RANGE TABLET APPLICATION

Building a bridge between nature and tech, Range is an application to streamline the environmental duties for park wardens and the national park systems across Canada.

Better known in Canada as park wardens, typically park rangers are misunderstood as the Yogi Bear of the Woods. As a critical component to sustaining the environment, park wardens actually study, monitor, and manage ecosystems and are essential protectors of cultural resources, developers of programs for public safety, builders of neighbouring community partnerships, and decision makers that provide scientific research. The design process improved the daily experience and safety precautions for park rangers and visitors.

Recognizing that a park warden’s job is relatively isolated and dependent on the environment, a significant challenge encountered in this project was reaching a resolution for low Internet connections and establishing an offline mode. Other considerations included data input, fast response times, the iOS application interface, and tracking the secondary target audience of visitors to the park. Range took life as an intuitive, map-based design that would embrace the current familiarity of navigating their environment from a tablet.

By designing an application to be a digital companion for the many demanding responsibilities experienced by park wardens, Range is a solution for park rangers and visitors through its easily navigated mapping interface and consistent accessibility to information. Features include tracking visitors and their permits, pinning locations and incidents, observing animal proximity, danger zones, and accessing large databases of species. These aspects were designed with the park warden in mind. The objective was to relieve some of the restraints the user would encounter by merging their world of parks and ecosystems with user experience design.   

We really embraced the process of bringing Range's identity to a friendly, but approachable system. One of my roles in the project emphasized the relationship the user would have with the application through Range's logo design and brand essence.