Speaking to Ewan, it was clear that understanding what my users thought about confidence and how they measure it was important.
My first research, half contextual, half brief interview, was rather good in terms of being insightful.
I decided to go out on the walk and talk, rather than be sitting inside.
When speaking to the walking leader about confidence, she made it clear that the people who go on the walk tend to think about it as the distance they have walked each week. For example, one woman was coming back from an injury and she said that she would test herself every week, trying to get herself further down the path. This would, in turn, increase her confidence in going out, not only in the group but on her own as well.
Another factor which I found interesting, even from an individual point of view, was that having a friend come on the walk could help the user be encouraged to push forward and walk more. Maybe having a companion feature inside the app would be suited to give the user that bit of encouragement.
Another key point which I picked up on, which I was talking to Ewan about, was the fact that how could the user possibly upload their own walking routes? I think this feature could be added in a way that would require very little input from the user. The walk I went on yesterday provided me with an insight that every walk has a start and a finish, where the users think that is, is up to them. Maybe having a record feature for the start and end of the walk?
Upon finishing the walk, everyone heads back for a cuppa and a chat, which is nice. Again, speaking to the walk leader about how she has in the past let users visually say how confident they are, which was in the form of a small graph, similar to a pie chart. They would colour in the circle depending on how confident they felt.
This was for another group, which was learning how to cook on a budget. I quite like this idea, I felt that it would be easier for the user to articulate how they are feeling without putting too much of an emphasis on a 0-100% scale.