Human Behavior and a Google Earth Tour
At 8 am on Saturday morning about 20 of us were in Ray and Ruth’s living room. Ray was quieting the crowd to show us a Google Earth flyover of the “long run” route we’d be traversing in a few moments. He’d recorded it complete with narration and was playing it back on the TV. After about the first major turn the room buzzed again with chatter. Ray, to his credit, said, “I guess no one is interested” and proceeded to hand out what he called “turn by turn” directions or what cyclists call “cue sheets.” (Side note: I can’t figure out why runners and cyclists in my region don’t use the same technology or conventions…there are many who travel in both circles…) As usual about the half the runners took the sheets; the other half planned to stay with someone who had the sheets or knew the route.
Why didn’t we want to watch the video?
I’m going to guess since I didn’t interview anyone onsite.
- We wanted to get running. It was early and cold and I’m guessing many folks planned to be ready for the next thing by 11 am or 12 pm. Besides, the toughest part of a long run is starting!
- While the video was novel for a club-hosted long run, we’d seen it before for other running events - especially marathons. Somehow seeing our local geography (Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, Winchester) just wasn’t that interesting.
- The overview in that form didn’t help us understand the route as a paper map might. The linear walkthrough didn’t bring out key points (or regions) of interests such as the big strip mall or going around the Mystic Lakes.
- The vast majority of us lived and ran regularly in one or more of the towns through which we’d travel.
In short, I don’t think it was the right solution for the job in this case. Thanks Ray for the interesting experiment!
