Research Plan — Wend Wayfinding Study
Client: Wend (walking / wayfinding app) Researcher: M. Ostrowska (independent) Contract window: through Aug 2026 Study type: generative / foundational — contextual inquiry + diary study Doc status: v1.2, approved by client 2026-05-15
Background & purpose
Wend is building a walking-first wayfinding app and wants to design for how people actually find their way, not for how map software assumes they do. The product team has strong opinions about turn-by-turn; nobody has watched real people navigate an unfamiliar city recently. This is generative work: we're not testing the app (there's barely an app), we're building the foundational model of wayfinding behavior that the design should answer to.
The deliverable that matters is not a report. It's a shared mental model of how people orient, get lost, and recover — grounded in evidence — that product and design can carry in their heads. (Borrowing the diary-study structure from Elena's old fieldwork protocol — see Dr. Ruiz. It held up for a decade; it'll hold here.)
Research questions
- RQ1. How do people build a mental model of an unfamiliar place, and what do they navigate by — instruments, landmarks, story, body?
- RQ2. What actually happens in the moment of getting lost — the triggers, the emotional texture, the recovery strategies?
- RQ3. How does reliance on turn-by-turn navigation change the experience of a place over time (skill, confidence, memory)?
- RQ4. What do experienced local navigators (couriers, walkers, delivery riders) know that the map doesn't encode?
Method
Two methods, deliberately paired so each covers the other's blind spot.
1. Contextual inquiry — in-context walk-alongs (primary) Accompany each participant on a real navigation task through an unfamiliar-to-them area. Master–apprentice framing: you lead, I follow and ask. Think-aloud where it doesn't distort behavior. I record route, hesitations, glances at phone, recovery moves, and the verbatim language they use for places. Roughly 60–75 min each.
2. Diary study — 2 weeks, longitudinal (secondary) Each participant logs wayfinding moments over two weeks via a lightweight prompt (voice memo or photo + one line), triggered by three events: got lost, found a shortcut, or noticed a landmark. Catches the everyday behavior a single walk-along can't — and the drift of habit over time. Light-touch on purpose; over-instrumented diaries die by day 3.
Participants
Sample: n = 8. Small by design — this is depth work, not a survey. Recruited for range, not representativeness.
Screener criteria
- Mix of newcomers (< 3 months in a city) and long-term locals / professional navigators
- Range of baseline map-reliance (self-reported: "I'm lost without it" → "I never use it")
- At least 2 who navigate for work (courier, delivery, tour, postal)
- Mix of walkers, cyclists, transit-users
- Exclude: professional cartographers / GIS folks (too expert), Wend team + friends
| ID | Profile | Map reliance | Written up |
|---|---|---|---|
| P01 | Newcomer, 2 months, transit-first | high | field notes only |
| P02 | Local, 20+ yrs, walker | low | field notes only |
| P03 | Newcomer, 6 weeks, drives | high | field notes only |
| P04 | Newcomer, 6 weeks, walks everywhere, gets lost constantly | very high | Interview — P04 |
| P05 | Local, tour guide | low | pending |
| P06 | Transplant, 3 yrs, "finally stopped using it" | medium | pending |
| P07 | Bike courier, 3 yrs, navigates by feel | near zero | Interview — P07 |
| P08 | Newcomer, 1 month, anxious navigator | very high | pending |
(Full write-ups for P04 and P07 first — they're the two poles of the sample and the richest sessions. Rest are captured in raw field notes, synthesized in Synthesis — Wayfinding.)
Timeline
| Phase | Dates | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiting & screening | May 12–26 | 8 confirmed, consented |
| Walk-alongs | May 27 – Jun 13 | session notes, audio, route traces |
| Diary study (parallel) | Jun 2 – Jun 16 | ~112 diary entries target (8 × 2 wk) |
| Synthesis / affinity mapping | Jun 17 – Jul 2 | themes → Synthesis — Wayfinding |
| Readout + design implications | Jul (mid) | working session with client |
| Buffer / follow-ups | through Aug | contract close-out |
Analysis approach
Thematic + affinity. Transcribe the load-bearing bits, tag observations, cluster bottom-up on the wall (no a-priori framework — let the categories emerge). Triangulate walk-along behavior against diary self-report; the gap between what people do and what they say they do is usually where the insight lives.
The wall mid-synthesis. Blue = observed behavior, pink = verbatim quotes, yellow = my inferences (kept separate on purpose — the inference is the part I'm most likely to be wrong about).
Ethics & consent
Informed consent, recorded. Participants can stop the walk anytime; we don't navigate anywhere they'd feel unsafe. Audio stored locally, deleted post-synthesis. Pseudonymized to P0x in all artifacts. Location traces generalized (no home addresses in any deliverable, ever).
Deliverables
- Synthesis — Wayfinding — themes + design implications (the real deliverable)
- Two annotated deep-dive interviews (Interview — P04, Interview — P07)
- Verbatim highlight reel for the readout
- A one-page model the team can pin above their desks
The map is not the territory, and the app is not the wayfinding. We're studying the second thing.