Bridging the G.A.P.

A Rebrand for The Great Allegheny Passage Trail

design research

ux/ui design

Client: The Great Allegheny Passage Conservancy

Course: CMU MA in Design, Studio I — Visual Communications

Role: UX Research, Copywriting, Brand Identity

Team: Lorin Anderberg, Michael Juan, Rui Ying

Tools: Figma

Duration: 5 weeks

Design Challenge:

Pittsburgh has a large population of transient student population and most residents are unaware of the GAP trail or experience barriers to experiencing this historic nature trail.

How might we rebrand the GAP trail to feel accessible and inviting to people with minimal experience in nature?

Full Project Documentation

Problem Statement:

How might we rebrand the GAP trail to feel accessible and inviting to people with minimal experience in nature?

Our team shares a deep love for nature and the outdoors, which led us to explore local organizations aligning with this passion—and to identify opportunities for improving visual communication. We selected the Great Allegheny Passage, a 150-mile non-motorized path that goes from the tip of Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD. The existing website and brand are good so we decided to narrow our focus to bike touring the trail as a beginner.

We spoke to the GAP association and learned that previous CMU grads designed the existing website and that they explored using an app in the past. We felt an enormous amount of potential from this project for real world results.

Research:

Conducting field visits and interviews to identify barriers and opportunities for engaging new users.

Field Research:

We drove out to Ohiopyle, the trail’s most popular trail town, to observe signage and speak to folks on the trail about bike touring. We also spoke to 30 friends, family members, and CMU students about the GAP trail and bike touring. Of those interviews, only one person said they were not interested in bike touring at all. This confirmed the potential that these solutions would be useful to our target users.

User Research:

We developed personas and mapped out their journeys while planning a bike tour to identify key pain points and opportunities for our deliverables to be positive interventions. We translated the most important pain points into key deliverables that would serve our user’s needs at every stage of their journey.

Reflection: Our research led us to the conclusion that our four main deliverables would be:

Apparel (awareness + nostalgia)
Signage + trail mural (awareness + wayfinding)
GAP Guide Pamphlet (awareness + education + initiation)
GAP Map App (trip planner, tool, education, community)

Market Research:

We looked at All Trails, Strava, Kamoot, Trail Forks, FarOur, and Gaia GPS. We assessed pros and cons of their user experience and decided to focus our efforts on playful design and customizable trip planning with strong imagery.

Brand Identity:

Designing a more inclusive and engaging brand experience for the Great Allegheny Passage.

We gathered mood board inspiration of the playful, colorful, and inviting tone that we wanted Bridging the GAP to have. I started crafting logo ideas that would incorporate movement and biking. We chose the National Park typeface and I manually manipulated the letters to get a rounded shape with additional features. We did some user research on colors that people associate with the outdoors. I also explored bridge and river shapes to bring home the metaphor.

Iterations and Feedback: We received productive feedback at our weekly check-ins and presentations that helped us alter each deliverable to its most optimal state. The main feedback was to get our style aligned and go for a line-art approach and to make sure everything felt cohesive. We decided to incorporate apparel in case our signage or mural idea didn’t pan out. We spent the majority of our time on the most time-consuming deliverables with the plan to adjust our expectations as the deadline approached.