Strava Innovation Days

We’ve recently begun a new tradition at Strava – Strava Innovation Days. At Strava we aim to push new code and features to the site every two weeks; after the push, typically on a Friday, we spend the day “innovating”.

We kick things off the day before by having everyone (not just dev) submit ideas. You can suggest anything: major new concept/feature, developer pet-peeve, or a research project (e.g. “Conditional probability of subscribing”). Next we meet to share the potential projects, and then we vote on them. Everyone gets $5 to spend across the projects (you can put at most $1 on any idea that it is your own). The projects with most dollars behind them are the ones that we’ll work on for Friday. The aim here is to work on projects in which the team is generally interested, not just random pet projects. Also, the goal of an Innovation project is not to implement a feature, it’s to prototype enough of a feature or concept so that the team can share your vision.

Finally, we split into teams. Every project must have at least 2 people working on it. This is an excellent way to pair-up people who don’t normally get a chance to work together. Our designers are typically over-booked so they tend to consult across a few projects. On Friday we come to work and spend all day, hopefully uninterrupted, working on our Innovation projects. On Monday, before planning the next push, each project team gives a brief demo. At this point we can make a decision on whether to pursue the idea in a future push (we call them “sprints”), or whether to  put it on the back-burner.

We have two Innovation Days under our belt, and it has been very rewarding. There’s just so much cool stuff to work on: take all the great ideas we get from our users, combine that with the fact the just about everyone at Strava is an avid user of Strava, and add the mountains of data we’ve been collecting, and you have a gushing fountain of innovation. Innovation Days have also been an important discovery tool: as an engineer, one of the most valuable aspects of spending a day prototyping is that you gain a much better sense of the scope of a project when (and if) we actually decide to build it.

Here are some past examples of Innovation Day projects:

• Heat map of a user’s activity.
• Profile gradient coloration of climbs.
• Where are they now? Real-time tracking of athletes via mobile.
• Ride comment and description “tag clouds“.
• Favorite segment notifications (e.g. new KOM).
• …and many more.

Of course, don’t expect to see these in the product tomorrow, but I’m sure some of these ideas will start popping-up in the coming months.

-Mark

Weekend Ride Guide (SF Edition) – Purisima Creek

Hellooo Summer!

With the temps now on the rise, and dry trail conditions, I thought it would be useful to profile a cool, forested, dirt climb through the Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. Located just South of Half Moon Bay off of Higgins Creek Road, this County park is both legal and illegal for cyclists. There are a few main fire road trails, which are legal to all. But, begrudgingly, any single-track in Purisima is a no-go (and tickets are far too expensive, trust me). That said, if you find yourself riding the coastline on a road or a cross-bike, and want an exciting new route up and over the costal range, I highly recommend this park.

The Purisima Creek trail is cool, covered, and gorgeous.

The particular trail I’m talking about is the main event – the Purisima Creek Trail. It starts at the bottom (Western) entrance to the park, follows along Purisima Creek, and continues onward and upward all the way to Skyline Road. Once through the gate, you have roughy 2 miles at a modest 4-5% to enjoy the creek, the strikingly green forest, the bridge-crossing, and all the little critters. But after that, the true challenge begins as Purisima Creek Trail turns into a dirt stairmaster. 10%-15% sections are no joke to begin with (and Purisima has several on the way up), but the dirt trail means no flailing out of the saddle. Strong, smooth pedal strokes only. It’s a bear of a climb; but we’re cyclists! Suffering comes with the territory. Once you reach the pavement again, its less than a half-mile south to Kings Mountain Road for a fast, fun decent into Woodside. Enjoy!

Tour de France Maps – Stage by Stage

We’re approaching the final countdown to July, now just over a week away. There seem to be many questions leading up to the 2011 tour: Who is the best American GC contender? Levi, Horner, TJ? What is going on with the Schleck brothers? They didn’t look anywhere close to top form at the Tour de Swiss. Where is Garmin-Cervelo? Thor, Heinrich, and Tyler have been pretty quiet all year. Can Cadel and BMC make a move? He was going strong in the 2010 Tour before that broken elbow. Will Cavendish see some legitimate challengers in Team Sky and Lampre? And then there’s perhaps the biggest question – Alberto Contador. Will he blow everyone out of the water? Should he even be permitted to ride with an ongoing investigation in progress? Whatever the answers turn out to be, you can be certain I won’t wait for second-hand news. It’s Tour de France time!

To supplement the all-consuming Tour de France experience, we have created some awesome, Strava-powered route maps for all 21 stages. Similar to our Tour of California route widgets, they show the route, the elevations, and all the major segments which promise to make the big selections.

Stage 14 looks like it will play a huge role in the GC results – 18,000ft of climbing!

We built these maps hoping to improve on the lack-luster, minimal maps available. Now you can see exactly how much the pros climb, how big the climbs are, and how steeply they rise. And if you do like our work, please help us to spread the word! Tweets, Facebook comments, blogs posts and links, etc. It’s very helpful for our business, and we’ll work that much harder knowing Strava is truly providing a valuable service!

Strava Android Application

Thanks to all of your support, a fantastic Android developer, and the help of many Strava members who helped us beta test, we have released our first Strava Android app!

The Android app will function much in the same way as our iPhone application, harnessing the phone’s GPS functionality to track rides which are then uploaded directly to Strava.com.

And as you all know, the more people who get on Strava and start adding rides, climbs, and segments, the more fun and motivating it becomes.  So don’t be shy about spreading the word to your friends with Android phones.  Thanks again, and welcome to all of the new Strava members who have joined through the Android app in the past few days.

For more info: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.strava