A Framework for Curating Engaging Leisure Walking Experiences

Leisure walking is an activity that can encompass a range of rationales for walking, this may include walking for exercise, relaxation, or active travel. To discover new or interesting routes, users may look to use navigation tools, online search, or local knowledge to formulate and plan new leisure walks that they have an interest in. These navigation systems are often built to aid routing between different and unfamiliar locations; however, only limited attempts have investigated such navigation methods beyond that of specific contextual characteristics or point-to-point routing. The limited subjective, contextual, and rich information about leisure walking routes provides the impetus for the research performed as part of this PhD.

The research first investigates how users engage with leisure walking through capturing rich results from a leisure walking behaviour survey and a think aloud verbal protocol study, mapping this alongside expert interviews. A framework for curating leisure walking experiences will then be designed and proposed, based upon the results of the qualitative aspect of the work. Finally, research will investigate the data generated, how this data can be curated, stored, represented, and how a routing algorithm could work, while also considering the richness and scalability of existing data sources. The study will look to provide more contextually relevant, interesting, and engaging leisure walking routes through the framework and tools, which will also support the development of more relevant and useful route recommendation systems for users. The research question of the project is as follows:

How can a framework for recommending leisure walking experiences be designed from user engagement with walks?

The question above is split into three main aims defining the focus of the study:

Understanding the User. To understand what engagements occur and how these can be captured using technology. And to investigate what type of characteristics users engage with while leisure walking.
Understanding the Data. To establish an understanding of how leisure walking characteristics and the related context can be represented in a leisure walking framework. To investigate existing data sources as to how these can be used as part of route recommendations.
Design and Test. To propose and test a walking route recommendation tool which considers the walking characteristics, the data richness, and the scalability of digital technologies to understand how they can be used to curate engaging leisure walking experiences.

We will collaborate with over 40 partners drawn from across FMCG and Food; Creative Industries; Health and Wellbeing; Smart Mobility; Finance; Enabling technologies; and Policy, Law and Society. These will benefit from engagement with our CDT through the following established mechanisms:

- Training multi-disciplinary leaders. Our partners will benefit from being able to recruit highly skilled individuals who are able to work across technologies, methods and sectors and in multi-disciplinary teams. We will deliver at least 65 skilled PhD graduates into the Digital Economy.

- Internships. Each Horizon student undertakes at least one industry internship or exchange at an external partner. These internships have a benefit to the student in developing their appreciation of the relevance of their PhD to the external societal and industrial context, and have a benefit to the external partner through engagement with our students and their multidisciplinary skill sets combined with an ability to help innovate new ideas and approaches with minimal long-term risk. Internships are a compulsory part of our programme, taking place in the summer of the first year. We will deliver at least 65 internships with partners.

- Industry-led challenge projects. Each student participates in an industry-led group project in their second year. Our partners benefit from being able to commission focused research projects to help them answer a challenge that they could not normally fund from their core resources. We will deliver at least 15 such projects (3 a year) throughout the lifetime of the CDT.

- Industry-relevant PhD projects. Each student delivers a PhD thesis project in collaboration with at least one external partner who benefits from being able to engage in longer-term and deeper research that they would not normally be able to undertake, especially for those who do not have their own dedicated R&D labs. We will deliver at least 65 such PhDs over the lifetime of this CDT renewal.

- Public engagement. All students receive training in public engagement and learn to communicate their findings through press releases, media coverage.

This proposal introduces two new impact channels in order to further the impact of our students' work and help widen our network of partners.

- The Horizon Impact Fund. Final year students can apply for support to undertake short impact projects. This benefits industry partners, public and third sector partners, academic partners and the wider public benefit from targeted activities that deepen the impact of individual students' PhD work. This will support activities such as developing plans for spin-outs and commercialization; establishing an IP position; preparing and documenting open-source software or datasets; and developing tourable public experiences.

- ORBIT as an impact partner for RRI. Students will embed findings and methods for Responsible Research Innovation into the national training programme that is delivered by ORBIT, the Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (www.orbit-rri.org). Through our direct partnership with ORBIT all Horizon CDT students will be encouraged to write up their experience of RRI as contributions to ORBIT so as to ensure that their PhD research will not only gain visibility but also inform future RRI training and education. PhD projects that are predominantly in the area of RRI are expected to contribute to new training modules, online tools or other ORBIT services.