Digital
Paddle App Prototype
An interactive app design for avid kayakers — finding the next great waterway, then tracking the trip and staying safe on the water.
- Client
- Paddle
- Industry
- Outdoor recreation / mobile app
- Role
- UX/UI design lead
- Year
- 2021
- Services
- UX design, UI design, Interactive app design, User flows, Visual design system
The problem
Kayakers hunting the next great waterway piece their planning together from maps, forums and weather apps. Paddle had to do the whole job in one place — surface the best places to paddle by distance, difficulty and user tags, track the trip in real time, and add safety beacon features, all in an interface usable outdoors and on the move.
Background
Paddle is an app concept for avid kayakers who are always on the prowl for the next great waterway. Leaning heavily on user feedback and reviews, it builds lists of the best places to paddle against parameters that matter on the day — distance, difficulty and user tags.
Its secondary function tracks mileage, distance and calories burned in real time, and adds safety beacon features so paddlers feel more secure out on the water. The tone brief was adventurous, utilitarian and environmentally conscious — an interface that stays out of the way of the scenery.
Objectives
- 01
Design a testable UX flow covering the full trip: discovery, evaluation, recording and review
- 02
Rank and filter waterways against the parameters paddlers actually use — distance, difficulty, user tags
- 03
Build trust around the safety beacon through deliberate UI affordances
- 04
Establish a utilitarian visual system that reads as adventurous and environmentally conscious, not a generic activity app
Audience: Avid kayakers who plan their own trips and rely on community feedback and reviews to decide where to paddle next.
Process
Planning, strategy, execution.
- 01Planning
Mapping the paddler's journey
Planning started with journey mapping: the decisions a user makes before, during and after a trip — discover, evaluate, launch, record, review. Each decision became one screen in the flow, and the five-tab navigation (Home, Search, Record, My Trips, Profile) keeps every mode one tap away.
- Defined the core loop: discover → evaluate → paddle → record → share
- Mapped each screen to a single decision point in the journey
- Prioritised trip-critical details (distance, length, difficulty, conditions)
- Scoped safety features as a distinct, always-accessible mode
- 02Strategy
Cards, conditions and confidence
The strategy made comparison easy and safety visible. Lake cards lead with glanceable chips — distance, length, difficulty — plus current conditions, so evaluation happens without a detail view. Ratings, reviews and user photos provide social proof one tap deeper, and the recorder and beacon stay within reach once on the water.
- Card-first layout with comparison chips for quick lake evaluation
- Ratings and reviews surfaced before the detail view
- High-contrast recorder and emergency beacon states
- Saved trips for revisiting past routes and sharing with others
- 03Execution
A clickable prototype ready for testing
Execution produced a polished, high-fidelity prototype across the key screens — splash, map discovery, lake detail, photo gallery, ratings, trip recording and saved trips — built on a consistent component library and ready for user feedback and developer handoff.
- High-fidelity iOS screens with a consistent component library
- Accent system tied to action and safety states
- Trip recorder with live mileage, distance and calories burned
- Emergency beacon with a deliberate confirmation flow
Creative approach
The information architecture follows the paddler's real journey: discover a waterway, evaluate it through conditions and reviews, paddle it, then record and revisit the trip. A five-tab navigation — Home, Search, Record, My Trips, Profile — maps each screen to a single decision point so the design could be tested as a clickable flow.
Comparison happens on the card, not three taps deep: distance, length and difficulty sit as glanceable chips alongside current conditions. Community ratings, reviews and user photos — the source of truth for this audience — carry the detail one level in.
The trip recorder is a focused mode with live stats for mileage, distance and calories burned, and the safety beacon uses deliberate high-contrast styling with a confirmation step: easy to find, hard to trigger by accident.
Utilitarian visual system: clean card layouts, high-legibility type for outdoor glare, and full-bleed natural photography that keeps the environmental tone without competing with the interface.
The work
Walk the deck.
Use the arrows, thumbnails or arrow keys.
01 / 01Lake detail, ratings and saved trips
Delivered
- Mobile app UX/UI prototype
- Lake discovery and detail screens
- Ratings and reviews flow
- Trip recorder interface
- Emergency beacon screen
- Saved trips section
- Visual design system
Scope of ownership
- End-to-end UX/UI design and visual system
- User flow architecture and screen design
- Prototype art direction and component structure
What this project demonstrates
A product prototype is only useful if it tells the truth about the user's decision-making — this one keeps the trip, not the interface, at the center.
Performance results for this project are not published here. Metrics are available on request where the client has cleared them.
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