Towards Understanding Hikers' Technology Preferences

Many people enjoy hiking as an outdoor escape from everyday life. However, in our survey of 1002 respondants in the United States, 95% of respondents indicate that they prefer to bring their cell phone when hiking. This potentially creates distractions by reminding hikers of the daily pressures they sought to escape. We believe technology has the ability to enable or enhance outdoor activities, such as hiking, without taking away from the experience. But to begin to realize this vision we must first understand current attitudes towards technology in the outdoors. We present data from a nationwide survey conducted within the United States. We have used this data to identify clusters around attitudes towards hiking and technology use while hiking. We present initial results and analysis of this data as well as direction for future work.