The Dyrt

Continuously iterate and improve the #1 app and website in the US for camping, with over 1 million campsites, reviews, and tips — submitted by campers, for campers including offline map backups, offline search, exclusive discounts, and trip planning tools on iOS, Android, and Web.

I was initially hired at the dyrt to design the admin tools that allowed campground managers and owners to manage their campgrounds, campsites, bookings, customer communications, and more. It was a large-scale initiative to improve the experience for them and the customers/campers. Although there were some existing tools, they needed a total overhaul aligned with the improvements in the consumer-facing experience. The system needed to be robust and well-organized yet simple and clean. I was the sole designer on the project but had great support from the small but mighty design team.

Manager Portal

As often is in startup companies, I didn’t have any requirements to go off of and was working on a highly aggressive timeline. I did an initial audit and performed a  competitor audit of similar tools and systems in the marketplace. I also wanted to work through the system’s architecture to understand what pages and modules would be needed. The sitemap format, which also illustrated modules shared across pages/sections, gave a roadmap for what needed to be created and developed.

Straight to screens

Using a very lean UX model, I jumped directly into screen design. The company overall was not invested in design thinking. With an inexperienced leadership team, we felt like avoiding heavy documentation and artifact creation would only lead to confusion and delays. The screens here show the breadth of functionality while keeping the design light and open. Led by function and followed by form, and indeed staying on-brand. The Manager Portal allows owners and managers to manage all aspects of running multiple properties and sites. Including individual bookings, features, amenities management, user-submitted media, review moderation, and more.

Design Library

While working on the Manager Portal, I pulled assets from internal design sources and quickly started crafting an atomic design library for the team. We called it S’mores, and it provided the essential elements and components needed to work on day-to-day projects and initiatives.

Campground Details

I worked alongside a few of our designers to integrate some of the Manager Portal features and designs into the consumer-facing campground pages and took a swipe at improving the overall experience for our customers.

Review Wizard

I worked closely with another designer on the team to improve the customer reviews tool.

Search

As the Manager Portal work was being released, I started to work on other aspects of the app. We saw an opportunity to improve the legacy search design and bring a modern feel and improved UX by updating the overall footprint, map layers, markers, and a faster loading front end.

App onboarding

Another aspect we knew we needed to work on was app onboarding and working on overall confusion over what the free version vs. the Pro version of the apps did. I explored several takes on introducing Pro features into the initial sign-up paths.

Apple App of the day!

In March 2021, The Dyrt achieved Apple’s App of the day.