Griptonite
TLDR;
An end-to-end gym ecosystem using physical wireless route tags, smart hangboards and a slick app.
Who they are
01
Griptonite is a world’s-first that began as a passion project in 2012. It is a service provided in the form of an app to indoor climbing gyms that allows their visitors to track their progression, navigate around the facility and visualise their progression.
They already had the research, data and passion for climbing, but just needed help with envisioning what that would look like and that is what we, The Bang, do best. We quickly realised how much potential this product could have and the impact it could create so we’ve been there with them, together, from the very beginning.
What they faced
02
At the start, the Griptonite team were developing sensors and accelerometers and using this technology to record data from a bouldering competition, they wrote up their findings in a scientific journal. As a result, in 2018, they received funding and support from pioneers in the outdoor industry, Mammut to create the world’s-first wearable climbing tracker, Climbax.
With the learnings from Climbax and the technology they’d developed, the next logical sense was to create Griptonite. They had all the research, data and the vision for what Griptonite could bring to the climbing community globally but they just needed the right help to capture it.
So they came to us with the question of “How do we create something like Strava, but for climbing?”
Crafting the solution
03
With our design process, we always start with a brand sprint. The aim of a brand sprint is to align us and our client on the brand and business goals. Learn more about brand sprints.
The brand sprint allowed us to identify 2 key things: a) recognising the necessity of the sport to be accessible by drawing in users of all abilities, and b) retaining and engaging the same users through high quality technological methods. Griptonite had the research and data, and we had the UX knowledge to bring it to life. Our solution? To gamify the climbing experience.
To hit the ground running, we carried out a number of collaborative workshops to define a core brand and product for Griptonite. They also needed scalable design infrastructure in order for them to prosper into their long term goals. We manage this by building out a custom design library of reusable components for future proofing ideas as well as making for efficient time management.
Our next stage was to understand how to marry the bank of scientific data they had with our acute attention to detail to create a user experience that was sleek, impactful and trustworthy whilst also easy to digest and fun.
Once the frameworks had been established, a slight app rebrand was next line to match Griptonite’s young and friendly brand identity. We could see the impact Griptonite was having in the climbing community and the next stage in their progression was to incorporate social and independent features that users can interactive with on an individual basis as well as communally.
It helps that our core team working on Griptonite are also climbers, so it’s special to be creating something we also use ourselves!
Banging impact
04
After years of collaborative work and careful reiteration, Griptonite is the go-to for climbing training tool for thousands of users worldwide and in hundreds of climbing gyms across the world. Their success has been long in the making but this is very much just the beginning for Griptonite.
TESTIMONIAL
CIRCL
“The most collaborative group of people we've worked with. They're sh*t hot, and know how to make a product standout without losing focus.”
Cas Ladha, CEO & Founder
Griptonite
We've been the design arm for Griptonite for 5+ years helping them become an award winning product to a global audience
@2023
