Carv
Louis Valenzuela
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Posted Mar 27, 2023
Research and design for wearable ski tech app, that acts just like an engaged and encouraging coach.
Carv created cutting-edge wearable technology for skiers that comprised of insoles and an app. This combo delivers real-time analysis and audio coaching to help elevate technique, while also tracking progress. During my time at Carv, I had the exciting opportunity to interact with users and gather valuable insights to drive improvement in usage and design.
Results
In an end of season survey with 6,000 Carv users:
95% said that Carv had directly improved their skiing
62% reported that the 'off-snow' content motivated them to ski more often
Additional to the survey, the NPS (net promoter score) increased by 23%, from 30% to 53%.
What's the story?
The Carv app was doing a good enough job in engaging with users as they skied, but the same couldn’t be said outside of this e.g. at the start or end of their ski day. Working closely with the Senior Product Manager, I mapped out the journey for of a typical ski day, looking at where we could engage with users and what we could do.
A unique gem
Prior to my engagement, Carv had established a private Facebook group for highly engaged users to share their feedback, progress and ideas. This group, with its 7,000 active members, served as an effective feedback loop for the company, providing valuable insights to drive continuous improvement. The approachable and enthusiastic users made this group an invaluable asset for me to dive into and extract insights from.
Speaking with skiers
I was able to reach out to a few members of the community to speak with them about how they used Carv and where we could help make their experience using the app more enjoyable, useful and exciting overall. From the discussions I had, I was able to pull together insights and opportunities we could act on. Additionally these insights helped to validate the initial ideas I had considered.
Starting the ski day
Starting the ski day was a great opportunity for Carv to help users push themselves and set a challenge. This particular aspect spoke to the fact that skiers are methodical and they will formulate a plan on how they can improve.
This approach did that thinking for them and was flexible enough to work for first-time users, as well as active returning ones.
Stopping during the day
While using Carv, a large proportion of the interaction is voice-based as skiers focus on skiing. So when they stop - either just as a break or for lunch etc. - this presented a good opportunity to surface a recommended focus area to further help them improve and get the most out of their ski day.
End of the ski day
At the end of the ski day, I wanted to capture the skiers sentiment following the moment they had confirmed that they had finished for the day. This seemingly small action helped to paint a picture of how skiers felt.
By collecting this data we could match it up with their usage, which would in-turn, inform what sort of content we would serve and better refine focus areas. Basically, mirroring what a real-life ski coach would do. I also provided a run by run top line analysis of the day.
Progress, progress, progress
After many conversations with skiers in the community, Carv stakeholders and team members, I structured the beginnings of showing progress & adding value to the overall experience of the Carv app through primitive wireframes. These wires allowed me to concentrate on the functionality and shift and change rapidly (as everything moved quickly at Carv).
Achievements
Celebrating achievements in Carv was a new addition to the app, so I created a number of different concepts which were reviewed internally and externally. Following on from a mix of feedback and intuition, I landed on a final design which was a simple but effective card.
Levelling up
To help give skiers a return on investment for their efforts, I created a number of different concepts for how levelling up in Carv would work. Following on from feedback, I opted for names (grim ripper etc.) instead of level numbers. This not only injected some fun into the process, but also helped to not demoralise skiers, as names aren't as black and white as numbering.
Home & profile
Amongst activity tracking apps there’s a user expectation of how these types of UIs are presented - so there’s not a huge amount of opportunity to take a conceptually unique approach (unless you’re Facebook or Google, of course).
So my solution was to design a “recognisable” elements and patterns (e.g. hexagonal level badges) within the ‘home’ and ‘profile’ sections of the app, that included delightful details that made it uniquely Carv.
