Ridgeline
Offline trail maps that tell you how far is left in time, not in kilometres.
- Client
- Ridgeline Outdoors
- Role
- Product designer
- Year
- 2025
- Team
- 3 designers, 9 engineers
300k
Trails downloaded for offline use
4.8
App Store rating
−45%
Battery used per hour of tracking
Timeline
6 months, start to launch
- Trail research1.5 mo
- Design3 mo
- Build3.5 mo
- Launch0.5 mo
The problem
Hikers told us distance was the wrong number. Two kilometres uphill and two kilometres on the flat are not the same afternoon.
Approach
The map estimates time from your own pace on similar gradients, and the bottom card shows time to the summit and time back before sunset. Everything works in airplane mode.
- Time to the summit, from your own pace on similar gradients. Distance came second in every test.
- Drag along the elevation profile to see where you will be at any point.
Details
Contour lines thin out as you zoom so the trail stays the strongest line on screen. The screen dims to a night palette after sunset without a setting.
- The trail stays the brightest line on the dimmed map.
- After sunset the card stops counting to the summit and tells you when to turn back.
Outcome
Ridgeline 3 shipped in May 2025 and was featured by Apple in the Outdoors collection that summer.
“Our hikers stopped asking how far it was and started asking how long. That one change is the reason people trust the app on the mountain.”
Credits
- Product design
- Ines Calder, Mika Saarinen, Lea Roth
- Cartography
- Ridgeline maps team
- Engineering
- Ridgeline app team
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