Problem
Outdoor navigation and safety tools often assume visual attention, phone availability, and low cognitive load. HapTrek explores how tactile feedback can support hikers when visual interfaces are impractical or unsafe.
Embodied Interface
A haptic hiking and public-safety concept exploring non-visual navigation, fall detection through 3-axis accelerometer sensing, and the application of human body dynamics to product design.
Focus
Problem
Outdoor navigation and safety tools often assume visual attention, phone availability, and low cognitive load. HapTrek explores how tactile feedback can support hikers when visual interfaces are impractical or unsafe.
Concept
The project frames navigation as an embodied interface problem: direction, motion, and safety status can be communicated through vibration patterns and sensor-driven feedback rather than a screen-first workflow.
Safety Layer
Accelerometer data supports fall-detection logic, giving the system a public-health and emergency-response angle beyond wayfinding alone.
Design Value
HapTrek connects human factors, biomechanics, and interface design: the body becomes the medium for information, and the product must respect perception, movement, balance, and terrain.
Product Brief Draft
This page serves as the current HapTrek case study and product brief. A fuller PRD would define target users, vibration language, fall-detection thresholds, environmental constraints, validation protocol, accessibility requirements, and emergency escalation behavior.
HapTrek is being framed as a professional embodied-interface case study: concept first, then sensor behavior, haptic signal design, safety validation, and accessibility testing.
Define the hiking safety problem as glance-free navigation and terrain-aware status feedback.
Public-safety and non-visual interaction brief.
Use 3-axis accelerometer data to detect motion state and candidate fall events.
Arduino + accelerometer prototype direction.
Map directional and safety states into vibration patterns that can be learned without visual attention.
Vibration language still needs validation.
Test false positives, terrain constraints, cognitive load, accessibility, and response behavior.
Next PRD requirement.
Accelerometer-based state detection, threshold thinking, and fall-detection requirements.
Haptic signal mapping, non-visual information design, and movement-aware interaction constraints.
Accessibility, false-positive analysis, environmental constraints, and emergency escalation planning.