A case study and re-design of the Tension Climbing app
Within recent years, standardized adjustable climbing walls have grown in popularity as a new approach to indoor training for rock climbing. One the current leaders is the Tension Board. Paired with a mobile app, the Tension Board allows for an interactive climbing and training experience.
However, the accompanying app tends to fall short when it comes to creating an intuitive and insightful user experience.
Through this re-design, I sought out to discover opportunities to further elevate the training experience through transparency and personalization.
Personal project
User Experience Design, Visual Design, Interaction Design
July 2020 – November 2020
Tension Climbing focuses on creating the best equipment for climbing training and performance. Their main product, the Tension Board, consists of a variety of wooden holds set up in a mirrored layout on an adjustable wall and is controlled by an accompanying app.
Through the Tension Climbing app, users have access to a worldwide database of hundreds of climbs. All you have to do is select a climb and via Bluetooth, the chosen problem is transferred onto the board indicated by lights underneath each corresponding hold.
It has several features such as searching and filtering climbs, flagging climbs for later, and keeping track of your ascents, to name a few.
With the current state of the world and COVID-19 keeping climbing gyms closed, many climbers have turned to at-home climbing boards like the Tension board to maintain their fitness. The app is an integral part of the Tension Board experience, however, it’s an element of the system that’s been overlooked compared to the physical pieces.
I saw this re-design as an opportunity to challenge the current app, where there’s a lack of specific tools to help users maximize the primary objective which the board was designed for – to train.
My high-level goals were to:
1. Enable users to take control of their own training
2. Make the app more easy and intuitive to use
3. Create more transparency for deeper insight and engagement
Disclaimer: This is a personal project, and I am in no way affliated with Tension Climbing. The recommendations and discoveries are strictly my own. I do not have access to the company’s internal business priorities or operational constraints which may have influenced Tension Climbing’s current design.
I began with an in-depth analysis of the current Tension Climbing app’s features and interface. As a frequent user of the Tension Board myself, the biggest things I’ve noticed are issues regarding its general usability and basic functions such as searching and filtering.
- Lack of a main navigation to direct the user
- Pretty barebones without much to do
- Icons in the bottom navigation are not very intuitive and lack proper guiding labels
- Users have to navigate away from the climb to this page to see the climb’s rules (e.g. ‘no matching’)
- The statistics don’t give much insight other than the most basic data
- A lot of filters using toggles could be consolidated into a list of checkbox options
- There’s a lack of specific filters such as ‘hold type’, or ‘style of climb’
- Flat list of climbs you've completed
- No ability to search or filter climbs
- No ability to create any lists for “saved” climbs
To gain a better understanding of Tension Board users, I conducted a survey with 29 responses to learn about their user journey, goals and motivations, and attitude toward the current experience.
Through the survey and user interviews, I learned that generally, users love the Tension Board because its layout and vast library of climbs lends itself to be an effective and fun training tool.
However, several very basic usability issues and a lack of customization create frustration and leave users wanting more transparency and insight into their performance as well as actionable ways to help them reach their climbing goals.
Traditionally, we as climbers rely on routesetters to create and set problems and routes for us to climb. However, the Tension Board and its app, are a big opportunity for climbers to take hold of their climbing experience.
With this re-design, my goal was to enable climbers to take control of their training by providing them with insights and tools that will help them target to their specific goals and needs. Often, due to the nature of the sport, it’s difficult to track one’s progress and know if the training methods we’re using are actually helping us improve.
Have a complete view of your climbing progression. With your profile, you can monitor your performance through personal metrics, create lists, and store your projects – all in one place.
Statistics
Learn about your performance with an overview of your all-time ascents distributed by grade and summaries of each climbing session.
Lists
Create lists to organize and keep track of climbs you’d like to come back to or save your favorites.
Discover new climbs and tailor your session to your personal climbing needs.
Filters
Narrow down search results to discover climbs that suit a certain grade, style or criteria that you’re looking for. Let us make it easier for you to find climbs that challenge your weaknesses.
Benchmarks
Assess your climbing performance. Measure your limit against a community-rated baseline for each grade to see where you’re at.
Put your mind and body to work–diversify your climbing and spice up the session.
Create a playlist
Like a music playlist, you can create a “set” of climbs that can serve as a workout to help target specific areas you’d like to improve in such as power, endurance or technique.
Start a workout
Cycle through each climb in the playlist and easily log your attempts as you go.
See how you did
Learn about where your strengths and weaknesses lie, and save climbs to come back to later.
Easily view all details related to each climb such as no matching rules and all-time ascents without interrupting your session.
Boulder stats
See how other climbers performed on each boulder problem and the stats behind the community-generated consensus on the grade.
Interact with the community
Leave comments, share beta, and connect with Tension Board climbers worldwide.
Become the routesetter–craft your own boulders and training exercises and share them with the entire Tension community.
Start creating
Design a boulder through an intuitive step-by-step process. Give it a fun name, propose a grade, and publish it to the Tension Board library.
Save a draft
Not ready to publish your climb? No problem.Save the climb as a draft and come back to it later.
Edit climbs
We all make mistakes. Maybe that foot’s a little too low or you’d like to add a hold or two. Edit or delete your climbs at any time and publish a new version.
I particularly enjoyed this project largely because rock climbing is a big passion of mine. Currently, there’s a lot of innovation happening within the climbing sphere, especially with at-home training walls like the Tension Board. At the moment, there aren’t many competitors in this space that offer a better user experience, since similar boards, such as the Kilter Board, are using the exact same UI.
I was excited to work on a re-design of this app because I see many opportunities for it go from good to great. The app is definitely the part of the system that’s gotten the least amount of attention. As someone with a passion for design and climbing, I want to show what I believe is a small dose of the potential for an even better climbing and training experience.
Going forward, I’d like to delve further into user research and learn more about the different training habits amongst climbers.
I’m interested to see what methods are currently being used to advance one’s performance and whether they dramatically differ depending on the climbing focus (outdoors, sport climbing, trad climbing etc.).
How can we apply these findings to the Tension Board to make it an even more effective and holistic tool?
All rights reserved © 2024 Amy Virasak
