This was a redesign of the travel section of REI's website. Being a consumer co-op, rather than a publicly-traded company, enables REI to focus on the long-term interests of the co-op and their members. It means that they're able to operate a business that plays a national role in growing outdoor participation and protecting the environment for future generations.

I developed a microsite with a goal of allowing a high level of personalization while educating the site's visitors and eliminating the unknown for them - thereby removing any fear that may have been a barrier to traveling abroad or camping.  

Anyone at any experience level can find or plan a trip, then tailor the process of purchasing merchandise to their needs and their trip. Through card sorting and some initial sketches, I began fleshing out the functionality, design and flow of the site.

We hypothesized that REI was looking for a better way for customers to book trips through their website. I was given three user persona's, and had to address each of their needs in my final prototype. However, we were mainly given information about their buying habits, which I felt wasn't enough to really understand their motivations. I did some additional investigation into American’s travel and camping habits and identified a larger issue: American’s aren’t traveling abroad, and only 14% of the country is camping and experiencing the outdoors through that method of travel.  This allowed me to identify three separate problems to address in this project: 

USER interviews

I took user research a step further and identified people in my life who were somewhat similar to the user persona’s we were given. I then asked them about their travel and camping habits to better tailor my microsite to their needs. Some of their responses are below, matched with an image of the user persona that matched their camping experience:

Prototype and Testing

I created a prototype that allowed me to demonstrate a user flow for each of the three personas we were given.

The first video featured below is the most comprehensive, it goes through the process of setting up an account, buying a featured trip that REI had designed, and then purchasing a tent.  The second video features a more tentative camper's user journey and camping research while the third goes through the process of planning a private trip and utilizing some of the more advanced features.

Early testing on a half-way functional site revealed some hiccups with functionality, I revised these elements to be clearer in my final iteration.

Here are the journeys through the site for my three user personas as visualized with the digital prototype that I built and tested. The first video is the most comprehensive, the other two just show a couple of variations.