DISCOVER NATURE APPS
Ten years ago, after running a small design studio committed to doing high-quality work within a culture that valued respect and kindness, I went to a lunch meeting I hoped would lead to a new client. Instead it led to finding a business partner, founding a successful app development company, the start of a wide-roaming adventure, and—best of all—a new friend. The adventure lasted seven years, led to the development of four mobile applications serving visitors to public conservation lands and the public land managers that care for them. It was an experience I will always think of with pride.
THE BEGINNING
The seed of an idea for Discover Nature came during a drive across the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico in early 2000. During the drive the appearance of interpretive road signs standing lonely and seldom visited on the side of the road struck me, as did the somewhat amazing idea that wagon trains and settlers traversed this harsh landscape. The question of how to deliver these interesting histories to a wider audience intrigued me. Coming from a family that loved games, the idea started percolating as to how one might gamify the experience. At the time the technology was not where it needed to be, and the seed remained dormant for many years.
In 2013, after listening to an NPR piece on the illegal ivory trade, I was reminded where one of my passions lay…conservation, which led me to re-examine our client mix. I knew I wanted to be doing more work with conservation-based organizations.
A few weeks later, in the midst of some business development networking, I reached out to the National Wildlife Refuge Association and end up at a lunch with the president, Evan Hirsche. As luck would have it (though I thought it quite the opposite at the time) he informed me he was transitioning out of his current role. We talked, and for some reason the idea I had years earlier came up in conversation. That mention led to an ongoing conversation over the next few weeks, leading to a partnership that would last seven years, and—more importantly—a lasting friendship.
The first step, was discovery. We ground truth-ed the idea, developed a problem statement and followed that with a business plan. Discover Nature had been conceived.
Over the course of the ten years between seed and conversation, the technology had advanced, and the core concept arrived at for Discover Nature was a location-based game using mobile and cloud-based technology (GIS/GPS, on-demand cloud based data sharing, and a variety of native applications) to deliver a scavenger hunt style game to visitors of public lands.
After months of market research, conversations with multiple stakeholders—public lands managers, visitors, and leadership within Fish and Wildlife, we identified our first site and partners. Less than a year later (and coincidentally, the same year that Pokemon Go was conceived) we successfully launched our first app at the crown jewel of the National Wildlife Refuge System, the J.N. “Ding” Darling NWR in Sanibel, FL. We delivered the experience via native iOS and Android applications, under budget, on time, following an agile methodology that resulted in a successful visitor experience at launch, won an award for innovative interpretation, and continually improved over the course of the next seven years.
The core of Discover Nature was a location-based scavenger hunt style trivia game. It also included the equivalent of 100s of pages of interpretive information that educated visitors about the places they were visiting and the critters that depended on them.
Over time, based on feedback and observations, we built additional functionality into the experience. Users could use a virtual passport to record every refuge they visited, report wildlife sightings and see what others were seeing and where in real-time, and we supported real-time translations of content (static and user generated) across three languages (English, Spanish, and Mandarin). Discover Nature was both a multi-lingual game, interpretive tool, and crowd-sourced guide.
Following the successful launch of Discover Nature, and in response to stakeholder and user feedback we developed two additional platforms—Discover Nature VS, a virtual sign version, and Discover Nature W, designed to work online and offline in challenging wilderness conditions.
Based on the success of these three platforms our mobile applications came to the attention of the United States Marines Corps for their Air Ground Combat Center in 29 Palms California—the largest US Marine Corps base. They needed something to help them manage a recreational and military shared use area, and enlisted our services to deliver a user-friendly mobile application to provide interpretation and guidance to recreational users of the area.
Discover Nature experiences were delivered to visitors at over 30 National Wildlife Refuges, State, and National Parks (and one Marine Corps base) while maintaining their excellence over seven years and generating customer satisfaction ratings of over 90%.