Inclusive Information Mapping for the Great Outdoors

In partnership with Washington Trails Association (WTA), this University of Washington’s Graduate Capstone project involved a thorough investigation of WTA’s online resources and how inclusive their website is to all hiking enthusiasts. Using qualitative & quantitative research methods, including information mapping, this project attempted to uncover any structural biases imbedded in the organization’s current website and develop evidence-based recommendations for improving WTA’s resources, language and overall design of their website to be more empowering and inclusive for all. 

This expansive research and design project (which required the integration of various interdisciplinary fields including, but not limited to: strategic planning, user experience design and research, and information architecture) was solely headed by Michelle Lam, who also took on the role of project manager, researcher, and designer, and completed in a six-month timeframe in 2019 alongside Loren Drummond, WTA’s Digital Content Manager in the Greater Seattle region. 

Background Information:

The Washington Trails Association (WTA) is a non-profit organization that helps to “mobilize hikers and everyone who loves the outdoors to explore, steward and champion trails and public lands”. The organization works all across Washington state (their main office is based in Seattle) to make hiking trails accessible for all. The WTA advocates for the protection of hiking trails and wilderness, conducts and coordinates trail maintenance measures, and helps to promote hiking in Washington State. Although the WTA only has a limited number of staff and board of directors that oversees WTA’s work through outreach, program management, advocacy, and administration, the organization is also ran and maintained with the efforts of WTA members, contributors, corporate sponsors and hard-working local volunteers.

As the WTA is one of the predominant information resources available to the whole public for outdoor adventures, it is imperative that the information being presented on their interface is both clearly written and user-focused so that the great outdoors becomes a space that is empowering, inclusive and accessible to everyone. Using both qualitative and quantitative research methods, including information mapping, I planned for this project to encompass a thorough investigation into determining whether structural bias exists and evaluating bias in the reporting framework on the Washington Trails Association website (www.wta.org).

Previously, the WTA’s resource guides provided on their website were, in part, created by external contributors who are, predominately, well-versed in the great outdoors. For those who have yet to discover their desire to be immersed in the great outdoors, it is often difficult to utilize all the information provided effectively because the content was often full of jargon and colloquial terminology common within the community.  As a majority of the resource guides are collectively created by those who have been a part of the outdoor community for long periods of time, of course there is a natural and unconscious bias that is embedded into the information system. 

GOALS & OBJECTIVES:

The overarching goal of this project was to help WTA gain informed insights on how they can effectively design a content standard for their user-generated “Trip Reports” so that in turn, the work can provide the organization with a clear direction in which they can redesign their hiking guides to become more inclusive. By helping the organization develop a standardized process in which they can further evolve their systems, this the information resource for the great outdoors can become a more inclusive, empowering, accessible and collaborative resource for a wider, and broader audience.

The efforts from this project helped to develop a standardized process in which WTA can now further evolve their systems and information resources in future for a wider, and broader audience. In a manner of speaking, this project can be considered a prototype system engineered for the organization to model research procedures and source community-driven ideas and feedback to redevelop and evolve their information systems in a more effective and inclusive manner. By modeling a research and design system/process that can be modified for each information system accordingly, WTA will be able to continue to improve their resource guides and inclusively connect more people with the great outdoors after the conclusion of this project.

RESEARCH AGENDA & PROCEDURE:

This project required the integration of various interdisciplinary fields including, but not limited to, strategic planning, user experience research, information design, information architecture, experience design, and the workflow process comprised of six-defined stages:

1. To identify current problems and creating an adaptable plan accordingly.

2. Conduct heuristic evaluations on WTA’s current information system to identify specific problems that hindered the usability of Trip Reports and better understand the user interactions that took place when using Trip Reports on WTA’s website.

3. Host and organize various community workshops to ideate and develop new ideas that both identified elements and factors that contributed to the success of trip reports and more importantly, those that could improve the information resource.

4. Synthesize all the findings from the previous four stages using affinity diagrams.

5. Develop and input all organized ideas into a digital information card sort sent back out to the community to evaluate how the information resource should be organized and built for higher effectiveness & usability.

6. The final deliverable of this project will be a final published report that will present the findings from the research and exploration process, as well as the presentation of the overall project to the community at large at the University of Washington’s Information School’s 2019 Capstone Event.

NEXT STEPS:

With the conclusion on the investigative process, my hope was that the findings and recommendations made throughout the research process would create the opportunity for the WTA to act upon almost immediately. If the results of this project cannot be implemented in the near future, it is Loren & my hope that the research and design process of this project can be reevaluated and improved upon so that a second and possibly third iteration of the research can be implemented in continuation. This process of research and user-experience design work can easily be reiterated and evolved so that even more expansive and substantial results could be garnered. The entire process, in and of itself, has proven that the community as a whole has many ideas and inspired thoughts that can be utilized and further developed if it can be nurtured carefully.

Prior to any of that though, Loren and I hope to implement another evaluative and explorative process on the mobile application version of the “Trip Reports” feature. As noted by a few participants and peers, the WTA mobile application works quite differently than the traditional “Trip Reports” on browsers, thus rendering the usability of the functions to differ. In order to present a fully comprehensive report to the WTA in future, I would need to expand the scope of the project beyond its original objective to include all the various access points of WTA’s “Trip Reports”.

For more details and research materials on this project, please reach out directly to me through the Contact page.