Wildlife Safety

Wildlife Safety Training Project

A human–computer interaction research project designing a digital system to help park visitors safely navigate wildlife encounters and protected ecosystems at California State Parks.

Role

UX Researcher — Assisted with literature review, contributed to research design, developed study instruments, conducted semi-structured interviews, and collaborated with park stakeholders to understand docent expertise and visitor behavior.

Research & Design Skills

Literature Review, HCI Research Methods, Study Design, Survey Design, Focus Group Development, Field Research Planning, Environmental UX, Safety-Critical Design, Cross-agency Research Coordination

Type

Academic Research — Authentic User Experience Lab, UCSC (2025)

Working alongside Heather Ecobichon, 2nd Year HCI M.S. student, and Rebecca Jonas, Post-Doctoral Scholar in the Computational Media Department at UCSC.

Overview

Visitors to protected wildlife areas often lack knowledge or previous experience with wildlife to navigate safe interactions. Año Nuevo State Park has a docent program of over 200 volunteers who help visitors navigate safe interactions with Elephant Seals while enable visitors to experience the animals first hand. We are looking into how this state park navigate these interactions, how visitors behave, and seeing if there is a need for technology to assist docents with educating visitors on wildlife safety.

Approach

Literature Review: We conducted a literature review before designing the study to understand what is known within the field already, current gaps, and previous study designs used. We found that a lot of previous literature looked at safety within a human lens but not safety with both animal and human perspectives in mind. We ended up citing 21 peer-reviewed academic publications for this project.

Semi-structured Interviews: We conducted interviews with 21 docents with varying levels of experience (1–40+ years) to learn how they teach visitors about wildlife safety, strategies for managing groups, and their perspectives on potential digital tools. Interviews focused on themes such as visitor behavior, teaching methods, safety practices, and technology opportunities.

Field Observations: Participated in docent-led tours and self-guided visitor experiences to observe interactions, educational strategies, and safety practices in the park context.

Analysis

After collecting interview and field data, we conducted a qualitative, thematic analysis to identify patterns in docent practices and visitor behavior:

• Grounded Theory Coding: Interviews were transcribed and coded in two rounds. The first round captured descriptive, incident-by-incident notes, and the second round focused on identifying emergent themes.

• Thematic Synthesis: We combined insights from interviews, field observations, and photos of park signage to create a holistic understanding of how visitors learn, how safety is communicated, and where gaps exist

This project is currently on-going. Reach out if you would like to talk about it!

For now enjoy a picture of the Elephant Seals from my most recent trip to the park!