OX Opens Up: Part One

Garmin’s decision to launch OpenCaching.com was similarly easy,  he says; it wanted to improve the game for everyone.  “We see a world of opportunity for geocaching. Geocaching is a great hobby. It gets people outdoors, it allows friends and family to spend time together, it brings people to beautiful places they wouldn’t otherwise see, and it gives technophiles an excuse to buy some really cool toys.

“We want to see the geocaching experience become even better for those who are already caching, and we want to make it incredibly easy for new people to start caching.  One goal is to make caching streamlined for someone who caches every day and to make it less intimidating for a family who only goes out a couple times a year.

“Geocaching can get less complicated, less intimidating, and more fun by having a website that: let’s you download as many geocaches as you want, provides easy website to GPS integration, and continues to listen to users.”

He admits, though, that the company had anticipated a possible backlash over its OX launch.

“We knew there was a chance, yes. Ultimately, we decided that if we could effectively communicate our goals to the community, then most geocachers would see that competition can be beneficial to the activity and its future.”

However, when queried as to what he thinks Garmin should have done differently, Chad replies: “Ask me again in three years. I feel like we are still just getting this thing started. If we were to start all over again, we would have had a review system in place from day one. We thought we could follow the Wikipedia model of having people report violating caches and remove them. We added the peer review system just a couple of weeks after launch, and it was a definite improvement.”

He says the site’s early launch allowed the OX team “to start getting feedback” from the geo-community as soon as possible. “We launched OpenCaching.com with the bare essentials, and a couple of sprinkles to show how we thought we could be better. Then we started listening to feedback, and we started watching how people actually used the site. We knew OpenCaching.com could go a hundred different ways, but we wanted to go with the community.

“If we had developed the site in isolation for another six months or a year, we would have started with more features and they would have been more polished. But I don’t know if they would have been the right features. We would have been developing based on what we thought people would do, and how we thought they would respond. Instead, we were able to change and prioritise based on what was actually happening.”

Among those initial changes were:

• Introduction of the peer-review system to reduce the number of inappropriate geocaches.
• Removal of the site’s ‘Log A Cache’ page and relocation of ‘Pending Logs’ – aka field notes – to a dropdown menu at the top of the page. “We don’t get emails from confused users about this anymore.”
• Automatic pocket query updates: “We noticed that most people download caches from the same area over and over again, so we decided to make that really easy (zero clicks required). Now, when you go to OpenCaching.com, we look at the queries you have already downloaded to your GPS. If those caches have been updated, or new caches added in the area, we update your GPS automatically.”
• A bigger OX guidebook to answer members’ questions.
• Verified finds: “We heard a common theme was that people wanted to be able to prove that they had really been to a geocache and weren’t ‘armchair logging’ … With new firmware, Garmin handhelds combine your location and a code from inside the geocache (a number, a QR code, or communication with a chirp beacon) to create a digital signature that proves you visited the cache.”

“That’s just a few examples of things we were able to do based on the feedback from the geocaching community.”

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