Milestone 3
Introduction
In Milestone 2, we conducted interviews, a photo diary study, and a cultural probes and from those results, decided to define our audience as casual hikers who are focused on exploration and touring during short (1-3 hour) hiking excursions. Based on our findings in Milestone 2, we ideated and created three different design concepts. While our design concepts were all unique, we realized they were not fully supported by our user research and also discovered some potential problems that may arise from those designs. Therefore, it was important to refine our concepts more and conduct further research on how users may potentially react with our proposed design concepts and gather their thoughts.
We also re-examined all our results and created new research questions in order to examine different tensions that appeared from our user research:
From these tensions, we created the following research questions to help guide our user enactments for this milestone:
We also re-examined all our results and created new research questions in order to examine different tensions that appeared from our user research:
- Physical activity vs. injury
- Comfort/safety vs. exploration
- Being in control vs. unexpected
- In situ planning vs. before planning
- Capture vs. enjoy moments
From these tensions, we created the following research questions to help guide our user enactments for this milestone:
- What components come together to make a hiking experience valuable?
- What types of hiking or nature artifacts do people think are meaningful to them?
- What are factors that influence people to take a certain hiking path? (eg. scenery, difficulty, time, other people)?
- Does having too much information hinder the overall hiking experience?
- What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking?
- How do people want to record and share their hiking experiences with others?
- How do people react when they are constantly having their hiking experiences recorded?
- How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires?
Study Design
We designed five user enactments in order to explore the tensions and research questions mentioned above. We first brainstormed different ideas and design concepts based on the tensions and research questions. We then turned our ideas into scenarios and scenes. We narrowed down our initial User Enactment ideas by determining how feasible in terms of available resources, how realistic we could make the enactment (participants should be able to easily picture how they could enact the scenario), and how much potential insights the enactment could reveal (UEs should be answering our research questions and shedding light on potential design opportunities).
We recruited our participants through our personal networks. All participants are in their twenties and Master’s students at the University of Michigan. All of the participants fell under our target audience of past casual hikers.
We recruited our participants through our personal networks. All participants are in their twenties and Master’s students at the University of Michigan. All of the participants fell under our target audience of past casual hikers.
Participant |
Age |
Gender |
Occupation |
P1 |
24 |
Female |
Master's student |
P2 |
26 |
Female |
Master's student |
P3 |
23 |
Male |
Master's student |
P4 |
24 |
Female |
Master's student |
P5 |
23 |
Female |
Master's student |
We first conducted a pilot study of our enactments outdoors to further make sure our scenarios made sense and could be carried out. We then conducted all our user enactments at Nichols Arboretum to immerse our participants in an outdoors, “hiking” environment. For some of our enactments, we used props, such as cameras, glasses, smartphones, and headphones. Before we started our user enactments, we briefed them on what our project is about, what user enactments are, and how we would be conducting them. Before each user enactment, we would also briefly explain what the scenario was and what we wanted our participants to do. After each enactment, we debrief with our participants by asking follow up questions. During each enactment, we took photos and videos and wrote down observations and the participants’ responses. We ran through each enactment multiple times by switching up the roles and groups.
Summary of User Enactments
*See Appendix for full script
User Enactment 1
Research Question: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires?
Participants are on a group hike. One participant is an avid photographer who likes to stop often to take picture of the scenery and any interesting surroundings. The rest of the participants are more focused on completing the hike without paying too much attention to their surroundings. We observe how the participants act out this situation in order to better understand group dynamics and how people would compromise.
*See Appendix for full script
User Enactment 1
Research Question: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires?
Participants are on a group hike. One participant is an avid photographer who likes to stop often to take picture of the scenery and any interesting surroundings. The rest of the participants are more focused on completing the hike without paying too much attention to their surroundings. We observe how the participants act out this situation in order to better understand group dynamics and how people would compromise.
User Enactment 2
Research Questions: What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking? How do people want to record and share their hiking experiences with others? How do people react when they are constantly having their hiking experiences recorded?
Participants are on a group hike. One participant is wearing a pair of sunglasses that allows the user to record everything they see on their hike as videos. These captured videos can be seen by other users later to create hiking trail previews. All participants are aware that they are being recorded. We follow up by asking the sunglasses participant about how they feel on using such a device and ask the other participants how they feel about being recorded.
Research Questions: What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking? How do people want to record and share their hiking experiences with others? How do people react when they are constantly having their hiking experiences recorded?
Participants are on a group hike. One participant is wearing a pair of sunglasses that allows the user to record everything they see on their hike as videos. These captured videos can be seen by other users later to create hiking trail previews. All participants are aware that they are being recorded. We follow up by asking the sunglasses participant about how they feel on using such a device and ask the other participants how they feel about being recorded.
User Enactment 3
Research Questions: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires? What are factors that influence people to take a certain hiking path? (eg. scenery, difficulty, time, other people)?
Participants are on a group hike. They have been hiking for some time and are starting to feel fatigued. They reach a fork in the path and wear sunglasses to be able to preview the paths. One path looks rocky and difficult to climb. The other path looks flat and easy to climb. Participants decide amongst themselves which path they should take and whether they should go together.
Research Questions: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires? What are factors that influence people to take a certain hiking path? (eg. scenery, difficulty, time, other people)?
Participants are on a group hike. They have been hiking for some time and are starting to feel fatigued. They reach a fork in the path and wear sunglasses to be able to preview the paths. One path looks rocky and difficult to climb. The other path looks flat and easy to climb. Participants decide amongst themselves which path they should take and whether they should go together.
User Enactment 4
Research Questions: What components come together to make a hiking experience valuable? What types of hiking or nature artifacts do people think are meaningful to them?
Participants are on a group hike. Along their hike, they take note of interesting artifacts (such as leaves, rocks, etc.) and asked to pick an item they would take home to help them remember their trip. We follow up by asking the participants why they would choose such artifacts.
Research Questions: What components come together to make a hiking experience valuable? What types of hiking or nature artifacts do people think are meaningful to them?
Participants are on a group hike. Along their hike, they take note of interesting artifacts (such as leaves, rocks, etc.) and asked to pick an item they would take home to help them remember their trip. We follow up by asking the participants why they would choose such artifacts.
User Enactment 5
Research Questions: Does having too much information hinder the overall hiking experience? What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking?
Participant is walking alone. They wear headphones in order to receive audio, hiking-related notifications. The moderator acts as the audio notifications by calling the participant and relaying the notifications.
Research Questions: Does having too much information hinder the overall hiking experience? What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking?
Participant is walking alone. They wear headphones in order to receive audio, hiking-related notifications. The moderator acts as the audio notifications by calling the participant and relaying the notifications.
- Participant hears a notification to take a detour - “Take a left.”
- 1 minute later, participant hears a notification to change posture - “Improve your posture by standing up straighter”
- 1 minute later, participant hears a notification to take a break - “You should take a minute break now.”
- 1 minute later, participant hears a notification to drink water - “You should drink some water now to stay hydrated.”
Study Results
We individually coded the data and observations from the user enactments and then came together as a group to debrief. We created an affinity wall to group our findings together and identify key insights.
Key Insights
Participants are not interested in splitting up. They are willing to give up what they want in order to stay together as a group.
Participants were concerned with the concept of shared, public memories.
Participants were willing to tolerate a certain level of intrusiveness from technology
Participants were most interested in exploring and touring.
Participants are not interested in splitting up. They are willing to give up what they want in order to stay together as a group.
- UE 1 and UE 3 indicated that participants would prefer to stay together as a hiking group instead of splitting up, despite the fact they had different desires and goals they wanted to accomplish on the hike. In both of the run throughs for UE 1, the participants still stuck to the photographer and waited for them, despite them acting annoyed and telling the photographer to hurry up or to stop taking pictures. These participants were willing to compromise in order to stick together.
- In UE 3, Participant 1 expressed the desire to take the harder route while the other four wanted to take the easier route. Participant 1 ended up comprising and going along with the rest of the participants. This participant said “Even if I really want to go on this route, if no one else goes with me, it won’t be fun. I don’t want to go by myself so I’ll compromise to whatever the majority wants to do.”
Participants were concerned with the concept of shared, public memories.
- While all our participants expressed that they would enjoy wearing the glasses in UE 3 to record their trip, Participants 2,4 & 5 expressed that they would not enjoy being recorded. This apprehensiveness stemmed from the fact that the videos would be shared publicly. During the enactment, the participants would actively tried to avoid being recorded by the glasses. Participants 4 and 5 also asked if audio was also being recorded in addition to video. They said if audio was being recorded, then they would not want to say anything during recording.
Participants were willing to tolerate a certain level of intrusiveness from technology
- In UE 2,3 & 5, we equipped participants with glasses and a notification system to determine whether people would be annoyed having to wear or use technology devices while hiking. For form factor, participants were comfortable with the idea of wearing sunglasses while hiking. Participant 3 stated “I would not mind wearing the recording glasses or preview path glasses if their form is really similar to regular sunglasses.” Participant 4 also stated “It would be nice to have another technology besides my phone to rely on while on hikes because my phone tends to have bad battery and I want to preserve it.” Participants were also okay with having a notification system but it depends on how often the notifications were or if they were by themselves. Participant 1 said “I would turn on notifications if I am alone but not by myself because I feel like it might me isolate from my group.” Participant 4 said “I would use the notifications if I’m alone, but I would not like it if the notifications interrupted my music or if the notifications came often. I would not like getting a notification every minute.” Overall, participants are comfortable with using technology on their hikes as long as it is either comfortable to wear and they are not constantly bombarded with notifications or noises from the technology.
Participants were most interested in exploring and touring.
- Participants were interested in exploring and learning about different paths they could take. In UE 5, the notification that the participants thought was most useful was the notification to take a certain direction. Participants 1 and 4 said that they think notifications that tell them which paths to go or tell them about different sights they could see on routes would be most helpful. Participant 3 believed the preview paths function from UE 3 would be useful because he is not good at looking up information beforehand in order to learn about where he is hiking.
Ideation & Selection
For Milestone 3, we started by using the insights gained from the UEs to help us refine the specific design requirements, and pain points. Using this, we ideated more ideas and refinements on our original ideas by writing our individual ideas on post-it notes and then sharing as a group. We grouped these ideas into common themes.
The biggest themes that stood out to us were:
We struggled with finding a design that worked well, but during this process, we realized that separating how people access, capture, and display information are three functions where we could add value. Similarly, we realized that we could split our idea based on form, and function. This resulted in our new idea - glasses that allow you to access information from nature markers, which displayed information regarding the hiking trail.
- A concept revolved around encouraging hikers to explore the area and check out various trails and sights (UEs indicated people like to explore different paths and sights while hiking)
- A concept around revolved allowing hikers to capture, share, and remember their hiking experience (The interviews and diary studies from the previous milestone indicated that many participants like to take pictures of their hikes to share with others and remember their experience later on. UEs also indicated people were interested in using a technology that enables them to record their experience.)
- Glasses that allow people to capture pictures and videos
- Nature markers that allow people to see environmental information (temperature, level of activity, pollution, etc.)
- Gamified hiking environments (including amazing race style trips, mini challenge swithin trips, or collecting different information about flora/fauna)
We struggled with finding a design that worked well, but during this process, we realized that separating how people access, capture, and display information are three functions where we could add value. Similarly, we realized that we could split our idea based on form, and function. This resulted in our new idea - glasses that allow you to access information from nature markers, which displayed information regarding the hiking trail.
System Proposal
We are proposing Hiking Glasses, which will allow people to navigate hiking locations, access information regarding the local environment, and discover new trails. The hiking glasses would have a scanner in front that allows people to scan their environment, while the lens would be an augmented reality camera that would display information.
For our storyboard, Ben and his two friends are hiking around Banff National Park. Ben was in a hurry to plan the trip, so he had a general idea of where to go, but wasn’t too sure on what the actual trails were like. The whole group decides to put on their Hiking Glasses to help them better understand the local environment and where to go. The system is based on augmented reality and QR codes. After wearing the glasses, they are able to access the display markers (QR codes) left by the state park which shows what the paths will look like. While looking around they see a tree with a code, and they are able to get information regarding the local plants and learn more about the different seasonal vegetation. An hour in the hike, they were able to find a marker that showed new potential paths that would interest them. Ben and his friends feel safe in navigating the different trails and leave feeling that they explored all the different areas.
For our storyboard, Ben and his two friends are hiking around Banff National Park. Ben was in a hurry to plan the trip, so he had a general idea of where to go, but wasn’t too sure on what the actual trails were like. The whole group decides to put on their Hiking Glasses to help them better understand the local environment and where to go. The system is based on augmented reality and QR codes. After wearing the glasses, they are able to access the display markers (QR codes) left by the state park which shows what the paths will look like. While looking around they see a tree with a code, and they are able to get information regarding the local plants and learn more about the different seasonal vegetation. An hour in the hike, they were able to find a marker that showed new potential paths that would interest them. Ben and his friends feel safe in navigating the different trails and leave feeling that they explored all the different areas.
|
Demo Proposal
For our demo, we will focus on the experience of accessing and displaying information. To simulate the experience, there are 3 main functions that we need to expand: sensing the trigger, displaying the information, and interacting with the display. We plan on using Google Cardboard to simulate the glasses and use a smartphone to simulate the visualizations. The triggers would be QR codes that we would place at potential trail entry spots along the park. The glasses would have a scanner that would access the QR code, but for an initial demo, we can scan the QR code using the smartphone. The biggest barrier to actually implementing this part would be time. We need to install a QR code at a specific location. To display the information, the glasses would be similar to augmented reality vision. By viewing the QR code, there would be additional information regarding the trail and users would be able to see videos of what to expect, how long is the trail, and what are some interesting flora along the way. The barrier would be skill as we don’t have a programmer on our team who is able to create the visualization for the information but we can create a prototype of what the visualization would look like and demonstrate the interactions. For interacting with the display, we would have it so the user can exit the system by just moving their gaze, similar to how a QR code stops working when you move out of view. Based on the different aspects, our prototype will focus on creating the form factor and demonstrating sensing the trigger. We believe that this is where we have the strongest capabilities in creating a component that is similar to the final product. As wearing the glasses is one of the drawbacks of wearing the system, it would also allow us to evaluate some of the physical and social factors that might impact our core features.
Conclusion
For our project, we are still struggling to determine what exact functions would be offered to make this experience “complete”. Based on interviews, we know that people are most interested in what trails are ahead, what are some different trails to take, and how long it takes to complete a trail. Based on our UEs, we know that people prefer in-situ experiences that have minimal interference with natural sights. We are still unsure how users will react to having visual information being displayed while hiking, and whether this information is enough to justify wearing glasses for the entire trip.
Appendix
Script for User Enactments
Setting for all UEs: Nichols Arboretum
User Enactment 1
Research Question: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires?
Props: Camera
Scenario: Imagine you are hiking as a group in the Arb. One of you is an avid photographer who tends to take a lot of pictures during the hike. You try different angles, play with settings and basically spend a couple of minutes to capture the scenes worthy of remembering. You are curious and tend to explore all possible places that you can access to see if you find an exciting and new thing, be it a rare plant, animal, or scene. The other person in the group is geared towards completing the trail without paying that much attention to the details.
Process: Assign roles to participants and read scenario. Have them walk down a trail and act out their roles accordingly. Observe how this difference of hiking styles would influence the group dynamics and see how people would resolve this issue.
User Enactment 2
Research questions: What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking? How do people want to record and share their hiking experiences with others? How do people react when they are constantly having their hiking experiences recorded?
Props: Glasses or sunglasses
Scenario: You are hiking with a group of friends. Imagine you have a pair of sunglasses (or glasses) that is recording everywhere you go. You know that these captured videos are going to be used for other users later to create hiking trail previews in forms of condensed videos. Therefore, you have become more conscious because everything you are looking at is captured. Your friends are also aware that you are recording these public videos.
Process: Assign role to participants and read scenario. One person wears the glasses and pretends to record while the other people in the group behave how they want as long as everyone is exploring the trail. Observe how the presence of a device that captures every moment would influence the social interactions among people.
Follow up questions:
User Enactment 3
Research questions: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires? What are factors that influence people to take a certain hiking path? (eg. scenery, difficulty, time, other people)?
Props: glasses, pictures of choices
Scenario: Imagine that you are on a hike with a group of your friends. You are already at least halfway done with your hike and you and your group are very exhausted. You come to a fork in the trail. You use the glasses to preview the available paths. One path shows a difficult route; the other path shows an easy, low intensity route. You and the group decide about which path to take.
Process: Have participants jog for 2 minutes in order to create a feeling of tiredness. Make sure to end their jog at a fork in a path. Have participants put on the glasses. Use a smartphone to first display a picture of the hard route and then display a picture of the easy route. Have the group discuss which path they should take.
Follow up questions:
User Enactment 4
Research questions: What components come together to make a hiking experience valuable? What types of hiking or nature artifacts do people think are meaningful to them?
Props: Artifacts in the Arboretum
Process: Have participants go on a walk through the Arb. Ask them to collect any artifacts they think are notable. After they are done walking, ask why they picked those artifacts and what they would do with them after their hike.
User Enactment 5
Props: Headphones, phone
Research questions: Does having too much information hinder the overall hiking experience? What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking?
Scenario: Imagine you are on a hike by yourself. You have an audio notification system that will give you notifications throughout your hike with instructions.
Process:
Setting for all UEs: Nichols Arboretum
User Enactment 1
Research Question: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires?
Props: Camera
Scenario: Imagine you are hiking as a group in the Arb. One of you is an avid photographer who tends to take a lot of pictures during the hike. You try different angles, play with settings and basically spend a couple of minutes to capture the scenes worthy of remembering. You are curious and tend to explore all possible places that you can access to see if you find an exciting and new thing, be it a rare plant, animal, or scene. The other person in the group is geared towards completing the trail without paying that much attention to the details.
Process: Assign roles to participants and read scenario. Have them walk down a trail and act out their roles accordingly. Observe how this difference of hiking styles would influence the group dynamics and see how people would resolve this issue.
User Enactment 2
Research questions: What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking? How do people want to record and share their hiking experiences with others? How do people react when they are constantly having their hiking experiences recorded?
Props: Glasses or sunglasses
Scenario: You are hiking with a group of friends. Imagine you have a pair of sunglasses (or glasses) that is recording everywhere you go. You know that these captured videos are going to be used for other users later to create hiking trail previews in forms of condensed videos. Therefore, you have become more conscious because everything you are looking at is captured. Your friends are also aware that you are recording these public videos.
Process: Assign role to participants and read scenario. One person wears the glasses and pretends to record while the other people in the group behave how they want as long as everyone is exploring the trail. Observe how the presence of a device that captures every moment would influence the social interactions among people.
Follow up questions:
- How did you feel knowing that you were being recorded? Did it affect your actions?
- How did you feel about recording? Do you think it would be useful?
- Did you feel that wearing the sunglasses were intrusive?
User Enactment 3
Research questions: How do different people in the same hiking group compromise when they have all have different hiking desires? What are factors that influence people to take a certain hiking path? (eg. scenery, difficulty, time, other people)?
Props: glasses, pictures of choices
Scenario: Imagine that you are on a hike with a group of your friends. You are already at least halfway done with your hike and you and your group are very exhausted. You come to a fork in the trail. You use the glasses to preview the available paths. One path shows a difficult route; the other path shows an easy, low intensity route. You and the group decide about which path to take.
Process: Have participants jog for 2 minutes in order to create a feeling of tiredness. Make sure to end their jog at a fork in a path. Have participants put on the glasses. Use a smartphone to first display a picture of the hard route and then display a picture of the easy route. Have the group discuss which path they should take.
Follow up questions:
- What factors influenced your decision?
- How did you come to your decision?
- Would you be willing to split up from your group if you wanted to take the less popular route?
User Enactment 4
Research questions: What components come together to make a hiking experience valuable? What types of hiking or nature artifacts do people think are meaningful to them?
Props: Artifacts in the Arboretum
Process: Have participants go on a walk through the Arb. Ask them to collect any artifacts they think are notable. After they are done walking, ask why they picked those artifacts and what they would do with them after their hike.
User Enactment 5
Props: Headphones, phone
Research questions: Does having too much information hinder the overall hiking experience? What levels of intrusiveness from technology can people tolerate while hiking?
Scenario: Imagine you are on a hike by yourself. You have an audio notification system that will give you notifications throughout your hike with instructions.
Process:
- Participant starts walking through the Arb and is wearing headphones.
- The moderator pretends to be the notification by calling the participant and giving the instructions one by one.
- Participant first hears a notification to take a detour - “Take a right.”
- 1 minute later, participant hears a notification to change posture - “Improve your posture by standing up straighter”
- 1 minute later, participant hears a notification to take a break - “You should take a minute break now.”
- 1 minute later, participant hears a notification to drink water - “You should drink some water now to stay hydrated.”
- Were these notifications intrusive?
- Did you think they were helpful?
- What did you think about the frequency of them? Would you prefer it if notifications came often or should they be spaced out?
- What other types of notifications would you like to hear?