Diary Study

With our diary study, we aimed to understand the running behaviors of our target users. We conducted the study with four participants over a 7-day period.

• Participant A is a 27-year-old male who is currently searching for jobs around the Detroit area. He previously had running habits for losing weight. He prefers walking/ hiking now due to his back injury.
  
• Participant B is a 30-year-old female who is working at a consulting firm. She has been trying to build a running habit since March this year. Her goal is to maintain a good mood and a healthy lifestyle from running. She often runs in the neighborhood alone during weekdays and drives to running trials with friends on the weekends.
• Participant C is a 23-year-old female who is a master student at the University of Michigan living in Ann Arbor suburb areas. She doesn’t have a running habit and has always wanted to build one. She has the goal of losing weight and keeping a healthy routine.
• Participant D is a 27-year-old male who is currently working at the medical center of Umich as a researcher. He runs in order to have a healthy and fit body. He normally runs in the neighborhood alone and sometimes with a partner.

We asked participants to log their daily running behaviors into a Google Sheet with predefined questions. The first set of questions include the time, location, duration, and weather conditions when they went out for a run. Then, participants would reflect on their feelings before and after running, anything they found interesting, and concerns they had during the run. If a participant decides not to run on a day, they would need to fill out a response on what led to the decision. To better understand various factors involved in their running behaviors and attitudes, we also asked participants to upload photos and videos from their daily runs, which could include videos of them talking, photos of the environment/running outfit/fun adventures. 

Survey

In order not only to collect in-depth information from our research target, but also to reach a wider range of audiences to understand the overall trend and common thoughts, we designed a survey and included it as part of our study. Our 5-min survey includes both close-ended and open-ended questions that mainly ask about people’s running habits, as well as their motivations and frustrations regarding running. Since our target users are people around 18- 40 years old who are more likely to accept and try out new technology, we sent the survey through school email and also to Facebook and WeChat group chat to reach out to our target group. We eventually collected 80 responses to our survey study.

We used affinity mapping to analyze our study results from the diary study and survey. We were able to divide the affinity notes into four categories: motivations, needs, frustrations, and “other” which includes some findings related to running habits and some new ideas.

Findings

What motivates them to maintain a habit of running?

• Health: Losing weight, improving health, and relieving mental stress are the three most popular reasons that people decide to run.
  
• Lower risk compared to going to the gym: Different from the preliminary research which indicated that the number of people running outside had declined since COVID, more than 65% of our participants started their running habits over the past 6 months. Running outside serves as the perfect excuse for people who want to go out under the stay at home order. People prefer to run outside because outdoor running has the lowest health risk compared to other exercise methods.
• Anxiety/stress relief: Running outside is the perfect cure for people who suffer from anxiety and stress. 85% of the participants point out that they feel relaxed and happier every time after their running exercise and most of them also have a better energy level for the rest of the day. Some other incentives are given by running includes healthy feelings, relieving of stresses as well as better performance during & after running.
• Sense of accomplishment: People like to see their accomplishments during a short period to motivate them to keep their healthy lifestyles. We found out that people who are doing a better job stick with their running plan are more likely to maintain their running goals even better since they feel a sense of accomplishment by following their plan tightly. 

What frustrates them?

What do they need while running?

• Safety: We discovered that people neither want to run in crowded places(Covid19) nor want to run in extremely quiet places(one participant mentioned that she only runs on mid-days because she has safety concerns)
  
• Environment: When being asked to collect positive memories of their running experience, three out of four diary study participants mentioned the scenery along the way, thus we believe that a good running route should bring a very positive impact on the overall experience of running.
• Social interactions: Two out of four diary study participants mentioned that they feel positive about social interactions(could be familiar friends or pets) during running. 83.8% of our survey participants prefer to run alone to get away from peer pressures, but they also enjoy interacting with others along the road to make the running less boring. They are participants who prefer to run alone mentioned dogs are their best running buddy.
• Audio: 83% of survey participants bring their headphones while running, two out of four diary study participants mentioned that they enjoy listening to podcasts and audiobooks while running, one dairy study participant mentioned that she enjoys listening to bird sounds when running outside. Audio motivates them to keep running.

After we analyzed findings from our research, we used a combination of individual and collaborative ideation techniques. We not only evaluated and improved our previous concepts but also brainstormed some new ideas that could potentially better solve the pain points discovered through the research study. As every one of us started to share our ideas, we found it exciting to combine some of them and even spark new concepts from the discussion. We also considered a few tradeoffs when deciding which concepts to go with for this milestone. Initially, our ideas could be anything that uses pervasive technology, but we found it too broad and decided to focus on more feasible solutions. We also considered user adoption - our products should not just tackle the problems but also easy to adopt and use. 

Additionally, based on key insights from the research, we developed a set of criteria to help us select ideas that tackle the most important pain points and opportunities.

Criteria of Selection

• Behavioral changes: the system should help users build running habits by nudging their behavior.
  
• Customization: the system should be customizable based on their running habits. Sense of accomplishment: The system should help users to obtain a sense of accomplishment and therefore maintain motivation to keep up with their running plan.
• Social interactions: The system should bring interactions between users and their environment to better motivate their behaviors.
• Safety: The system should provide solutions to people’s safety concerns with outdoor running including getting injured, choosing a dangerous route at night, etc.
• Fun experience: The system should make outdoor running more fun for users.

Refined scope

The research study helped us refine the scope of our project. With the finding that some people prefer to walk/hike rather than running, we decided to target not just running but also hiking and walking, which have a lot of common pain points. We were also able to narrow the problems and opportunities we plan to tackle with our design solutions.

Target Audience

Beginners who want to develop a habit of outdoor running/hiking/walking; 18-40 years old; use mobile or wearable devices.

Environment

Urban environments (streets, sidewalks, parking lots)Trails (parks, hills, mountains)

Activities

Running/hiking/walking outdoors alone or with someone

Problems and Opportunities

Lack of a sense of accomplishment, social interactions, safety guidance, and fun experience.

Technology

Devices that people can easily bring and interact with while running (thus, we decided to take out the smart kiosk idea proposed in milestone 1.

Refined Concepts

Concept 1: AR E-dog

The concept of an AR dog works as runners' perfect running buddy. Before the running, it provides weather, recommended clothing, stretching guides, and running routes to help users get ready for the exercise. During the running, it can lead the trail, explore new attractions as well as provide companionship for their master. After the running, users can stretch with their dog and look at what they accomplished. 
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The AR dog will grow as users building their running habits and accomplishing milestones. Users also can earn coins by keeping exercising to raise their dog (dog food, houses, and outfits). Moreover, there are random events (ie. Treasure huntings) to help users engage with the social space and discover the beauty of running along the road.

Concept 2：Shoe Insole

Next we have a concept of a four-element system: shoe insole, NFC sticker, airpods and apple watch.  Shoe insoles have smart sensors that can interact with NFC stickers, together making running a treasure hunting experience. The first two stories below illustrate how the crowd-sourced game works: user A sticks the NFC stickers around and buries the treasure. User B runs around, discovers the sticker, and touches it with their shoes to gain the points or badges. Both user A and user B can get points once the NFC sticker is activated by the shoe insole. 
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In the case above, user A and user B can be strangers. We also created a third story to imagine how friends can interact with each other. Two friends running in the same park meet each other, they touch each other’s shoes, both get points.
To enrich the experience, we also included Airpods and Apple watch to provide audio and visual feedback, but those accessories optional

Concept 3：Running Mask

The running mask is designed for runners who wish to enjoy their running trip safely without losing interaction with others. 
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It comes with micro speakers on both sides to allow users to enjoy their favorite music, audiobooks, or podcasts while running, which could be customized by the user through the app. Also, when two runners pass each other and listen to identical songs or podcasts, the mask will detect it and play a “Ding” sound as feedback to inform the runners that “hey, you guys are listening to the same music”. The mask could also detect the smile of users and reflect it on the screen. This might give a chance for runners to feel connected with one another and the interaction with strangers would make the running experience fun even when running alone. The mask also comes with a filter layer that could block pollution particles, dust, and germs especially during pandemic, which allows users to worry less about the risk of getting sick and interact with each other safely. 
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With the app which works together with the mask, users could customize how they want their smiles look, or even add emojis and text if they want. Users could also redeem gifts using the reward points they gained by accomplishing their running goals and keep up with their plan. 

Conclusion

At the end of this milestone, we have narrowed our target audience to beginners rather than all runners. Our focus has been shifted from running to three outdoor activities: running, hiking, walkin. We have selected three concepts that would solve major problems for our target audience more efficiently: AR E-Dog, Smart Shoe Insoles, and Running Mask. It is still uncertain if we should cover all activities or prioritize certain tasks. Going forward, we will further narrow the scope of our project through more user research and competitive analysis.