We have found out the importance that planning and preparation before a long hike entails. This includes planning out the routes you want to take, the safety measures and tools that you might need while out in the wild as well as the food you might need to bring. Without a good plan, heading out to nature blindfolded might not be the best thing one could do. Getting lost in the forest or on a hike is a terrifying experience and this is something that happens hikers every year. Coupled with getting lost, hikers oftentimes get hungry on the way to their final destination. Hunger is a hiker’s worst nightmare because it slows down your abilities to get moving quickly. Hikers often times try to find food out in the wild but are not always successful. Maybe they see something that doesn’t seem edible but perfectly is, or see something that seems edible but will send them to the hospital the moment they take a bite. These are common experiences that hikers go through every year and we plan on fixing and improving it. We have also discovered that wildlife identification is rather easy for an expert. Most observers use just a field guide and hand lens to identify wildlife based on visuals. All hikers have a slightly different agenda when they go out into the wild. However, we believe a product like ours can cater to the general population of hikers as a tool that not only increases safety but also immerses the user in an enhanced learning experience as they journey towards their destination.

For our first contextual inquiry, we observed a Williams College student on a hike along Stone Hill. She is a pre-med student and a member of the cycling club. She is engaged in numerous outdoor activities during the week such as cycling, hiking and camping. We thought that she would be the perfect master to teach us what we might need to know to amplify our design and ultimately our product. We performed the hike on Sunday afternoon with temperatures of about 16 degrees celsius. It was cold getting up to the hike but we were able to get most of our questions answered. We were also able to get an insight into the way hikers think when they are hiking and the decisions that they make along the way.

Our second contextual inquiry participant is a member of the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies and a caretaker for the Hopkins Memorial Forest. He is heavily involved in managing the researchers and other caretakers that do work inside the forest. He has vast knowledge on wildlife identification so we decided he would be a good “master” to teach us identification techniques to implement in our project. Also, as a manager of a public forest/hiking area, he could provide great insight on typical hikers and their needs/desires. We performed this contextual inquiry on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, where we followed our “master” on a short hike/walk into Hopkins Memorial Forest.

For our third inquiry, we observed another Williams College student. This time, the student was a freshman who did not have much past experience hiking, but is still very interested in exploring the outdoors. He had chosen to go on Leading Minds this year and enjoyed it but only because he was a little afraid to go on a Woolf trip. We took this student on the same hike as our first inquiry participant, this time with rainy weather. As a beginner who lacked the basic knowledge to go out in the wilderness, he serves as a baseline for what we can expect the average user/hiker to need/desire from us. We focused on his sensory observations in the wild and his thoughts/feelings while hiking.

Before we performed each inquiry, we had a brief discussion with our participants about what we were about to do and how we were to go about it. For instance, we usually explained that we wanted them to perform the task (hiking and/or identifying wildlife) and that we were going to ask many questions about it as they performed the tasks. Our first participant voiced their opinions now and then but for answering questions we sometimes had to ask further questions for them to explain things better. Our second participant was extremely willing to give us information; however, conversations got off topic or he would go into too much detail at times and we tried to move the conversation on (but it was a little awkward to do this). Our last inquiry participant, was most quiet. We often had to prompt him with questions so that he could talk with us, but still after that we were able to get good information from him.

Each participant seems to have varying degrees of how willing they were to talk to us without us asking many questions. It seems the most experienced in the wilderness (forest caretaker) was the most vocal about giving us information while the least experienced (freshman) was the most quiet. This is interesting but it makes sense as the more experienced “masters” should be more comfortable in their environments.

1. Navigation (planning) before and during the hike is essential to the sucessess of it
2. Finding information about plants and animals in nature is desired but a higher learning curve discourages it
3. Different hiking skill levels lead to different goals/desires from the hike

All these themes, problems and practices are tasks that our product will be primarily designed towards improving. We have also gotten feedback on how we can make our current features better.

We identify these themes through similarities between different post-it notes. Analyzing commonalities between the different experiences has allowed us to group them together under one section. Seeing these details allowed us to judge the issue appropriately and come up with a common theme.

The primary users for the design are people who have a genuine interest in nature and in engaging with it, but don’t know how to start learning about it or they are not complete experts on it.

They mainly go on walks and hikes while not knowing much about the things around them.

The users desire a way to learn about hiking routes that are appropriate for their skill level and they also want a way to verify that they are going the right way when they feel like they might be lost. They also desire a way to identify the things around them to better enjoy their experience in the wild and to learn more about the area they are hiking in.

As is, the tasks require either the guidance of an expert or trial-and-error. In order to learn about wildlife, a user would require a field guide and would have to painstakingly detail the various qualities of, for example, a flower such as the color, the number of petals, the arrangement, and the symmetry. To learn more about hiking, the best trails to hike, and tips for hiking, the user would have to consult local groups or search the internet for trails near them. In other words, they would have to consult experts. With our design though, we hope for the user to be able to learn the tasks on their own with relatively little guidance.

These tasks are performed out in nature while our customers are interacting with the wild. While they are out on hikes, tasks such as navigation, receiving information about nature and the environment around them and safety tasks are performed. These tasks are also performed out in the forest with a variety of trees and plants

The data that the person receives will be data custom to their liking. This means that the data they choose from our device will incorporate information that they will need going on their hike.

The Hopkin’s Forest Manager uses hand lens, field manual and general knowledge to assist him in his daily tasks. For the hiker and potential environment enthusiast, they do not have many tools to work with. They mostly have a backpack to keep their water and food in as well as a map showing them where to go.

People going on hikes communicate with each other verbally for the most part. They speak to each other regarding the routes they are going to take, if they need a break for food/water and just to have casual conversations.

These tasks are performed every week for the hiker, the freshman did not perform these tasks often and the Hopkins Manager performed his task everyday.

The task of hiking itself doesn’t have a time constraint unless the users set out a period of time for it. Often however, this is planned before time and the time it takes to hike is accounted for by the length of the trail. As for small things such as wildlife identification, these often take a bit of time for users, especially those non-experienced. Our expert can identify “astors” in seconds whereas we also happened to see a full class of Williams students working to identify one species in a class period. For our product, we envision it able to identify plants faster than the speed of experts and having enough battery life to sustain for hikes.

As is, when things go wrong on a hike, meaning someone is lost, injured, they have to hope that they have service to call authorities or they have to wait for someone else to file a Missing Persons report. With our design, we hope to both limit the possibility of this occurring with the wayfinding aspect, but we also hope for the device to be able to call the authorities on its own and send your location for quick and efficient recovery. When things go wrong on the manual wildlife identification side of things, the person simply has to live with the incorrect knowledge that they have until they are later corrected by an expert or they realize on their own that they were wrong. In the case where our device misidentifies something, we hope that knowledgeable users will be able to file a report so that the error can be fixed.