Ridgeline Tactile Pack

RESEARCH
Research included interviews and site visits to learn from outdoor gear makers and repair people, benchmarking of existing gear and materials, and a bodystorming exercise along the Gariwerd Peaks Trail. I conducted multiple overnight hikes with nine fellow participants to understand the specific needs of hikers in the dark.

ITERATION
Once I had identified the opportunity for tactile surfaces, the iterative design process began. The combination of soft and hard materials in a hiking pack provides fertile ground for experimenting with both malleable and rigid textures. Using UX and wayfinding principles, alongside human touch-sense research, I applied these principles onto the surfaces of both hard buckles and soft, technical hiking textiles.

Paper prototypes and fabric tests were done using both physical craft and CAD-based techniques. I experimented with multiple techniques to land on a texture system that was identifiable, while also being durable and lightweight, the two main concerns of hikers choosing a pack to use.

TESTING
User testing, including indoor tests and outdoor hikes, was carried out to validate and iterate on the outcomes. Five participants were blindfolded and asked to evaluate a range of textured samples. I then conducted a nighttime test to simulate actual use cases of the product. Finally, the hiking pack and stuff sacks were taken on a six-hour hike at Cathedral Range.

PRODUCTION
The Ridgeline Tactile Pack was produced using an industrial sewing machine to ensure a highly durable outcome. The tactile hardware was printed using a powder printer, and the frame was made of steel rod. The fabrics used are industry-leading nylon-66, creating a top-quality monomaterial construction. The outcome is conceptually the first of its kind, while also being designed for repair and disassembly, and could feasibly be manufactured with minimal changes.

Embedding tactile cues into outdoor gear is an important innovation as more night hiking happens globally in response to hotter days on average, and as outdoor sports become more inclusive for people with vision impairments.

A prime example of an existing tactile interface is the Braille alphabet, a language that enabled millions of people to educate themselves and communicate. Today, tactile haptics enable information-rich UX experiences for everyday people and specialised medical contexts alike. By applying this thinking to outdoor gear, simple tactile surfaces can improve the accessibility and comfort of an outdoor experience, in the same way that haptics have improved our experience using electronic devices.

Hiking trails in arid areas like the NT are often hiked at night, even in the winter months. Hikers rise at 3am and walk using head torches until sunrise, to avoid the heat of the day. As summer temperatures continue to climb globally, and adventurers race to avoid heatstroke and dehydration, night hiking is only rising in popularity. Improving the safety of hiking by keeping people informed about the location of first aid equipment and water access is important as the number of new hikers continues to grow.

By designing one user experience specific to the use phase of the product, and a separate user experience specific to the repair and disassembly processes, every human being involved in the product’s lifecycle is catered for. Making sure people were involved in decision-making throughout the project created a rich body of research that means the final product responds to real people’s needs, both for hikers and repairers/disassemblers.

Ridgeline represents design excellence in its smallest details, the tactile surfaces, through to its large impact as part of a monomaterial manufacturing system at the scale of a global company.

Ridgeline is a clear and intelligible tactile system embedded in the surfaces of the hiking pack, helping the user to feel their way around these surfaces in low visibility conditions, and to easily access water, first aid, and other belongings.

The primary tactile interaction system, ‘NaviTex’, aids the user in navigating the surface of their pack, including textiles, buckles and zippers, to find what they’re looking for. The tactile system here is a spectrum between smooth and bumpy, using roughness and scale to identify areas of the pack and inform actions such as opening, closing or adjusting. These become important when accessing urgent first-aid equipment, or locating warm layers in the dark of the night.

‘HydraTex’ helps users to easily understand where their water is, and how much of it they had left. This is particularly important when hiking, especially in a hot, arid environment.

‘FitTex’ communicates increments of strap adjustments to the hiker, helping balance the left and right straps, and informs them of how much they have loosened and tightened the straps to maintain a comfortable fit.

Acknowledging that the hiker is only one player in this product’s life cycles, I designed usability aids not only for the hiker, but also for other people, including the assembler, repairer and disassembler. Taking the pack apart to separate it into different materials, is aided with visual cues. These cues are hidden from the hiker during the use phase, to avoid confusion.

These tactile and visual communication systems overlay to address the needs of various stakeholders (hiker, repairer and disassembler) throughout Ridgeline’s use and disassembly phases. The use of tactile cues in outdoor gear is a genuine innovation in the field, and has the potential to be built into an array of other outdoor gear products to improve their safety.

Because vision impairment can include temporary impairment (e.g. darkness), all the way to ppermanent legal blindness, designing with this in mind is useful for everyone. Almost 10% of the global population has a visual impairment. Visual abilities can be thought of as a matrix, with varying health conditions and environmental situations overlapping to make up someone’s level of sight. Visual impairments can change day to day, or even throughout the day.

In the dark, when sight disappears, texture becomes the main source of sensation – the feel of rocks underfoot, and the brushing against branches along a path. The skin and muscles of a person contain many sensors including touch, temperature, pain, itch and pleasure. A richer, more embodied, and more informative experience can be had by involving these sensations in a product.

In the context of a hiking pack, utilising touch to signal to the owner pocket location and contents, strap tightness, frame adjustment, water levels and location, offers inclusion in the sport to a wider array of people. I also look forward to implementing these findings into other impactful, widely used products to make outdoor experiences more safe, inclusive and comfortable. Beyond outdoor gear, these tactile interface systems could be readily applied to med-tech, automotive displays and any product that requires a quick response under high pressure.

The design of the circular monomaterial manufacturing system, outlined below, could feasibly be implemented on a global scale with some alterations. By keeping each material separate for recycling, and making recycling a non-negotiable step for manufacturing, products like Ridgeline can play a part in eliminating polymer waste streams around the world.

It is important for every new product to be designed for circular manufacture. This means either creating a product from the castoffs of the waste stream, or designing the product so it can be re-used after its first lifecycle has ended.

Unfortunately, most high-performance outdoor gear is polymer-based and cannot biodegrade. When combined with other materials in a single product, the result is a non-recyclable conglomerate plastic.

MONOMATERIAL SYSTEM
To avoid this, I designed a monomaterial system, where every single component of the hiking pack, down to the thread, textiles, zippers and buckles, is made from the same polymer. It was determined that the best material to use was nylon-66, because it could be both a soft fabric and also made into hardware. It is also a readily available waste material, as it can be recycled from old outdoor gear, fishing nets, and certain hard plastic products. Embedding a monomaterial system early in the design process significantly reduces global environmental impact if this product was brought to market.

DISASSEMBLY
While I was able to use nylon-66 in almost every other component of the hiking pack, there was no way to substitute the foam padding of the hip and shoulder straps without sacrificing hiker’s comfort. After experimenting with various materials, I chose TPU formed into a lattice structure as an alternative to foam.

To make this TPU component disassemblable, it had to be removed in one simple motion, to minimise labour cost in the disassembly process (the main inhibitor to disassembly becoming mainstream). Instead of the TPU component being sewn into the straps as usual, it has slits spaced along its length, where a woven strap is threaded through to secure it. At end-of-life, this strap is pulled out and the TPU is separated from the nylon-66 shell.