Backcountry travel is complex and dangerous and yet incredibly rewarding. We believe the resources available to recreationalists can improve and the way to do that is through listening directly to the voice of the skier.
We engage with, and design for all backcountry travelers regardless of mode of travel or skill/experience level. We seek to make work that is valuable for recreational users, educators, guides, avalanche centers and curriculum developers, and manufacturers.
Our approach is called Human-Centered Design, a close friend of Design Thinking. It is a form of creative problem solving that begins with empathy. We do our best to put ourselves in our participants' shoes. The desired outcome is not to definitively prove or disprove a hypothesis but simply provide inspiration. We seek to offer fertile ground for new solutions. It doesn't replace quantitative or other forms of research. It is instead an important compliment that is well suited to understand why people have the behavios that they do.
At the heart of our research are semi-structured, qualitative interviews where we spend 60-90 minutes with participants unpacking their motivations, fears and experiences. We employ other methods depending on the learning goals, such as a diary study where we talk to participants before and after a tour. We also do a lot of prototyping, where we ask people to do something rather than talk about it. For example, in our many speed dating events we to facilitate partners meeting while learning how they go about it. Please see the outcome of this work on the research page.
Human-Centered design is about applied research, putting research into action. We create solutions to meet the needs and mental models uncovered in our research. Teamwork and human factors are critical to travel in the backcountry and also where participants have told us they have their greatest challenges. We believe it's an important area for us to focus. For the 2024-25 season we are consolidating individual resources into a more comprehensive Teamwork Toolkit, coming in September. We also offer our Partner Network for those who want to connect with like-minded tourers thoughtfully.
Richard is a long-time avalanche educator and ski guide, author of Light Tours of Tahoe and served as executive director of AIARE from 2016-2018. He is passionate about student outcomes, and actions people take after training.
Daniel is a mediocre backcountry skier but a great Human-Centered designer and product manager with experience at Apple and IDEO.org. He loves helping people through making useful things.
Jenny is a design research specialist and wild places enthusiast. She's passionate about supporting people to choose safe behaviours, navigate risks and mitigate trauma.