Geocaching While Blind: UX Case Study
Technology succeeds when it’s designed for all users—not just typical ones.
What Is Geocaching?
Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. From city centers to the remotest of forests, Geocaches are hidden everywhere. Twenty years after the Geocaching website's creation, there are more than 3 million geocaches in over 190 countries (source).
Overview
For our final project in Design Studio 2 in the Digital Design program at CU Denver, teammate Izzy Castellano and I were tasked with designing something for a blind user. After a bit of discussion, we decided to assess and improve an app that both of us have used at different points in our lives: Geocaching. We've both had really connective, meaningful experiences while using the app, so we loved the idea of bringing it to a new audience. In our eyes, Geocaching has the potential to facilitate collaboration among groups of differently-abled people, challenge and refine low-vision users' orientation and mobility skills, and get people out of their comfort zones and into new places.
In this post, we walk you through our the app's current accessibility features, our research on audio wayfinding, user journeys and personas, and a proposal for an app update that would expand Geocaching usability for blind and low-vision users.
Problem
Apple VoiceOver is a screen-reading function that speaks digital content aloud to low-vision users. However, not every app is optimized for VoiceOver. I recorded the Geocaching onboarding process using VoiceOver, and I've edited the video below to highlight a few concerns.
(1) Because each welcome screen is technically not a new page, VoiceOver does not jump to the top of the content. Once the user gets through the initial message, they have to tab backwards to read screen items.
(2) Although many elements are compatible with VoiceOver, the Geocache details screen still includes vague and unordered content descriptions: things like "button" and, when hovering over the map, "no features visible." The cache's difficulty, terrain, and size ratings are oriented horizontally, which makes them difficult to understand while tabbing through.
(3) Lastly, and most importantly, Geocaching does not offer audio wayfinding.
Research
Luckily, Izzy and I didn't have to solve this problem from scratch. The Royal Society for Blind Children's (RSBC) Youth Forum and ustwo have already laid some amazing groundwork for us by developing the Wayfindr Open Standard. Started in 2014 and updated in 2018, this document is the the world’s first internationally-approved standard for accessible audio navigation. If you don't feel like reading all 56 pages, here are some of the most important highlights to take away:
(1) Almost all blind users have some residual vision. The mobility aid they choose—a white cane, symbol cane, guide dog, companion, or none of the above—depends on their level of residual vision as well as their comfort in the space they are navigating. Many users use different mobility aids in different contexts.
(2) Unlike typical map users, low-vision users are often looking for the safest—not the fastest—way to get from place to place. Even users who undergo extensive Orientation and Mobility (O&M) training are presented with hazards in their environment.
(3) Among other things, audio wayfinding apps should include a repeat function, a melodic tone that plays before each instruction, an emergency assistance feature, and settings that accommodate for different mobility aids.
Personas
Our primary persona is Gary Watford, and he is based on research we did about Geocaching’s target audience as well as actual blog posts from a blind Geocacher in England. The idea is that he loves Geocaching with his family, and he’s been doing it for a while. He’s found accommodation workarounds that work for him but take up a decent amount of time. He wants to cut down on his time planning trips and more time actually taking them.
We based our second persona on a Perkins School of the Blind blog post written by an Orientation and Mobility (O&M) instructor. Here's an excerpt:
"Occasionally I have little ones who just aren’t motivated to get up and go. They may have decent cane skills but just don’t want to practice and refine their techniques. They may have been oriented to their new school but still say they are lost. Just say the words TREASURE HUNT and their interest is piqued."
User Journey Map
Our journey map is based on this blog post where a blind user walks the reader through his geocaching process.
Proposal
It must be noted that Gary does have access to audio navigation, but he must transfer geocache coordinates to Adrienne GPS in order to use it. This process makes up a significant part of his user journey. By enabling audio navigation on the Geocaching app itself, the "transfer route" step can be eliminated completely. Our proposal also integrates some of Geocaching's native features in a way that Adrienne GPS can't. We've mocked up an iOS menu that highlights some of these integrations.
• The "repeat feature" repeats the most-recently-issued instruction.
• The "hint" feature allows the user to get the Geocache's hint without exiting navigation.
• The "settings" feature would let the user choose what type of mobility aid they are using, how often they want reassurance notifications, their preferred system of orientation (cardinal, degrees, etc), and more.
• The "help" feature allows a user to access emergency assistance if they get stuck or lost.
Represented in the video is a feature that announces the terrain and difficulty ratings of the geocache and a feature that describes the nearby environment in a way that might help a user better understand the geocache's hint and warn them of nearby dangers.
Conclusion
We know our solution is not comprehensive, but we've brainstormed some other features that we would want to be incorporated into a Geocaching app update for low-vision users.
• Provide the user a preview of the route, a way to drop a personal pin and/or add a voice memo note while navigating, and a way to drop a community pin that would alert other users of dangers (like poison ivy or eroded terrain) near the cache.
• Provide a "Geocaching While Blind" section in the Geocaching FAQs that would (1) provide helpful tips for both low-vision and (2) help sighted users make their caches more accessible.
• Make Geocaching premium free for visually-impaired users so they can access the much-needed “list” feature.
