The prototype validated the experience, but it rested on an assumption: that timely, accurate closure data would exist to feed it. In practice, no such feed does — municipal notices lag reality by days, and conditions on the trail change hour to hour. Building the product meant confronting that gap head-on.
Flipping the data model
The answer came from the research itself. Users' core question at a barricade — "can I get through?" — is one the people already on the trail can answer better than any document. So the live product inverts the model: instead of pulling from municipal sources, it lets walkers report conditions themselves. Three statuses — clear, on foot only, or blocked — reported in one tap, aggregated in real time. The community becomes the data feed the prototype was waiting for.
- Scan at the barrier
- →
- See live status
- →
- Report in one tap
- →
- The next walker knows
Closing the loop the signage left open
Research showed the moment of failure was standing at an entrance with no usable information. The product meets users exactly there: QR stickers at the access points link directly to that location's live status page. The broken on-site signage that started this project became the distribution channel for its solution — each sticker leads with the question a walker is already asking at that spot.
The production sticker for Pottery Road. Each access point gets its own question as the headline; the print is straight black on weatherproof vinyl — outdoors, in full sun, scan contrast beats brand purity.
The stickers are now up along the corridor, placed where the research said the question actually gets asked: trailhead boards, the backs of road signs where a walker turns around, the bollard at the bottom of an access stair, and poles up on the street for people still deciding whether to head down into the valley.
In the field. Stickers sit at eye level on the surfaces walkers already stop at — trailhead boards and the backs of road signs.
Each location gets its own question. The Riverdale sticker rides the existing wayfinding — the same pillars and bollards the city already maintains.
The last sticker leaves the trail entirely — posted at street level so the answer arrives before the walk down, not after.
Eight minutes. That's how long it took from the first stickers going up to the first community report coming in.
Shipping the loop also meant being able to see it working. A small, unlinked tally page counts every report as it lands — running total, reports per day, and breakdowns by location and status — so a glance answers the one operational question that matters: are the signs being scanned?
The submission tally, light and dark — shown here with sample data. Every report is counted at the moment it lands, by day, location and status. Built on the same tokens file as the product, so night ink comes for free.
A five-day production sprint
The build was a design project in its own right: five intensive days from validated concept to shipped site. That covered a new brand identity, a bespoke map theme with light and dark modes, the offline strategy, a serverless reporting backend with unit-tested aggregation logic, the QR print system, and the domain launch. The four weeks of research made that pace possible — every product decision already had an evidence base, so build time went into execution rather than debate.
Ruthless scope
Not everything from the prototype shipped — deliberately. Audio detour guidance tested well, but wayfinding turned out not to be this product's job; the reasoning lives in the accessibility section below. The core loop launched on its own: scan, see the status, report the status. Shipping the smallest thing that solves the researched problem beat shipping everything the prototype imagined.
