The Challenge

Rangers at Caballero County Parks have recently noticed an increase in hikers needing assistance while hiking. To reduce the number of cases of heat illnesses due to dehydration and hikers undertaking hikes they may not be prepared for, the County would like to place QR codes on signs throughout the trails, providing hikers with trail tips such as preventing dehydration and how to select an appropriate hike.

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The Approach

I centered my design approach on understanding the setting and technology that most users would be accessing this learning experience from. Hikers will be utilizing their phones and will already be at the park, focused on hitting the trails. Therefore, I knew the design had to be mobile-responsive and a practical tool that would help hikers easily access information while on the trails.

Based on the challenge described by the park rangers, I crafted learning objectives that would directly impact the behaviors that needed to be changed. In this case, the goal is for hikers to make hike selections based on what they are physically and logistically prepared for as well as have a plan for proper hydration and know what to do if affected by heat illness.

I took a lot of consideration into the amount of time a hiker would potentially spend on this eLearning. As a result, I decided that an elaborate scenario or practice may not be appropriate for this use case.

The Development

Since Rise was the authoring tool I was using, I decided to take a slightly different approach to storyboarding. I divided the content into three sections and mapped out content for each section. I then explored the content block options in Rise and the Mighty plugin that would be most effective in displaying the content interactively and efficiently. During this planning, I envisioned a hike generator as a useful tool, but saw the limitations of the provided content blocks. I decided to see if I could utilize an AI tool to code a generator. I wrote a prompt for Canva Code AI and collaborated with AI to create a generator that would help hikers select a hike as well as match the visual style of the rest of the course.

I wanted to ensure key information could be easily and quickly accessed as well as the layout translating well on mobile devices, so I picked content blocks that visually displayed information in a list or chart form.