Gulliver is a wiki portal, a vibrant community of outdoor enthusiasts who share their experiences, recommendations, and ideas. It's a place where individuals who love the outdoors come together.

What is Gulliver ?

Project Brief

" We aim to improve our community website as a central hub for outdoor enthusiasts to find information on tracks and conditions.

Our goal is to elevate the quality of user-generated content and foster greater engagement among our community members, enabling them to share valuable insights and advice."

Francesco, Product Owner @Gulliver

Our Process

We followed the double-diamond process throughout the project, utilizing brainwriting for ideation and conducting user testing to refine our prototype.

Gulliver Users

Mario-mont, 60

"Sunday hiker" and curious multifaceted. Environmentalist, traveler, photographer, he signs up for guided canyoning trips, rents MTB for a ride in the Dolomites, and navigates various websites to find ideas for the weekend or for the holidays.

Piedmontese, hiker and explorer. Opens new trails, explores mountains to help spread mountain culture, belongs to CAI, tells endless stories. He knows all the nicknames of "Gulliverians" and spies on every new thing. On Gulliver, he has the diary of a lifetime, from 1975 to the present.

Tony, 38

Leo, 25

Italian, moved to Turin to be closer to the mountains. Skis hard and climbs 8a. He reads reviews that help him identify the perfect excursion. Visitor "ghosts" (has no profile) despite his frequent use. He is starting to collect guidebooks.

We were provided with personas by the product owner, giving us a clear picture of the diverse individuals using Gulliver.

Goal: Experience great expeditions | Fear: Wasted weekends

Goal: Take part in the community | Fear: Not being recognized

Goal: Breath fresh air and see landscapes | Fear: Rushy schedules

1. Form Feedback: Frustration with the lack of real-time feedback during form completion, especially for critical information.

2. No Preview: Difficulty creating content without a preview option before posting.

3. Return Option: Challenges in navigating back to previous steps in the form-filling process.

4. Copy Language: A need for more engaging language to encourage users to provide information.

User Research & UX Audit

Due to time constraints preventing in-depth user research, our team experienced the Gulliver website firsthand. We focused on the content creation section. Following this experience, we held a feedback session to highlight common issues:

Click on the image to see the full size

So, how might we improve post quality and encourage users to share high-quality content ?

We used the brainwriting technique to generate a multitude of ideas quickly.

A dot voting system helped us select the most promising concepts, with the progress bar idea gaining approval from the product owner.

Building ideas

Click on the image to see the full size

Click on the image to see the full size

We choose the most voted ideas and analyzed them based on the effort to implement vs value on users.

The product owner decided to go with the progress bar idea, and we started to brainstorm on the possible solutions.

Initial Prototype

The initial prototype is here.

Testing the solution

During our testing of the initial prototype, we conducted moderated Zoom interviews with 3 participants who provided valuable insights:

1. Positive Reaction to Preview: Users appreciated the inclusion of a preview feature. It gave them confidence about how their content would look when shared with the community.

2. Icon Confusion: Some participants found the icons used in the prototype to be confusing. They suggested making the icons more intuitive or providing clear tooltips to explain their functions.

3. Navigation Bar Feedback: Users pointed out that section names on the navigation bar were repeated in the sections themselves, which they felt made the interface less straightforward. Simplifying these labels was recommended.

4. Desire for Simplicity: Overall, participants emphasized the importance of simplicity in the design. They wanted a clean and intuitive interface that would help them share their experiences easily and effectively.

Tuning the prototype

Based on the user feedback, we tuned the prototype to improve the experience.

Final Prototype

The final prototype is here.

1. Listen to Users: Regular feedback from users was crucial. It helped us shape the user experience by adapting the design based on real user preferences.

2. Embrace Team Diversity: Our diverse team brought unique perspectives and skills, enhancing creativity and ensuring our design was inclusive.

3. Iterate for Precision: Iterative prototyping was key. It allowed us to refine our design gradually, saving time and ensuring a closer match to user needs.

Lessons learned

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