth team.
Sample of Research Goals
- What is the user's definition of "routes"?
- What are the moments or events that spark searching for or creating a route?
- How are users currently creating routes for their activities?
- How can Strava create quality, safe, and trusted directions for our everyday athletes?
- Define user needs around interacting with routes on and off the Strava application
Process
1. Historical Discovery
2. Intercept User Testing
3. Competitive Analysis
4. Define Themes and User Scenarios
5. Brainstorm and Wireframe
6. Preform User Interviews
7. Iterate on Concepts
8. Validate
9. Define Next Steps
Historical Discovery
When starting this project, I wanted to learn everything about Routes. I looked at the current usage of the route features, interviewed stakeholders, reviewed at past research, and ran interaction testing on the existing routes product.
Data Questions:
- What is the current count of cycling routes?
- What is the current count running routes?
- How many unique route creators does Strava have currently?
- What is the total number of routes in storage?
- What is the total number of activities that have used a route?
Intercept User Testing
On a Sunday and Thursday morning, a Product Manager and I ran intercept testing. We visited two popular spots that are frequented with runners and cyclists in San Francisco. We wanted to understand, in-person, how they use routes.
Competitive Analysis
After running intercept and user testing with the existing product, we took a look at what our competitors are doing. We determined where the needs exist and where there was market saturation.
Products - Trail Forks, Map My Run, All Trails and Komoot
Objectives - Audit of existing products, What works well, What doesn’t work well, Ideas
Define
Myself, another designer, and two product managers on the growth team iterated on scenarios, themes, and defined assumptions about critical features.
Starting out, we broke down the moments a user chooses to create, search, or find a route.
Scenarios Everyday, Adventure and Weekend Workouts, Work, Athletic and Tourist Travel
Themes - Recommendations, Social, Planning, Challenges
Brainstorm and Wireframe
The team brainstormed features that would fill the users' needs for each scenario. We started by putting sticky notes on a whiteboard, then we picked out favorites we'd like to wireframe for feedback.
We took the top four wireframes and created high-fidelity designs to show users during the interview sessions. My design partner and I then split the plans up, and I created the following concepts.
Concept Breakdown
1. Routes from Here - three disparate routes generated from their chosen location.
2. Maps for Runners - places, local routes, and training suggestions for runners based on their interests and locale.
3. Subscriber Buddy - an assistant that suggests personalized routes based on the inputted parameters.
4, Goals - workout and route suggestions based on one or more specific goals.
Preform User Interviews
Working with the contract user researcher, we learned more about how users are interacting with routes daily. We started the interview at high-level learning about the user’s day-to-day and travel with routes. We then showed them the four concepts and asked for feedback.
“If you are doing the same workouts over and over again, it doesn’t really improve how you are or what you do.” — Anonymous research participant
Iterate on Concepts
With the incredibly valuable feedback, paired with the other designer, we iterated on more design variations.
Validate
With the final designs in hand, we repeated user interviews with a smaller set of users. This helped set the concept validation and looked further into how the concepts could grow for future iterations.
Define Next Steps
- With all of this useful knowledge, the growth team set key opportunities to present to the rest of the Strava organization for approval.
- Next step examples:
- Find routes near me and anywhere
- Build trust with Route details
- Discoverability of Routes
- Conversion experience on the web through routes
