Bringing Inclusivity and Mindfulness to Birding
Overview
Birding is typically framed as a visual, checklist-driven hobby. But blind birders practice something fundamentally different: a slower, sound-centered, presence-focused relationship with nature. When research on blind birding surfaced early in our program, the three of us saw not just an accessibility gap, but a design opportunity: this mindset was something all birders could benefit from.
Initial pitch deck to Merlin to partner for our research and design capstone project.
Rather than waiting for an advisor to assign us a capstone project, we took the initiative to pitch directly to Merlin, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's bird ID app, which has over 5 million users. It allows users to ID birds primarily using live audio recordings. It also focuses on helping people learn more about the world of birds. We came prepared with prior research on blind birding and desk research, which provided a clear framing and a concrete proposal. They signed on immediately and even thanked us for our work.
Initial pitch deck to Merlin to partner for our research and design capstone project.
Research Goals
We entered the project with three guiding questions:
When and how do people want to engage with mindful birding?
How do people want to store, revisit, and share birding audio?
How can the birding-by-ear experience be improved through Merlin?
Research Approach
We ran a four-phase research study designed to move from broad exploration to generative co-creation.
Phase 1 — Semi-Structured Interviews (n=6)
We interviewed 3 novice sighted birders and 3 blind or low-vision birders. We deliberately chose novice sighted participants because they hadn't yet invested in binoculars or developed strong visual habits, making them more open to ear-based and mindful approaches than expert birders tend to be.
Interview findings research report highlighting important findings and creating empathy between Merlin and their real users by labeling interview participants as their spark birds.
Phase 2 — Field Observations
We invited participants to bird in real environments while we observed their behaviors and mannerisms while biring. One session was with novice sighted birders, and the other one was with blind birders. Observing in context revealed behaviors that wouldn't surface in an interview room.
Phase 3 — Quantitative App Review Analysis
To stress-test our qualitative findings, we analyzed nearly 6,000 Merlin app reviews, using Claude Code to co-create R scripts for data visualization, checking whether patterns we heard in interviews and field observations showed up at scale across the broader user base.
Data collecting methods with tech stack
Research report on qualitative data gathered from Merlin app reviews data
Phase 4 — Co-Design Sessions
We ran two mixed visual ability workshops: one remote (2 blind participants, 1 sighted), one in-person (2 sighted, 1 blind), and guided each group through three activities
Activities:
Formal birding log: Participants listened to an audio/video recording of a birding outing and decided what they'd want to log and share from the experience.
ncidental birding log: A time-pressured scenario where you spot a rare bird at a bus stop with 5 minutes to capture it. What do you log? What do you share?
Collaborative audio design: Using a vibecoded "Bird DJ" tool that let participants mix bird calls, environmental audio, mnemonics, and spoken notes, groups co-designed a weekly birding recap experience together.
Key insights
4 findings emerged consistently across methods:
1. People forget they can go back.
Birders rarely revisit their own past recordings or field notes, not because they don't value them, but because nothing prompts them to. When we surfaced old media during sessions, participants lit up.
2. Two distinct motivations drive what people want to log.
Co-design revealed a clear split: participants logging to learn wanted vocalization types, mnemonics, habitat, and bird behavior. Participants logging to reminisce wanted who they were with, where they were, their emotional state, and, only loosely, which birds they saw. These require different features.
3. Sharing birding memories is harder than it looks.
Participants struggled to share because their notes were too personal, their recordings often had private conversations layered over the birds, and their birding-specific content would land flat with non-birder friends. There was no easy middle ground between raw and private and too niche to share.
4. How people share varies by generation and visual ability.
Older blind participants preferred sharing in person or via email. Younger sighted participants gravitated toward Instagram Stories. No single sharing format served everyone.
Outcome & Direction
We showcased our research at the University of Washington's accessibility research day, where it received significant interest and praise from PhD students and professors specializing in accessible design research.
Our presentation section at CREATE community day at the UW
Reflection
My first time birding with my team
Before this project, I had never gone birding, conducted research with blind and low vision participants, or facilitated a co-design activity with mixed visual abilities in the room. Going directly to Merlin forced us to be rigorous before we even had a client. Our preparation was our credibility.
The deeper lesson was about mixed-ability research design. The friction between perspectives in the room surfaced tensions that homogeneous groups would have smoothed over, and taught me that centering underrepresented users doesn't narrow a design problem. It opens it up.