Rationale for Approach

Rationale for Approach

In beginning to think about what research questions to ask and how to form an appropriate design question, I started thinking about the activities JMU students do in their spare time. The topic of outdoors came up, and I thought about all the times I’ve gone hiking with friends and absolutely fell in love with it. So, I thought this platform idea was perfect. Although I go hiking often, I thought it would be a good idea to interview people who may have more or less knowledge of the trails around Harrisonburg that might make for a fun hiking trip, and what aspects help for a successful trip.

I decided that the easiest way to reach a wide range of people was to link a google form on my Instagram. I predicted that the most important things about finding trails to hike are the distance, difficulty, and viewpoints along the hike, but I left all my questions open-ended so that I could receive the maximum amount of input from my users. Within hours, I got up to 12 responses from people at different levels of experience in hiking, and was able to form my product requirements.

Interviewing a variety of people with different levels of hiking experience, majors, and age was a perfect way to research for this project because I was able to incorporate suggestions that I would’ve never thought of, like having a GPS tracking system, including parking spaces, and having a suggestions tab.