Hiking Buddies design project.
It’s been a while since I wanted to write about my side hustle, which has kept me busy and satisfied my craving for design over the last five years. This is the story of how I helped design a better user experience for Hiking Buddies, a community app dedicated to bringing together mountain enthusiasts.
The story of Hiking Buddies began in Munich, Germany, where a passionate hiker created a Facebook community to connect mountain enthusiasts. The group quickly spread to Switzerland and other mountainous regions. However, as the number of hiking events grew, Facebook proved inadequate for managing them. There was no system to ensure attendance or prevent novice hikers from joining advanced trips. That’s when a couple of talented and bored software engineers took matters into their own hands, creating Hiking Buddies, a website dedicated to organizing hiking routes and events. It became an instant hit in the Munich hiking community. While it excelled in functionality, it lacked in user experience (UX). As a professional designer, I couldn’t ignore the potential for improvement. And thus, my journey with Hiking Buddies began.
Before diving in, it’s important to note that Hiking Buddies is a non-commercial organization. No one makes money from it, which means significant private funds are spent on server costs and other expenses.
I apologize in advance for my informal writing style. This is a hobby project, and I decided to keep my native accent and grammatical quirks.
My Personal Story
Five years ago, I moved to Munich, my fifth country after Russia, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. With experience in adapting to new places, I had a solid strategy for making friends and finding activities. During my first week in Munich, I joined every expat and hiking group on Facebook and Meetup. That's how I discovered Hiking Buddies. Instead of sitting in bars, I found myself exploring beautiful mountains, sweating through the snow, and trying to keep up with the "Mountain Goats". Finding friends was never so easy! It was an exhilarating experience, and I quickly became a loyal member of the community. That's why I volunteered to help.
Hiking Buddies is more than just a Facebook group; it’s also a website and mobile app for iPhone and Android. We started redesigning the website five years ago but hit a roadblock when we couldn’t find a skilled React developer willing to work for free (do you know any? Send them to us!). We managed to complete one page listing events, but progress stalled there. For now, I’ll focus on the more exciting mobile app. In this post, I will use the freshest mocks and prototypes, that might be not fully developed yet (or developed in a slightly different way). To see the current state, download the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Mountain sports is the core theme of Hiking Buddies, but the main differentiator from other hiking apps — the focus on the community. People and events are at the heart of Hiking Buddies. It doesn’t dare to compete with Stravas and Komoots of the world, which are nailing the maps and tracking. That’s why the home screen focuses on the user's upcoming and recent activities, as well as uploading and recent activities in the community.
The Events list is by far the most used part of the app. Imagine the situation: it’s Wednesday, the weather forecast looks promising, you have no plans yet, you want to go somewhere new and with fun people. And one more thing, you have a desk job and you need to move, otherwise that bottom part of your body will get indecently large. So you open Hiking Buddies and see a bunch of hikes already planned. The first one is a hike around a lake where you’ve already been 5 times, with 25 participants, great for socialising, but you need a bit more of a challenge. The second is conquering the highest peak of the region, and it starts at 4 am, plus those dudes in the group — they are hiking machines, you’ll never keep up. The next one is a trail run, it sounds great, but you are not yet in the right shape for 36 km running through the Alps. Then there’s a Hike+Sauna event, a German-style-textile-free sauna with a bunch of very fit strangers… Well, you are not that integrated yet. Finally, you find that perfect hike, not too hard, not too easy, with a reliable organiser and a fun group, so you join in. This is how the Events list is used. We started adding new activity types (cycling, climbing, social events etc), and hopefully filtering will become more advanced soon.
From there you can open each event and see details: route specs (technical difficulty, elevation gain, duration, etc), map and profile, and instructions for the hike.
We’ve been thinking about transport options. Because the hiking community originates in Munich, it used to make sense for everyone to meet at the main train station and travel to the hiking spot together. Another option was a carpool, where drivers could add their cars and others could join as passengers. But with hiking geography growing, this simple approach did not work so well. For example, in Switzerland, people are more distributed and the transportation network is more advanced, so it doesn’t make sense to travel all together, some would come by train, some by car, and others might even take a bike. For this, we had to think of more flexible transportation options for our app. On the other hand, for other groups commuting all together is part of the hiking experience, so it’s up to the organiser to decide if they want to allow mixed transport options or travel all together all the way.
The Routes list contains a large database of routes with their technical ranking and automatically adds public transport info, destination and parking for drivers, and even information about mountain huts.
The hiker profile page contains the hiking history of the person, reviews and, the killer feature — points that translate into hiker level (Beginner, embarrassing Advanced Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and, the Mountain Goat). Don’t underestimate what people do to gain points and the Mountain Goat status!
Reviews are also important for creating reputation and credibility. Some organisers would not want to accept people with little proven hiking experience for difficult mountaineering adventures. For others, fitness and speed matters. And last, when people sign up and don’t come to the hikes, wasting someone else’s opportunity to join — they get a shameful No-show note in their profile.
Hiking Buddies is run fully by volunteers and doesn’t generate any cash (for better or worse). Nonetheless, the expenses are growing and soon it will become too expensive of a hobby. There is a PayPal Donate button on the app and the website, but not many people use it. We needed to think about a more sustainable crowdfunding approach. And that brought me to the idea of a Sustainer badge — people would receive a badge after signing up for one of 3 subscriptions. We have yet to see how this idea would fly.
Conclusion: Lessons Learned from Hiking Buddies
1. Community is Everything: The heart of Hiking Buddies lies in its community. The connections formed through shared experiences in nature are powerful.
2. Design Matters: Even the most functional software can fall short if the user experience is lacking. Investing time and resources into UX can transform a platform from good to great.
3. Flexibility is Key: As the Hiking Buddies community expanded, we realized the importance of flexibility in our approach. Adapting to the needs of a diverse and geographically dispersed user base was essential.
4. Volunteer Power: Running a non-commercial organization relies heavily on the dedication of volunteers. Attracting skilled volunteers requires clear communication of the project’s impact and benefits.
5. Sustainable Funding: Even passion projects need sustainable funding. Our exploration of crowdfunding and the introduction of the Sustainer badge highlighted the importance of innovative funding solutions to cover growing expenses.
6. Persistence Pays Off: The journey wasn’t always smooth. We faced obstacles, especially in finding developers willing to work pro bono. However, persistence and a shared vision kept us moving forward.
In conclusion, Hiking Buddies has been more than just a side hustle for me — it’s been a platform for personal growth, community building, and professional development. As we continue to evolve, I am excited about the future of Hiking Buddies and the adventures that lie ahead. Whether you’re a hiker, a designer, or someone with a passion for community projects, there’s a place for you in our journey.
That’s it about Hiking Buddies for now. In the meantime, I am ready to end my professional pause and look for the real job: if you know of any open roles of Product Design Heads, UX Managers, or UX Designers (Senior and up) — let me know! Find me at https://annaarteeva.com/ or https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaarteeva/
Also, you can follow my adventures on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/anna__arteeva/ . It’s entirely personal, I’m not a blogger and never advertise anything.
