The Adventure Cycling Association inspires and empowers people to travel by bicycle. For cyclists who want to share their stories and for those who want to research future tours, the Bicycle Touring Digital Companion (BTDC) is a hybrid blogging and mapping application that publishes user stories alongside route information and maps. The goal of the BTDC is to provide the bicycle touring community with a unified platform for viewing, creating, and sharing tour information. The BTDC will also aim to expand Adventure Cycling’s membership by engaging younger cyclists and supporting a wide range of experience levels. This new experience will be unlike any service that exists today, where storytelling is kept separate from recorded trip data. Our users will be able to view and create maps of their trips as well as find local spots of interest. Users will be able to share routes and experiences through narratives, and upload these narratives to the BTDC, where other users can view them. All of the narratives and data accumulated in the application can be stored and then later posted to provide cyclists an evolving diary of their trip. These tools will come together into one platform, designed to inspire more people to travel by bicycle.

However, For this senior project cycle, the RIT student team is not committed to implementing the entire vision of the system. The specific vision targeted by the team is outlined below

The Adventure Cycling Association inspires and empowers people to travel by bicycle. For cyclists who want a better experience while touring, the Bicycle Touring Digital Companion (BTDC) is a targeted mapping and service review application that allows cyclists to obtain information for services, points of interest, and alerts along bicycle touring routes in the United States. The goal of this phase of the BTDC development lifecycle is to provide value to users in the form of a unified and easily accessible database of service information. This access to service information will allow cyclists to more easily research and plan their tours, and allow cyclists to quickly modify their existing plans once they are on tour. Unlike other service review applications and tour maps, the information in the BTDC is both crowdsourced and specialized. This means that cyclists will avoid the struggle of sorting out the noise on other service review websites, and the difficulty of transporting and accessing physical touring maps. Cyclists will be able to add new points of interest and services to the database, review existing services, and track services along their current route. This iteration of the application is designed to provide value, even when standing alone from the system as a whole. As a result the student development team will be delivering this iteration of the BTDC as the minimum viable product.