Day: March 7, 2017

Geocaching is a fairly old activity now which involves leaving a physical capsule for people to find and add to by only providing a select amount of clues and directions. Looking at the modern day adaptations of this with the use of smartphones and technology, this has become easy. Users can select where they want to go and the compass leads them there. Comm-Unity would maintain a sense of mystery by only providing the broad area of it. With Geocaching, many of them are out in the middle of nowhere so may be difficult to get there. That’s something that this project would avoid by placing the beacons in businesses and points of interest people would be able to find and explore places around them whilst improving the local economy. Geocaching has proved popular over the years despite it being still relatively unknown to the masses. With Comm-Unity, people would be able to access information such as reviews, photos, social media or general information on their smartphone, thus, distancing itself from Geocaching. Also given that many of the Comm-Unity Pucks would be placed in shops or in urban areas there would be less risk of danger as there’d be plenty more safety precautions as well as people around. Geocaching often involves people checking in in a log book, this could be something else that I look into as it adds a sense of community to the project.

Geocaching Homepage

(Image showing Geocaching’s Map of locations.)

Pokémon Go hit the Apple App Store last year to one of the largest launches for an app ever. The launch was so successful that Nintendo stock skyrocketed despite them having no hand in the game’s production besides the licensing. The app utilised the phone’s location services to allow users to go outside, explore and catch Pokémon. The game got many people, old and young alike outside, exploring. It’d be easy to identify people playing the game as they’d often walk around, phone in hand and eyes down. This actually lead to one of Pokémon Go’s main problems. People were so involved with their screens that they forgot about what was going on around them. There were many reported cases of people walking out into roads or dangerous environments in order to catch certain Pokémon. Seeing as my proposed app follows a similar plan, it’s important to realise the pros and cons to an app like this. The app caused mass hysteria with people going near mad to level up and “catch them all”.

Many heralded the app as being something that finally got kids back outside, however, the app’s popularity was short lived as things such as the whether or private areas prevented people from exploration. Where my product would get around this would be that the beacons aren’t randomly generated, they’re set up manually in public and private spaces. This would mean that access would be required to the beacons and there’d be no risk to the users. The Guardian described Pokémon Go as “Not a good game but a great experience” going on to say that the reason it succeeds is due to the exploration part of the app.

“The real fun, though, comes from heading out onto the streets to see what different sorts of Pokémon having been lying low in the rustling grass of local neighbourhoods, or at various historic sites.”

In a general sense, this is what the focus of my project is, urban exploration. Encouraging this would do wonders to the local community and economy as well as health benefits for all.