An adaptive outdoor light trail designed to make winter movements more motivating
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The concept
People don’t necessarily need another fitness tracker. They need outdoor activity to feel safer, more social and more rewarding during winter.
Blaze transforms a park trail into a responsive running experience.
Lights embedded along the route move at a pace chosen by the user. Rather than simply recording a run afterwards, Blaze gives runners a target they can see and respond to in real time.
Gamification will give the chance for the user to invest and gain an emotional connection to the activity by receiving points and rewards, giving a sense of personal achievement. Particularly framing the rewards around “bragging rights” for the user to be able to say in a social group that they are the fastest runner.
The concept behaviour steers the user to run through a park, racing moving lights; steering the users behaviour to the activity proposed.
There is an element of feedback; as the app will push the user at checkpoints to prompt them to push themselves; however this isn’t essential to the behaviour.
Participants ran the length of a rugby pitch and were timed and ranked on coloured cones, they then ran again knowing how much faster they would need to run to get given a better coloured cone, knowing what colour the other participants were running as well.
The participants felt like this pushed them to run that little bit harder, they liked that they had improved the second time round.
There is the potential to cause harm as new behaviours change peoples lives.
There is a potential for the interactive park to be overused by an individual and take over their life which could have knock on negative effects. Safeguards could maybe be put in place to make sure damage isn’t done as, for the most part, running should be fun.
Making sure the user has an opt out and choice is essential. That all kinds of use are examined before launching to make the intentional use not overshadowed by a misuse. That the behaviours are good and not going to be harmful to people.
The concept could potentially discriminate against people who can not run due to disability, and so an option on the concept could be use of the lights without the running activity and maybe a leaderboard for walking and lower level lights for wheelchair users.
The app won’t ask for a profile image and giving a choice on nickname they can run anonymously, Sharing the running data will be the choice of the user to feature on the public or private leaderboards.
Supporting Work
The opportunity
Research suggested an opportunity to create an interactive community park experience supported by a mobile app, using behavioural design, feedback and gamification to make outdoor activity more appealing during winter.
The initial audience focused on 18–25-year-olds who were less likely to use green spaces during winter because of reduced daylight, fewer reasons to visit and concerns around personal safety.
Design challenge
How might we make green spaces feel as engaging and inviting during winter as they do during summer?
Concept direction
Blaze uses an illuminated physical trail, real-time feedback and social challenges to give people a reason to enter and move through green spaces after dark.