WinterWALK
A service concept for community volunteers to collect data walking conditions of neighbourhood streets. This information can then be displayed on an easy-to-use digital map.
Walking promotes wellness through exercise and social connectedness for all members of the community. Community members will be encouraged to get moving during the winter months when they feel assured that their walk will be safe and enjoyable.
In recent winters, poor walking conditions have created significant barriers for some community members' ability to walk outdoors. Seniors and others may feel unsafe walking in deep snow or slippery conditions, and instead opt to stay home and lead a more sedentary winter lifestyle as a result.
WinterWALK was started as a local project in Ottawa, the objectives and deployment are readily translatable to many Canadian, and Northern US, cities that are affected by winter walking hazards.
Product Design & Development
The SnowMoles reporting program was started by the Council on Aging of Ottawa (COA). This program involves organizing both individuals and groups to perform audits of winter sidewalk conditions, and then providing reports by paper form, or via web-based questionnaires.
While this program can help to build public awareness, and can support the advocacy function of COA, the data collected is too irregular and unstructured to provide any personal guidance. The WinterWalk app is designed to make regular observations, on local conditions, that can be used by Seniors to make a decision if they want to get out to walk.
After performing a review of similar systems and apps, we determined that there is no existing system which we could partner with, or build on, therefore we have to build it ourselves.
I developed the preliminary user interface, so the next goal was to engage the programmers to create the User Trials version of the App.
A preliminary concept was developed at a Ottawa Hackathon (www.rhok.ca) in 2019. While this helped us to better understand network and interface issues, we hoped to take it to the next level to create a robust, multi-user, networked app.
User Trials were to be conducted to better understand actual user requirements for users and community volunteers.
For now the development process has been put on hold, but it can be restarted when demand and resources permit.
Enter Text