Backcountry travel is complex and dangerous. We believe the resources availabile to recreationalists can improve and the way to do that is through listening directly to the voice of the skier.
We engage with, and design for all backcountry travelers regardless of mode of travel or skill/experience level. We expect our work to be valued by recreational users, educators, guides, avalanche centers and curriculum developers, and manufacturers.
Our approach is called Human-Centered Design, a close friend of Design Thinking. It is a form of creative problem solving that begins with empathy. We do our best to put ourselves in our participants' shoes. The desired outcome is not to definitively prove or disprove a hypothesis but simply provide inspiration. We seek to offer fertile ground for new solutions.
We conduct semi-structured, qualitative interviews and use other observational to understand our participants. We’ve wrapped up our first big round of research and have shared our finding in our 2021-22 Season Report. Check it out to see what skiers shared, and what we learned!
We design solutions to meet the needs and mental models uncovered in our research. The most frequent pain point we heard about in our research is that partner finding is difficult. We are exploring solutions to this problem, including ski partner “speed dating partners” events we held during the 21/22 season and our personalized matchmaking service.
Richard is a long-time avalanche educator and ski guide. He is passionate about student outcomes, and actions people take after training.
Daniel is a backcountry skier and an experienced Human-Centered designer and product manager who loves making things that help people.