The App Keeping Kiwis Safe
Outdoors
Mountain Safety Council
May 2021
Users at launch
200,000+
50% above target, with 4m 45s average engagement.
Design recognition
Finalist
Best Design Awards 2022, Value of Design category.
Creating an app for the Mountain Safety Council (MSC) that enables people to enjoy the outdoors and promotes safety messaging. Plan My Walk helps people plan and prepare for their NZ outdoor adventure.
MSC had an existing safety tool on their website, but it was outdated and cumbersome. Through user research, focus groups, and a heuristic evaluation, we identified exactly where it was failing people, then rebuilt it as a purpose-built app. As solo Designer at Somar Digital, I facilitated a 5-day Design Sprint with MSC’s key stakeholders and led the full UX/UI design, working closely with MSC’s in-house designer to meet WCAG government accessibility standards throughout.
“
I’m a relatively risk-averse tramper, I always let someone know where I’m going, and often overpack ‘just in case.’ Plan My Walk simplified all of that. On the app, I could write down all my plans and the app emailed this to my chosen emergency contact person. My husband had all the info he needed in case I didn’t contact him at our designated time. Such a good feature!
Alice · Alice Adventuring
Every year: 6,000 incidents, 540 rescues, and rising. Plan My Walk was built to change that.
Pick a track that suits everyone you’re walking with.
My Role
As Senior UX/UI Designer at Somar Digital, I was the sole designer from Somar Digital on this project, owning research through to final design. Facilitated the Design Sprint with MSC’s key stakeholders and worked closely with MSC’s in-house designer throughout, particularly on accessibility compliance.
The Situation I Walked Into
MSC had an existing safety tool on their website, but it felt outdated and misaligned with how people actually plan a trip outdoors. The messaging mattered, staying safe in the New Zealand backcountry is serious, but the tool wasn’t doing its job.
Plan My Trip: fill out a form, download a PDF. Not how people actually plan an adventure.
Research said it plainly: the draw isn’t safety, it’s helping a group find the right trip. Safety follows, and it’s the youngest, keenest, least-prepared trampers who need that most.
A 5-day Design Sprint with MSC’s stakeholders, moving from research to a tested prototype in a week.
The Calls I Made
1
Combined multiple research methods before sprinting
Rather than relying on one source, I gathered feedback from existing users, ran focus group discussions with the target audience, and conducted a heuristic evaluation of the existing tool. This gave the sprint a solid evidence base to work from.
2
Ran a 5-day Design Sprint with MSC’s key stakeholders
Using Google’s five-phase Design Sprint methodology, map the research, sketch, decide and storyboard, prototype, and test, we moved from research findings to a tested prototype in one week, reducing the risk of building the wrong thing.
3
Structured the app around 5 clear destinations
Track, Alerts, Weather, Gear, and Plan, accessed through bottom navigation. A standard pattern for apps, and the clearest way to organise a genuinely complex safety tool into something simple to use before heading outdoors.
4
Designed the decisions, MSC’s in-house designer signed off
I made the design calls across the MSC brand, from structure through to detail, with MSC’s in-house designer reviewing and signing off throughout. That balance meant the work moved at pace while staying accountable to how MSC’s brand needed to show up.
The Solution
Plan My Walk gives users a comprehensive database of walking and tramping tracks across New Zealand, so they can plan their adventure with confidence, not guesswork. It’s organised around five clear destinations, accessed through bottom navigation: Track, Alerts, Weather, Gear, and Plan.
Track: Search New Zealand’s tramping database by location, difficulty, duration, and distance to find the right walk. Each track carries a difficulty rating from the community itself, whether it felt as expected, harder, or easier than described, so people know what they’re walking into before they commit.
Alerts: Track-specific alerts flag closures, hazards, and avalanche warnings, the kind of information that changes a plan, surfaced before people set out, not after.
Weather: Track-specific forecasts and warnings, provided in partnership with MetService, New Zealand’s official public weather forecaster, so people can check conditions for the exact place they’re headed, not just the general region.
Gear: An interactive gear list tailored to each trip, so packing matches the actual conditions and duration.
Plan: A trip planner that ties it together: add the people joining, set an emergency contact, upload trip notes. If someone hasn’t returned by their planned date, their emergency contact is prompted to call Search & Rescue, turning a simple trip plan into a real safety mechanism, not just a checklist.
Once the plan is complete, share it and go, peace of mind that if something goes wrong, help is already on the way. Free to use, and made by trampers, for trampers.
Our research found young men are the least prepared, most at risk.
Search for your next trip, right from your phone.
Real reviews from people who’ve walked it, so you know if it’s for you.
One track view: current alerts and the weather for your trip window.
Check the mountain forecast for the exact days you’ll be on the track.
Tick each item off as it goes in your pack.
Your emergency contact holds your plan, so Search & Rescue knows where to look.
The Shift
Before, MSC’s safety messaging lived in a cumbersome web tool people weren’t using. After, it’s a dedicated app that exceeded its own launch target by 50%, and has since grown into New Zealand’s go-to tramping planning tool, with over 1 million users.
Every shoulder season, MSC promotes Plan My Walk with local tracks, still keeping Kiwis safe outdoors.
The Outcome
200,000+
users at launch
50% above target, with an average engagement time of 4 minutes 45 seconds.
Finalist
Best Design Awards 2022
Value of Design category.
Since then, the numbers have kept climbing, well beyond my own time on the project:
1 million+ users, New Zealand’s go-to tramping planning tool
83,000+ downloads on Google Play alone
5-star App Store rating
“
Great place to start when planning a tramp or walk. It’s easy to create a trip plan and then share it with a safety contact so you don’t need to email them all the info. Gear list is another useful function, as is the custom track feature.
Plan My Walk user · App Store review
“
I love this app! It has made finding new tracks, gear lists and planning a trip safely so easy. Highly recommend to anyone considering a hike short or long in NZ.
Plan My Walk user · App Store review
“
I’m a relatively risk-averse tramper, I always let someone know where I’m going, and often overpack ‘just in case.’ On Plan My Walk, I write down all my plans and the app emailed this to my chosen emergency contact person. My husband had all the info he needed in case I didn’t contact him at our designated time.
Alice Adventuring · Content Creator
What I Learned
1
A tight sprint forces real decisions, not endless options
Having MSC’s SMEs and Somar’s delivery team aligned in one room for 5 days meant every decision had the full picture behind it. No waiting on someone else’s calendar, no decisions made on partial information.
2
The best safety feature is invisible until you need it
The emergency contact alert isn’t flashy, most users will never trigger it, but it’s the single feature that turns a planning app into a real safety net. Some of the most important design decisions aren’t the ones people notice.
3
Designing a product for people like myself made the stakes real, not abstract
As a tramper, a missed detail wasn’t a hypothetical UX flaw, it was a genuine risk to someone heading into the backcountry. That changed how carefully I treated every decision.