Trail Sense
TrailSense is a hands-free nature companion designed for Meta display glasses. It helps hikers in Southern California stay safe and stay curious by providing quick, glanceable plant identification and gentle safety guidance — without stopping the flow of the trail.
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Why TrailSense?
Hikers are often curious about the plants they see.
But taking out a phone interrupts the pace of the trail and breaks attention.
TrailSense provides plant identification in place, without stopping.
Quick. Glanceable. Heads-up.
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Designed for the Curious Hiker
TrailSense is made for hikers who want to understand the landscape while staying in motion.
Context Southern California + Sierra trails
Behavior Notices plants, prefers not to stop often
Need Identification that doesn’t disrupt movement
Safety Wants to avoid toxic look-alikes
Hands Often full (poles, water, scrambling)
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Scope
This project focuses on the user experience, not the recognition model.
In Scope
HUD visual design
Curiosity Mode
Safety Mode
Low-Confidence Mode
Confidence dot system
Voice and gaze interaction flow
Field testing through Wizard-of-Oz
Out of Scope
Training the computer vision model
Building Meta glasses hardware
Identifying all plants everywhere
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Curiosity Mode
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Medium Confidence
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Low Confidence
When TrailSense is uncertain, it does not guess.
Instead, it presents both possibilities and offers one distinguishing feature the hiker can check visually.
This approach prevents false confidence and builds trust through transparency.
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Safety Mode
Safety color is reserved ONLY for risks so the user associates orange with “pay attention” consistently.
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Why Confidence Needs to Be Visual
I drew on interface patterns from aviation HUDs, Tesla Autopilot, and Apple’s spatial interaction design, where shape and opacity, not text, communicate confidence. This allows TrailSense to express certainty in under one second, without distracting hikers or reducing situational awareness.
TrailSense communicates certainty using a simple confidence dot that pairs a visual signal with tone.
Solid = confident
Dimmed = likely
Hollow = uncertain
Instead of making the user read or interpret a sentence, the system uses repeated visual + audio pairing, allowing hikers to understand confidence instantly, without breaking flow or looking away from the trail.
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Why Scope Matters
I intentionally scoped TrailSense to a small set of plants that hikers frequently encounter in Sierra wet-meadow environments.
The goal was not to identify everything, but to support recognition, safety awareness, and learning through meaningful patterns.
The core learning moment comes from look-alike species, where TrailSense uses a hollow confidence dot and offers one distinguishing cue to help the hiker verify visually.
This prevents false certainty and makes the system feel collaborative rather than prescriptive.
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