I designed and developed Camper to help modernize and digitize the registration process for over 10,000 Boy Scouts in Colorado and Wyoming. Camper was designed as approachable, accessible and intuitive to minimize mistakes, customer support calls, and to speed up check-in and reporting.
Camper
Design System
Product Design, Service Design, UX Research, DevelopmentNew Era of Service Design for the Boy Scouts
Camp registration was in Colorado was digitized in the late 1990s but was reliant on custom programming and a decentralized collection of websites and databases. Interviews with over 50 users outlined a need for more control and pains with manually payments and a need call to manage their registration for events.
Camper revisited with a single point of contact for registration. The UX was designed from the ground up with a personal tone and focused on accessibility. Long for descriptions and help content is included in-line and buttons, inputs, and details are large, easy to access and read.
Goals:
Accessible from the Beginning
Leaders from Boy Scout units had become used to endless forms, fragmented processes, and phone calls and snail mail in the summer camp registration process. The same leaders were varied in tech literacy and providing information online was still new to some.
Camper addresses this in a design system that worked hard to make registration easy. I took a clear approach to service design and established guiding principles for design →
Camper UX Guidelines
- Conversational and approachable language with clear CTA’s and errors.
- Accessible UI components that are easy to see and use.
- Help resources in context and useful tooltips.
- Accessible data and prefilled fields when possible.
- Consistent and transparent user journeys.
Interactive Components and a Feedback Loop
Each component was customized and extended to afford users as much flexibility as possible while keeping the UI clean and uncluttered. The data tables are a great example of this - a simple table sortable by any column with live filtering via search box. Content supports images, rich text, pills and links and settings are saved for each instance in cookies. This was made standard for every table in the app.
Improvement Through Feedback
Camper was originally designed for Longs Peak Council in Colorado but interest in the platform helped us bring more councils and camps onboard.
Through feedback collected in the app, usage data, and weekly interviews with admin users, staff at the camps, and end users we started to look at Camper version 2.
I started by creating a leader advisory committee that provided feedback through monthly structured meetings. Feedback was incorporated and a new user registration interface based on a simple accordion tested well in A/B tests and with users. There was a reduction in support calls and mistakes in event rosters, class registration, and payment recording validated improvements.
Modern Interface for an Evolving Platform
As Camper grew it’s user base, the platform began to need a more flexible user interface to accommodate non-summer camp type events. With many users onboarded from previous camp registrations, they started to request that weekend campouts become available on the platform.
User journeys were developed to understand the types of events and registration requirements. Camper’s version 2 expanded to accomodate individual registration for weekend events as well as larger coordinated events such as Merit Badge University where reporting and certificate generation were essential with over 500 participants registering at once. Camper also introduced the ability to link multiple units to each user and more flexible user and unit management.