Madison Miller

The Mindful Adventure Club

A cause-inspired brand and website created to raise awareness about over-tourism in our National Parks, and ultimately motivate millennials to not just "do it for the ‘gram" but to be more mindful adventurists in the future.

The Brief:
Design a brand around a social good cause and build a responsive homepage for that brand. The main goal of the site is to spread awareness and build a community for giving and taking action.

The Problem:
Our National Parks are suffering under the weight of popularity. With this rise in tourism, comes more noise, more trash, more 💩 (seriously), more accidents, and ultimately more work on our already understaffed and underfunded Parks. Though perhaps most importantly, this surge in visitation is starting to negatively affect the land and animals that make our National Parks so special to begin with. Many people in our target market don’t realize that this is an issue, or how they might actually be contributing to the problem.

The Mindful Adventure Club:
Enter The Mindful Adventure Club, a social good organization aiming to ease the burden of over-tourism on our National Parks by fostering a more mindful outdoor culture. They educate, host cleanups, offer outdoor mentorships, and donate over half of their profits directly to the NPS. Saving our Parks might sound hard, but one of the easiest and most powerful ways we can help is by being mindful and educated adventurists.

RESEARCH:

I talked with and surveyed 12 people (between the ages of 28 and 36), including some who identify as “very outdoorsy” as well as some who simply aspire to be outdoors more. I asked a variety of questions related specifically to my topic, as well as donating to causes in general.

The goal with this research was to find opportunities where we could educate about our issue and create more outdoor empathy, and learn more about our target user in relation to donating to social causes.

Some insights that rose to the top:

• Exactly 50% of respondents were not aware that our National Parks are facing a crisis of overcrowding.

• Respondents had generally heard of the phrase “Leave No Trace” but didn’t know the 7 main principles, nor the new social media guidelines.

• Over half of respondents said they are very likely to geotag a photo when sharing on social media.

• Respondents feel skeptical about donating to social causes because they don’t know where their money is going. A general lack of transparency. 

• Respondents selected money as one of the main reasons they don’t donate to social causes, specifically a lack of disposable income to donate to causes at this point in their life.

• Respondents feel that social cause websites typically have too much copy and can be super overwhelming to navigate.

CHALLENGES:

• The Visual Identity:
  The first challenge when starting this project was to design a brand that would speak to a younger generation of adventure seekers. With that in mind, I wanted to create a visual identity that was youthful and had personality but still felt trustworthy.

• Brand Differentiation:
  Through my research, I looked at a variety of competitors and noted several opportunities where my brand could stand out. Some competitors lacked the design and personality that might inspire an audience to care and others focused more on merch, which made their overall experience more of an online shop.

• Extensive Information:
  The scope of this project did not include building out the entire website, so once I established my brand, the next step was to figure out the most important pieces of information to include on the landing page. With a high lack of awareness around our issue, education became my main priority. I wanted to make sure that if a user only got as far as the homepage, they would leave having learned at least one new thing.

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Short Attention Spans:
  When putting together a framework to introduce our brand and explain the issue behind it, I decided to utilize a TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) summary in each section as a fun way to get straight to the point and speak directly to our target. This was in direct response to user’s feeling like social cause websites are super copy heavy and overwhelming.

• Facts:
  When I began my initial research on this topic, I found that the facts and data in the articles I consumed were the pieces that stood out to me and made the most impact. I began collecting these and this ultimately led to including a carousel section on the homepage that filters through some of the most important or surprising facts. Another quick way to educate users that is short and to the point. ✅

• Ways to Get Involved:
  Because many people in our target responded that money was a main factor in not donating to causes at this point in their life, I wanted to work on creating plenty of opportunities for people to get involved that didn’t cost a dime. I created a lengthy list of opportunities and surveyed 12 friends to see what items rose to the top, whether it be a learning opportunity or an action they might take. I took the results from my surveys and decided what top 6 items to display in this section, according to user interest.

• Transparency:
  Our survey showed that many people don’t donate to causes because they aren’t sure where the money is really going. With that in mind, I made sure our main donation section included details on exactly where our company allocates the different dollar amounts. I also included this messaging in the donation flow to keep that level of transparency and remind users what their dollar amount would be used for.

REFLECTION:

If given more time, I would ultimately like to build out the full website. There are many features I would want to think through and involve in future iterations of this design, such as:

• Gathering real data related to my cause and creating beautiful data visualizations that would educate users in a unique and interactive manner.

• I imagine a multitude of ways this brand could come to life in social media, creating short, edutainment-style videos that would be perfect for our target and keep our issue top of mind, but never preachy.

• Lastly, I would love to do more extensive user testing on the product as it stands now to make iterations and build on what I have.

Photography Sources: Unsplash / Rocky Mountain National Park / Ben Giesbrecht / Mary Murphy

Illustration Sources: The Noun Project