Run Anywhere is a mobile app which allows runners to create and find races near them from anywhere in the world. Other popular running apps don't feature competitive and friendly racing assistance, so we decided to create a tool to help people run competitively or with friends. Users can track their statistics, search their local area for races, or invite their friends to their own races.
Before approaching a redesign we needed to define our style guide to exist as a unified design language. After creating our new design language we were about to build out cross functional UI components.
Our biggest focus was to have racers come together to easily compete with one another. Runners we interviewed said they wanted an app which easily allowed them to join real races with friends without having to canvas the internet to find one. To do this, we decided to implement a map feature alongside a social media feature to allow users to both find their friends and find local races. We would also implement a feature to allow user to create their own races, whether private or public, and invite people to race in them.
When I first got together with our development team, we defined all of the features which would be a part of the final stage of development. This was compiled into a rough design/sketch I create, as seen on the right. From here, we chose the features which should be part of the alpha stage of development and dictated our development timeline.
For the prototype which would be used before initial user testing, I finalized the design for the alpha development stage using Figma and mapped the designs so testers could fully interact with a prototype. Testers were then tasked with navigating to various areas of the app and completing tasks while I noted areas the testers got confused or stuck. This information proved valuable for editing my design all the way through to the final version.
At the end of our project we had created a fully realized design which allowed users to find races and interact with other runners.
Looking back at this project, I can see that I have learned a lot. One of the biggest issues I had was choosing a color scheme; I now realize there are complexities to color theory I want to understand better. While the end product features a blue and red dichotomy, I would like to eventually add more colors and more features to this app. Since I used a photo-based design by having users upload a photo with their created races, I felt the design was much more modern. However, this limits usability as now each race needs a photo uploaded alongside it in order for the design to work. In the future, I would like to work on create new designs which further test my knowledge of colors and layout.
