A demonstration stood out for me this morning at ICHIM. Hide’n’seek is a simple idea to increase engagement with user generated trails (www.hidenseek.us/).
Each game becomes a weaving of memories based on experiences, clues, questions, challenges, and pictures that can allow a heightened awareness of space
This gives:
placed based knowledge without maps
Thierry and Michael demonstrated both a handheld device (with communication between host and guest via a webserver) and an earlier paper-based prototype (actually I liked the paper better). For simplicity of use they had made a decision not to have any georeferencing or image recognition. Unfortunately this precludes the system adding any extra context, or building up of knowledge.
In talking with them I realised that the benefits were not just for the guest – the host would benefit in looking at their environment in a way that combines their accumulated experience and a fresh set of eyes. My cousin Richard Smith works for Living Streets in the UK. Among their toolkit is the Walkability Audit. Hide’n’seek iswould be a nice complement to this approach.
