Strava App Critique
StravA
Strava is a social network application primarily aimed at cyclists and runners that tracks their performance using GPS data.
Strava makes money through subscription fees, sponsored events, as well as by selling data to municipalities and urban planners.
Founded in 2009, Strava has become one of the world’s leading sports communities. It has raised over $150 million in funding to date.
Strava serves over 100 million athletes in 195 countries
Features
Strava boasts a large amount of features. Offering over 70 different features between their app and website, Strava has something for everyone. Strava is a one stop shop for tracking your activities, training, connecting with other athletes, improving your health, and so much more!
With all this comes many different challenges for users and stakeholders. I have used Strava for about 7 years now and going through the features I know how to use around 25% of them.
Solution:
In order for users to better understand and use all these features, Strava could improve their onboarding.
By creating a hierarchal list of the features through user interviews and research, Strava can introduce their new users to the most popular features they offer without the new user feeling overwhelmed. They can then introduce other features during onboarding as users become more familiar with the app and website.
For more experienced users they could introduce lesser known or newer features to them during their onboarding process.
Style Guide
Typography
Strava uses Maison Neue as their main typeface. I believe this is a good choice because of its kerning and tracking benefits.
Color
Stravas main colors are orange, black and white with a gradient of colors from black to grey to white . The contrast in the colors makes them easy to read. With a contrast of 6.35:1 and a passing grade for large and regular text as well as graphics the orange and black color choice seem intentional and smartly chosen. I also think that the choice of the bright orange helps with marketing as it stands out and draws the users attention.
On their app, Strava has added a red and some purples to their color palette. The orange and red are too similar with a contrast of 1.72:1, thus failing all accessibility tests. I think that utilizing the purples instead or sticking to the black will improve accessibility especially for the visually impaired.
App Walk Through
Open the app to track an activity….
Call to action is clear and indicated using their trademark orange
Options on the navigation above the start button are unclear and confusing. By adding a signifier or title to each icon, it will better help the user understand the function of each button.
Analysis of activity….
I have four different charts I can look at initially. Looking at these charts can be overwhelming and intimidating. Strava does a good job of providing some quick insights pulled from the charts. This allows the user to glean some information without analyzing the graphs themselves.
The Heart Rate Zones graph using very similar colors and has some major accessibility issues. By providing some sort of identifier like an icon or label would make the graph easier to understand.
The Home Screen
Strava does a great job with their information architecture on the home screen. With over 70 features they have found a way to synthesize that information and get whats important on your home screen
By compartmentalizing many features I can get information at a glance or choose to expand and get a more in depth look. This address the needs of newer users to Strava while also catering to those who might be seeking more in depth analytics.
Once an activity is completed and uploaded….
Your activity is automatically uploaded as a 3D map, it can be difficult to read. By changing the angle of the map to a more vertical view or a 2D map it would make it easier to decipher like on the right.
Below I have some clear metrics that were measured during my activity. By labeling them it makes it easy to interpret and understand all the data I am looking at.
….and more analysis.
This page shows my Fitness Score. Strava mentions how they measure this but its still very unclear. By adding a “read more” option it would allow the user to better understand what theis score represents without adding clutter to the page.
Adding a line for an average person of similar age, or even a line of where a professional athlete might land would give the user some baseline information to help interpret the graph.
TakeAways
By making some of the simple adjustments to the UX and UI I mentioned before, as well as improving the onboarding when signing up and when releasing new features, Strava can improve user experience and allow users to better access the plethora of features they offer. This would further assist in retaining their current users as well as gaining more new users.