Need Finding 2

What aspects of our need and/or users changed from the first iteration?

Design Iteration 1

Looked at all climbing types
Identified 3 key need areas - gym cleanliness, route setting, and leaving gear

Design Iteration 2

Focused on sport climbing
Identified only leaving gear as key need area

Due to our shift in focus from a wider need group to a more specific need group, our design process is more functional/product geared than before, where we focused on testing different ideas and theories for different products. Now, we are more focused on having a single final product that meets all needs identified, rather than making several different products for each need.

With all of our changes in mind, our Need Statement has stayed the same. Instead what has changed is our approach to validating this Need Statement -

"Outdoor climbers need a reliable gear retrieval system for recovering equipment left behind when unable to use permanent anchors."

Uncertainties

We are still uncertain on what a good price point for our design would be - what users would be willing to pay for a design that ends the culture of leaving gear behind on climbs.

Competing devices sold at around $50 have come and gone from the market, leaving us to wonder what went wrong to make those devices unsuccessful in the market.

Without knowing what caused previous inventions to fail, we risk making similar mistakes in our design process, making our product fail.

In order to not repeat previous mistakes, and to make a product that users will be willing to buy and use, we plan to research previous designs and look at user feedback on sources such as Reddit in order to see what people were actually saying about the devices. This will hopefully lead to us being able to pinpoint what went wrong in previous designs, and then allow us to make something that solves those identified shortcomings.

Summary of Interviews:

This time around we specifically tried to interview climbers with a strong background in sport climbing. The major problems faced by them are as follows.

Gear retrieval if they could not complete a particular climb
Aversion to doing certain climbs if it means leaving gear
Communication on the rocks between belayer and belayed

Also found some useful insights like

One user uses a clip stick to complete climbs he cannot finish, or chooses climbs next to routes he knows he can get up so that he can climb sideways to clean gear
Users believe there can be a market for niche climbing devices

To see more specific details about each interview click the links below:

John