People are born adventurers: trailblazing through the woods, trekking across the desert, ever-climbing to higher places. Without navigation or certainty of their surroundings however, people cannot accomplish these feats. In fact, the life of a hiker is one that is filled with many inconveniences that negatively impact people’s experiences in the wild. Of these problems, one of the most ubiquitous is the lack of a reliable way to navigate on the trails. This problem affects hikers of all experience levels and often prevents outdoor enthusiasts from exploring and going out on new trails for fear of getting lost on an unfamiliar path. Another issue is the inability to have questions about local wildlife answered when out in the wild alone. This inhibits the level of interaction that people have with their environment while out on the trails. Thus, we set out to design a better hiking experience for all potential nature lovers.

Introducing a hiker’s best friend, the hikAR mobile app. Using our technology, navigating along the trail and identifying and learning about the wildlife that surrounds you has never been easier!

hikAR has always been centered around the user. Before designing hikAR, our team performed rigorous user experience research methods such as contextual inquiries and task reviews to discover the most important problems with hiking. We determined what tasks we could support and decided that a mobile phone app would be the best medium. Then, usability testing, heuristic evaluation and cognative walkthrough were utilized to hikAR into what it is right now: an application that creates a better and more enjoyable hiking and learning experience.

Final Prototype from Gaurnett Flowers on Vimeo.