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Rethinking the Role of a Mobile Computing in Recreational Hiking

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Abstract

Mobile computing devices, especially smartphones, are part of the recreational hiking experience in the United States. In our survey of over a thousand people in the United States in 2017, about 95% of respondents reported that they prefer to bring a smartphone when they go hiking. A smartphone used during hiking is simply a tool. That tool can improve or worsen the quality of a hiking experience. In this chapter, we propose a vision of interactive mobile computing design for hiking which may improve the quality of the hiking experience. Our vision of interactive computing and hiking is built on three principles: time spent outdoors is good for individuals, computing can play a positive role in outdoor recreation, and human–nature interaction is more important than human–computer interaction. We illustrate our approach using an extended scenario.

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