Urbanization increasingly separates people from nature, negatively affecting well-being. While prior work has explored technological interventions to foster human-nature interaction (HNI), embedding nature engagement into daily urban life remains challenging. We present GreenCompass, a social mobile application that recommends nearby micro-opportunities for nature encounters through context-aware scheduling, gamification, and adaptive tasks. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conducted a four-week mixed-methods field study with 40 participants split into two conditions: GreenCompass and a reminder-based baseline. Results showed that GreenCompass better improved nature relatedness, outdoor activity levels, well-being, perceived stress, and social connectedness. Our analysis identified four design themes: embedding nature into micro-moment integration, collective nature engagement, cultivating intrinsic bonds with nature, and system challenges. We further provide design implications to support everyday urban nature engagement. This work demonstrates how everyday mobile technology can help bridge the urban-nature divide and promote well-being.
Urban green spaces are critical for well-being, yet planners lack scalable ways to anticipate how environments will be perceived by users. We conducted an experiment with 27 participants who viewed 30 images of urban spaces while eye movements and brain activity were recorded. Image composition, parsed into 14 urban classes and aggregated as vegetation versus non-vegetation, systematically predicted responses: a higher proportion of vegetation drew more visual attention and was associated with higher attractiveness ratings, while images with less greenery elicited stronger pupillary responses. Brain signal analysis showed topographic patterns in theta and alpha activity between pleasant and unpleasant scenes, although differences were not statistically significant. Taken together, our findings highlight systematic links between urban scene composition, user attention, and affective responses. We release our dataset and software to support further research.
Although people often visit places of nature to disconnect from technology, increasingly digital tools are shaping these experiences. To better understand how technologies might become obtrusive in nature settings, and how people manage such obtrusiveness, we conducted a field study of 30 adults visiting an urban nature park and using digital tools that ranged in interactive intensity from simple photography, through photo sharing and plant identification, to a more immersive site-specific augmented reality app. Distinctive facets of the way they experienced technology as obtrusive were observed: deprivation, prescriptiveness, engrossment, diminishment, neediness, unreliability, and awkwardness. We identify six tactics used to manage these experiences: abstaining, limiting, minimising, deferring, delegating, and conforming. Our findings indicate that technological obtrusiveness is a complex experience affected not only by the intensity of interactive demands, but also incongruities between the way people desire to experience nature and technology-prescribed activities, and people’s agency to deploy mitigating tactics.
Aboard an Arctic expedition sailing along the coast of Svalbard, there is a disconnect between the group and the rest of the world, especially when facing a lack of internet connectivity. We conducted a co-design workshop with 13 participants in a unique context - a ship in remote areas of the Arctic with limited connectivity. We see this scenario as an opportunity to research how people’s needs, behaviours, and social dynamics are influenced by digital disconnection to design better tools for connection in everyday life. Through this research, we develop themes related to social and technological connection and disconnection. We discuss a number of implications and questions for design, including suggestions to (1) Use Naturally Emerging Aspects of the Environment to Connect People without Pulling Them out of the Moment, (2) Design to Shift Expectations for Response Speed and Richness, and (3) Understand Disconnection Needs, Responsibilities, and Safeguards.
Urbanization has limited people’s daily exposure to nature, reducing nature connection and overall well-being. Although virtual reality (VR) offers an alternative access to nature-like environments, it often lacks authenticity and connection to physical experiences. We present NatureCapture, a multi-user system that bridges real-world and virtual nature engagement by allowing users to capture real-world natural elements and collaboratively integrate them as interactive 3D models into a shared VR nature space. A two-week within-subjects study indicated that NatureCapture promoted nature connectedness, emotional regulation, and social closeness. Interviews further revealed that NatureCapture supported immersive and extended interactions with nature, promoted reciprocal engagement in virtual and real environments, and strengthened nature interaction through socially mediated engagement. Our work highlights the potential of user-driven real-to-3D transformation to preserve physical encounters with nature, combining the spatial flexibility and interactivity of VR. Such cross-environment paradigm offers a novel approach for sustaining human-nature connection in technologically mediated life.
People often spend time in nature to escape an over-technologised life, yet they increasingly rely on technology to do so. Understanding how technology use shapes nature experiences is crucial, given their implications for wellbeing and environmental concern. Through in-depth interviews with 30 people, we examine this technology–nature paradox, focusing on commonplace digital tools used around visits to nature. Our findings chart how people assemble and manage a carefully chosen array of tools for each outing. We show how these technology choices depend on people’s adopted mode(s) of nature engagement, identifying six modes and their associated technologies: adventure, aesthetic, ambient, enquiry, escape, and novelty. We further demonstrate how these modes shape the temporal deployment of tools across phases of a visit: before, during, and after. We offer an interpretation of how people seek to manage the technology–nature paradox and consider broader implications for designing technologies for beneficial nature experiences.
How might alternative encounters with personal hiking data support practices of noticing nature as well as changes in one’s self over time? To investigate this question, we conducted a multi-year first person study with Capra—a system that combines the collection and exploration of hiking experiences in nature with an emphasis on longer-term, occasional yet indefinite use. Over several years, three researchers that represented different hiking frequencies, paces, locations, and life stages concurrently and independently hiked, used, and lived with Capra. Findings revealed unique individual and collective changes in attitude among the team, from an initial interest in intentionally capturing specific natural phenomena towards a shift in attentiveness when re-exploring hikes as well as when hiking outdoors. It is these insights that emerged through our long-term experiences with Capra that we present and reflect on in this paper.