Strava Routes Research

Over 2 months, as part of roadmap planning, the growth team researched the value of Routes.

Are existing Routes features 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 moments or events 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 past research, and ran interaction testing on the existing route feature.

Data Questions:

• What is the current count of cycling routes?

• What is the current count of 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?

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.

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 Workout

• Adventure Workout

• Weekend Workout

• Work Travel

• Athletic Travel

• Tourist Travel

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.

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.

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