Pilot Test Results (max 200 words)
We conducted our pilot test with two female UBC students. The participants encountered some difficulty with our prototype such as scrolling through lists and dragging the search radius since it was not a high-fidelity prototype. We decided to include these information in the instructions instead of updating our prototype for the actual experiment, as they were not crucial in answering our experiment goals. For example, we found that setting the time caused some confusion during the buddy matching stage, since the time entry was hardcoded into our prototype. We changed our instructions at the actual experiment to state that the time cannot be changed on the prototype. One of the biggest findings of our pilot test was that the participants were reluctant to come in on two different days for the experiment and to stay on campus until after sundown, thus making our designed experiment unrealistic. We revised our experiment to pair the participants with the fellow researchers whom they did not personally know instead of with each other to decrease scheduling conflicts and conducted the experiment at the participants’ most convenient time.
Experiment Abstract (max 150 words)
We address the idea of pairing individuals to accompany each other during their commutes. To demonstrate the benefits of having someone to walk with while travelling to a certain destination, we conducted an experiment with 5 participants to show that people generally feel safer when walking with a buddy than walking alone. The experiment consisted of two parts: (1) people matching and (2) walking alone and then as pair. The first part of the experiment was designed to discover what information users considered useful when choosing their walk buddy. The second part of the experiment had 2 levels within-subjects, comparing their perception of safety when walking alone versus walking with their chosen buddy. During our study, we discovered that participants felt universally safer walking with a buddy and that users could accurately guess their satisfaction with the walking buddy if provided with accurate information.
Revised Supplementary Experimental Materials
We kept all our interview questions, questionnaire surveys and coding sheets the same, but modified the consent forms slightly to better reflect the permissions we required for the experiment. The updated consent form can be found here: