Camping from the Viewpoint of a Product Designer

Camping is an activity that transcends the standard social and economic assumptions. Camping is an extremely popular activity that attacts hundreds of thousands of participants each year. We come to see and experience locations and activities like:

Hiking in the Appalachian Mountains
Hiking on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina

Hiking on Mount Mitchell in North Carolina


Sliding Down a Gigantic Rocks into 56 Degree Water at Sliding Rock

The modern camping trip is a buffet of products designed to help improve the camping experience. We bring, use and make icons, and artifacts, like:

The Venerable Coleman Camping Stove

Everyone Loves a Campfire Followed by SMores


When the Tents Leak, The Pop-Up Shelters Come Out

PVC Helps this Camper Accommodate for Missing Product Features

The podcast (below) discusses the camping experience and how we could redesign that experience to make camping more universally acceptable. Hopefully this exercise will give you ideas on how-to evaluate the experience associated with your products. Evaluating the experience associated with an existing product can be an excellent way to define new product experiences. These experience models lead to developing new, or derivative, products that make these new experiences possible.

As always, your comments, and suggestions, are welcome. Please send them to me at montie@montie.com. Have a great day!

Sincerely,
Montie Roland