It is a demonstrable fact of app development that most great ideas
arrive in late-night diners.
At least, that's how it went for Curtis Herbert — creator and
mastermind behind the ski-tracking app Slopes . One evening during a
winter trip to the Poconos, Herbert and some friends hit up a Denny's
for a late-night feast, where talk quickly turned to the day's
activities: Who was the fastest on the mountain? Who had the longest
run? How far did the group ski in total?
In response to one of the questions, Herbert pulled out the skiing app
he'd been using to track stats — and found the UX equivalent of a yard
sale. The stats were there, but buried amidst graphs and maps; to find
enough data to compare (and brag about, probably), Herbert had to
cross-reference three screens and a table view.
"It was really well-engineered, but the UX left a lot to be desired,"
says Herbert from his elevation-appropriate home in Boulder, Colorado.
"They clearly had skiers on the team, but it felt like something got
lost in translation… I thought, 'You know, I can do better than
this.'"
Curtis Herbert, taking Slopes out on the slopes.
Herbert made good on his thought — and ten years of ski runs and
late-night meals later, Slopes won an Apple Design Award for its
remarkably accurate and comprehensive digital diary of your skiing
day. The tracking app is a veritable mountain of data for skiers and
snowboarders. It includes all the stats Herbert was seeking out over
dinner: speeds, miles, and vertical drops, as well as the locations of
your friends and family members on the mountain during runs. It's all
done automatically using GPS on iPhone and Apple Watch, and it's
presented in a crisp, concise design that speaks to the sport.
"Runners have Runkeeper , Nike Training Club , and Strava for keeping
stats, but when I started, there just wasn't much for skiers," says
Herbert. "There was even less that felt part of the skiing community.
I needed an app written by a skiier or snowboarder. And I wanted it to
feel as human as possible."
That human factor is part of what helps elevate Slopes beyond simple
stat tracking. Rather, the app affords skiers of all levels — from
beginners on their inaugural bunny slopes to the human rockets on
double black diamonds — a way to quantitatively gauge themselves via
rich performance metrics. Or, to put it simply: It tells you how much
better you're getting.
To use Slopes , just press record — the app takes care of the rest.
"It's really easy to overwhelm with stats," says Herbert, who's known
as "The Slopes Guy" on the mountain. (Meeting him IRL is an in-app
achievement that scores you a special pin.) "You really have to pick
what matters to tell the story. I designed Slopes to be as human as
possible because I view it as a journal for your memories. Sure,
you're gonna faceplant a few times. But when you get to your first
intermediate run, and then to your first advanced run, you become the
hero of your own story."
'You can tune out the world' The story of Slopes involves several
regions that aren't mountainous and several seasons that aren't
winter. Herbert hails from the suburbs of Philadelphia, an area not
exactly known for its soaring mountain ranges. Strictly speaking, he
was a programmer before he was a skier. ("My seventh-grade math
teacher gave me a programmable TI calculator because she was annoyed
me with interrupting class all the time," he laughs). But he's been on
the mountains since he was a Boy Scout, first on skis and then on a
snowboard. "You can reach a real Zen state out there," he says.
"You're paying attention to your body. You're paying attention to the
environment. You can be reflective and tune out the world."
On flat land, Herbert found his way into web development and then app
design, taking quickly to Objective-C and Swift. He knocked around
corporate and consulting work and kicked around a few of his own
ideas, but nothing really clicked. "I always had the itch to write my
own app, but I figured it would never be worth it," he says. "Plus,
I'm pretty critical of my own ideas."
Slopes shows you where you've been on the mountain — and how fast you got there.
Even after the Poconos diner, Herbert sat on Slopes for months, drawn
to the idea but unsure how to make it profitable. He finally took the
plunge in April 2013, but quickly encountered a significant scheduling
issue: There's not usually a lot of snow on the mountain in April,
which makes it difficult to test skiing apps. Happily, a workaround
presented itself. "My beta testers were mountain bikers," Herbert
says. "Resorts open up to them in the summers, so I just asked a
couple of friends, "Hey, can you keep a phone in your pocket while you
ride?" Herbert's ad-hoc beta testing team hauled their bikes up on the
lifts, then rode them down the pathways of the once-and-future ski
runs. "One of the first things I did was write a harness where I could
replay data on my computer," he says. "Then it was: How do I break it
up? How do I present it?"
The app remained a side hustle until 2015, when Herbert switched to a
subscription model and started noticing downloads picking up. Spurred
by the new traction, Herbert made Slopes his full-time job — and dug
back into the design. "I've put the app through the wringer," he says.
"I need to make sure it's easy to use in the real world, not just at
my desk."
'I get to cheat' Creating designs for your hobby can be a huge time-saver.
"I get to a cheat a little because I'm the snowboarder, designer,
developer, and product manager," Herbert says. "Snowboarders or skiers
might not necessarily know what's possible from a technical
perspective, and engineers might just try to go the default way."
It's helped that Herbert's evolution as a snowboarder has mirrored the
app's growth. "I'm fortunate in that I only started snowboarding 10
years ago," he says. "It's a recent enough memory that I can put
myself in the shoes of beginners. I mean, you're going downhill at 30
or 40 miles per hour — and that's intimidating! And I can remember,
'OK, this is where people just getting into the sport might struggle,'
or 'Here's a thing that made me feel really good.'"
Slopes shows where your friends are on the mountain.
Still, a skiing app presents a novel set of challenges, both technical
(How do you ensure the GPS is accurately reporting your true location
and speed?) and practical (How do you tap a screen while wearing puffy
gloves in sub-zero temperatures on a flying bench?).
"The design of Slopes is very much informed by the situation," he
says. "For a lot of apps, you're at your desk, or in a car, or on the
train… on a lift, you're 100 feet up. You don't necessarily want to
pull your phone out and fumble with it. So for me, there has to be a
lot of thought about: What are the main interactions that really need
to happen, and what device is the best to do that with?"
The iPhone app's record button, for instance, is mirrored on the Apple
Watch app, which is more accessible on a lift or in a line. "A lot of
interaction design is thinking holistically about the ski experience,"
he says. "To me, having a great experience means: Does the thing on
screen react the way I'd expect it to? Can I physically interact with
this digital concept? Does it feel real?… Not in a skeumorphic way,
but in a 'can-I-manipulate-it?' way."
On a lift, you're 100 feet up. You don't necessarily want to pull your
phone out and fumble with it.
Curtis Herbert Beyond Slopes 's people-friendly interface and powerful
stat-tracking, Herbert is particularly proud of the app's 3D mapping
support for resorts and runs. "Skiers and snowbarders think in 3D," he
says. "Going into this, one of my big ideas was the ability to look
back at my runs and see the 3D profile. I don't want to have to
assemble the puzzle. I want to see, 'Oh, here's where I went really
fast,' or, 'Here was that really steep turn.'"
The skiing apps he'd used prior to creating Slopes only offered
top-down or side-profile views, which was workable — but ultimately
lacking. In part, there simply weren't great data sets for resorts,
runs, and lifts.
So Herbert turned to GPS data to help. He'd already planned to offer
the full Slopes experience even if someone only had GPS enabled, as
cellular connectivity could be dicey in the backcountry. "[So] we had
to figure out how to pull that data and translate in 3D," he says.
With no 3D experience to speak of, Herbert taught himself SceneKit to
create the feature.
Herbert's app has reached both hardcore skiers and those new to the
sport. "It's fun to hear that it's bringing families together," he
says.
This summer — nearly a decade later — Herbert and the growing Slopes
team are expanding their mapping offerings to help you better locate
your friends and family during a ski trip; with an Apple Maps-esque
interface, the app will show you the routes — easy and hard ones —
between you and your friends.
Here again, the human element comes into play. "There can be a lot of
intimidation about going somewhere for the first time," he says. "You
might look at a map and say, 'Am I gonna be able to get back here? Am
I gonna end up going off a cliff on a double-diamond?' I think this'll
take the edge off for a lot of people."
In recent years, Herbert and the team have focused more on those
collaborative features to bring people together. "I hear from a lot of
families who've used it to get their sons or daughters into skiing.
I'll hear about people trying to beat their mom at a top speed — and I
don't encourage racing on the mountains! — but it's fun to hear that
it's bringing families together."
(It can also bring you closer to the developer; Herbert makes his
location public when skiing; you can find him to say hi and get that
pin. "It's basically Where's Waldo," he says with a grin. "It makes
for good stories.")
But it turns out that goes for his own family too. "My niece recently
learned to ski at Killington, so I said, 'Here, put this phone in your
pocket.' And she lit up at the end of the day, like 'Look how far I
went!' It's hard to get that perspective until you see it with numbers
on a map, especially if you did much more than you thought. Hearing
that it brings people together at the end of the day, sitting around
the fire comparing stats, making a sport that I love more enjoyable to
people — that's the best stuff."
Learn more about Slopes
Download Slopes from the App Store
Behind the Design is a weekly series that explores design practices
and philosophies from each of the 12 winners of the 2022 Apple Design
Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers
and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how
they brought their remarkable creations to life.
Explore more of the 2022 Behind the Design series
