BoredWalk
Spatial Audio Walking App
Team
Zavack
VanLeer
Kopf
Chernetsky
Greytak
Problem and Design Overview
When walking recreationally, it is difficult to find a route that is safe, easily navigable, and fulfills a set of preferences–especially when exploring. In contrast to someone who wants an efficient route from point A to point B, those walking for leisure may place higher value on avoiding distracting noises or on walking near pleasant scenery. Existing mapping technology that supports walking treats walking directions like a driving route, and as such is targeted only towards efficient walkers–therefore, the niche of recreational walking goes unsupported. Because of this, many recreational walkers feel they must stick to routes they know; whether that exploration be small ventures from existing routes or fully unexplored trails, the human need for exploration is left unmet.
Our design, an app called BoredWalk, supports the niche of recreational walking by providing its users with unobtrusive walking directions. These directions guide recreational walkers along novel walking routes that match the user’s selected preferences. BoredWalk then utilizes the spatial audio function that exists in modern headphones to deliver these directions, shifting between left, right, or center, depending on which direction the user needs to take.
This result is typical of walking navigation when using Google or Apple Maps. The route travels down roads instead of along the nearby nature path
Design Walkthrough
The BoredWalk app allows walkers to customize their walks by entering a set of terrain and walking intensity preferences, expanding walking technology beyond just efficiency. Following a route and providing feedback supports users in improving their walking experience by allowing BoredWalk to quantify the user’s rating of their walk. BoredWalk then uses this data to improve upon the route suggestions it makes to the user. The user can complete this task using only the app, or they can provide soft feedback by changing direction while walking to communicate to BoredWalk they are not enjoying their route and would like to reroute. Overall, completing these two tasks using BoredWalk should markedly improve the recreational walker’s walking experience by allowing BoredWalk to tailor its route suggestions to the user’s preferences and past walking experiences.
Our initial sketch of the design, called at the time "Auditory Approach"
Select a Customized Route
When a walker first uses the BoredWalk app, they must input their preferences for a set list of factors e.g. trees, hills, crosswalks, etc. The user rates these factors on a sliding scale, and BoredWalk utilizes these ratings to craft walking routes that best suit the user’s preferences. When the user would like to start a walk, they can either select a destination to walk to or set their route to be a walking loop. They then input a desired walk length–in time or distance–within the constraints of their desired destination. The user is now presented with a route that matches their preset preferences and their desired walk length and destination.
A walker sets their walking preferences and then chooses a time or distance. Routes are dynamically generated which match these criteria.
The user can either start this walk or navigate forward (or backward) on the page to other route suggestions. BoredWalk’s route possibilities are endless! The user can also navigate to the home page to adjust their preferences at any time to better customize their suggested routes; they can also save walks to their favorites page if they would like to revisit this route in the future.
A walker can reroute while on a walk. Favorite routes can be saved.
Follow a Route While Leaving Feedback
BoredWalk delivers directions to its user through spatial audio feedback; the audio balance will shift between left, right, and center based on the location of the user along the route and the next direction the user must take. Following the pre-set route is easy, but the user may become dissatisfied with their walk along the way. The BoredWalk app contains a reroute button that can be selected an unlimited number of times while the user is actively navigating a route. BoredWalk also offers more immersive feedback options that do not require the user to open the app in order to reroute. If the user disobeys one of BoredWalk’s audio shift directions, the app will automatically reroute. The user can also press an existing button on their headphones, which communicates to the BoredWalk app to reroute; the BoredWalk app overrides the normal functionality of all buttons on modern headphones. BoredWalk recognizes areas and route characteristics that cause the user to reroute and factors these findings into future walking recommendations. After a route is complete, the user can also rate their walk and its preference accuracy, giving BoredWalk quantitative feedback that can better optimize its future suggestions.
Rerouting and rating flow.
Design Research and Key Insights
We approached the design research phase with an open mind. We wanted to speak with walkers from all walks of life, with the intention of figuring out why they walked, what issues (and non-issues) they had with their walks and how we could design to allay them. We had a specific interest in those who walked as a hobby rather than commuters. We gathered our information via interviewing a plethora of people, from random people on UW’s campus to friends and family. Interviews were our method of choice because they are time-efficient and allow us to interact directly with our participants, such as by asking follow-up questions tailored to the person. We conducted them outside, so that when the participant was willing, we would walk alongside them during the interview to provide an accurate context for the activity we were interested in.
People dislike having to plan walks themselves
Most of the participants in our interviews typically repeated the same routes over and over. When asked, participants said they would like to switch things up and explore new areas, but did not have the time, or did not want to risk getting lost or ending up somewhere too busy, too hilly, or worse – too unsafe. This insight led us to focus on designing a way for people to explore new places without having to do much work planning, and without the risk of getting lost or ending up somewhere unpleasant.
“I like to explore new paths [but] I am afraid of getting lost” - Andre
“I wanna explore new places, but mostly I have little time [so] I don’t totally plan the route; I mostly plan the amount of time I will spend and the pace.” - Agnes
There are no universally “good” route qualities
Despite some general themes emerging, there were no walk qualities that every participant mentioned liking. Some favored nature, some favored companionship, some favored exercise, so on and so forth. This meant we either had to choose a certain quality to focus on at the cost of alienating some group of walkers, or we had to make our design customizable so that everyone can get what they want. We went with the latter, which can be directly seen in our preferences screen.
Two walkers with varying opinions
“I don’t want to walk up any hills” - Archibald
“I like walking up and down hills” - Alejandra
People value immersion in their walks when possible
Many of our interview participants expressed a distaste for having to stop at intersections and crosswalks because it interrupts the flow of the walk. One interviewee, Abe, said if he could invent anything to help with his walks, he would have skywalks over every intersection. Another common desire was getting lost in nature and the world.
“I like seeing birds and squirrels…It’s nice to become one with nature.” - Andre
Participants also mentioned that disconnecting by not directly using their phone was important on walks. One participant, Alejandra, said she deliberately leaves her phone at home when going on a walk. However, a majority of walkers we interviewed still used headphones during their walks, whether to listen to music, podcasts or talk to people. All of this led us to focus on our audio-based design, because we believe a visual design would disrupt the walk. It also meant we had to come up with a way to provide information to walkers without a voice in their ear, since that would also be disruptive, which is why we decided upon a spatial audio shift for directions.
Iterative Design and Key Insights
Overview of Design Process:
When creating our paper prototype based off of our sketches, we made a few decisions to simplify some of the interfaces to make them more user friendly. The earliest feedback we received on this initial prototype and its associated task walkthrough was through an inspection process of our design according to Nielsen’s heuristics. After addressing and revising these violations of Nielsen’s heuristics, we did several usability tests with our improved paper prototype. After each usability test we made necessary changes to address the feedback we received. Once we had gone through several rounds of usability tests and iterations of our paper prototype we created a digital mockup of our design in Figma. Translating our design to be in a digital format surfaced several minor issues as well that we addressed to ensure our design was finalized.
State Flexibility
A key insight gained from our heuristic evaluation inspection was the lack of emergency exits in the “Choose Walk” screen with no way to look at previously generated routes and no way to leave the screen. We took this insight and applied it to this screen and throughout the rest of our design to vastly improve the transitions between states. This included making changes in our “Choose Walk” screen to have a “Prev”, “Next”, and “Exit” buttons as well as having more verbose “Save” and “Exit” buttons on the “Feedback” screen.
States in initial prototype with rigid state transitions.
States transitions made more flexible through addition of new buttons.
Visible Functionality
Another key insight we obtained from our usability testing included hidden and unclear purposes of features. Our old “Start Walk” screen had a hidden loop or destination feature hidden behind a drop down menu that confused some participants. Possible reroute actions we intended for our participants to use during a walk were not used because there was no explanation they encountered for this. Our old feedback screen had a preference accuracy star rating system that confused some of our participants about its purpose in improving future walks. These issues brought up by participants led us to make several changes to our prototype that improved usability by making possible actions visible and their purposes more clear.
States in our initial prototype that had hidden or unclear features.
Hidden functionality made more clear during revisions.
Tutorialization and Ease of Use
When usability testing, we realized that our app was confusing to use at first due to various tidbits of feedback provided by participants. Specifically, many had issues with app navigation or did not know what to do on some screens. In order to improve based on this insight, we first made our app navigation a lot more consistent and simple by adding a back button to every screen. Then, we added tutorial popups to a few different features so that walkers could figure out how to use them when first opening those screens.
States in the initial prototype that testers called out as unclear.
Extra explanations now included for clarity and visibility, "generate walk" is disabled until a destination is selected .