Since last time, I've been mainly working on getting the Android experiment up and running. As of Wednesday, it is! We ran several more pilot participants early last week to work through some technical issues with the assessment app and finalize the experimental design. One important detail that needed to be worked out was the number of pings and the time between pings during the walk. This proved to be tricky as the more pings (and therefore data points) the better for assessing the psychological changes that are occurring during the walk. However, more pings also mean more interruptions throughout the walk which could alter the experience, and we want to avoid that. We've settled on 25 minutes between pings, and have hopefully achieved a good balance between collecting enough data without jeopardizing the experience.
The locations for the nature and urban walks also needed to be finalized. While the Dish was the planned nature location, getting participants to entrance is a bit of a hassle. The Margeurite doesn't go directly to the Dish, so getting there involves taking a shuttle partway and then walking. Each trip, there and back, takes about 30 minutes. This is doable, however Lake Lagunita has turned out to be a great alternative for the nature location! It takes under 10 minutes to walk the participants to and from the starting location. Also, in some regards the loop around Lag is more of a "nature" experience than the Dish as there are more trees, a dirt rather than paved trail, and the walk does not feature a giant, man-made radio telescope. However, there are also disadvantages with using Lake Lagunita for the nature walk, one being the shortness of the loop. We want participants to be on about a 75 minute walk so that we can ping them several times with sufficient time between pings. A lap around Lag only takes about 15-20 minutes, so we are having participants complete 4 loops. While the nature destination has been resolved, the urban walk location is still up in the air. The starting point for the urban walk now needs to be about a 10 minute walk away and a 1 mile loop, in order to replicate the nature trail. Stanford has apparently done a great job of keeping our campus green, as we're having trouble finding a place within 10 minutes walking distance of Jordan Hall that is sufficiently urban! If you have any ideas for such a loop, please let me know!! Solving the urban location situation is pretty huge, and will be the first thing we tackle tomorrow!
Well, four weeks in and a whole lot of progress! The technical problems with the assessment app appear to have been mostly worked out (cross your fingers!). We now have usable data from three participants, and as soon as the urban location is finalized the Android experiment will be in full swing! In addition to continuing to work on the Android project this week, I will also be working with Melissa to get the self-awareness online survey up and running. Excited to see what week five brings!
Interesting post. I suppose that having difficulty finding a place on campus that is sufficiently urban is a good problem to have.
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