Booking for 140 mountain huts across Norway, built to work on a single bar of signal at the trailhead.
[02]
Vale’s huts were booked through a patchwork of email, a phone line and a paper book in each hut. Hikers found out a hut was full only when they arrived after a seven-hour walk.
Most bookings happen on the trail, where there is one bar of signal at best.
[03]
We designed offline-first: the app keeps the hut list, maps and your bookings on the phone, and queues a booking until it finds signal, then confirms by text.
Every screen had a weight budget. The first load is 180 kb, and the map uses simplified vector tiles that still show every hut and river crossing.
[05]
All 140 huts are now bookable offline. Mid-week stays tripled because hikers can finally see which nights are quiet.
The wardens use the same app to mark beds as taken, so the paper books have been retired.
[06]
Designing for the worst connection made the product better for everyone. People on fast Wi-Fi noticed the speed first.
[07]
MORE WORK
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