Rock climbing is an incredible rewarding activity. There’s a beauty in surmounting the mental and physical challenges that come with the sport. A shared passion for helping one another has always been at the heart of the climbing community.

Two climbers on a tall rock face in Joshua Tree national park

Many climbers however, especially new ones, can struggle to find a consistent group to climb with.

I’ve learned so much from the climbing community so I wanted to explore ways to help.

Framing the problem

Finding yourself in a climbing gym as a beginner can be daunting. Everyone seems so strong and the floor is packed. It’s hard to know where to start in such a brand new environment and it can seem like all eyes are on you when you approach the holds.

Speaking with members at my local gym, talking to climbing friends in my own climbing group, and gathering sentiment online helped shed light on common challenges people were facing:

Forming a hypothesis & guiding design principles

Establishing user journeys and personas

Let’s consider two main scenarios a person can typically encounter when they consider finding a climbing partner:

(Case 1: Paul) looking for a climbing partner before you arrive at the gym
(Case 2: Talia) looking for a climbing partner when you’re already at the gym and have no prior arrangement

Hypothesis:
If climbers have a stress-free “first step” in having autonomy over who they choose as their belay partner…then they might have an easier, more organic way to form groups and climb more.

Additionally, I thought having some principles that addressed the feedback above would be great to have in order to guide design going forward.

Core screen concepts

After using the user journeys as a starting point, I wanted to explore design concepts for what a mobile-first experience could look like. I thought exploring a pair-up concept could be a simple one to start off with because building one-on-one connections is so valuable for newcomers.