Go Jauntly awarded Innovate UK funding
We are very excited to announce that we have recently been awarded Innovate UK funding as part of the £1m Design Foundations competition for Audience of the Future. We are planning to research and experiment with an Augmented Reality (AR) prototype that will bring to life data and content about our cities with a view to helping people connect with their environment and surroundings in new ways.
We currently provide ways for people to discover walks and locations to enjoy in the city and the outdoors by using imagery and bite-sized facts and information. Users can document their own walking routes to share with our growing community and share outdoor adventures with family and friends. We now wish to create an enhanced, playful experience for families to walk and learn more about the nature around them by building upon our in-depth knowledge of walking in cities.
Our prototype will combine AR, open data sets as well as our own curated and crowdsourced content. We hope that this feasibility study will uncover the approaches that have the potential to change behaviours.
We will be running a series of experiments to help us to explore how technology can steer human behaviour and how it shapes our relationship with nature, particularly in children. This will involve tests to see how families interact with different features in different settings and with different mindsets. Our findings will help us to understand whether AR can support adults and children alike in their appreciation of the environment, interpretation and its effects on nature and biodiversity.
Technology and design for good is a growing sector of the creative industries and new research by Dr Miles Richardson and his team has pointed to nature connectedness being 'positively related to age and nature pictures taken per week, and negatively related to selfie-taking and smartphone usage times'. We are hoping to find out more about how immersive content can improve our lives and re-engage us.
So watch this space! And thanks again for your ongoing support.
Hana Sutch, Co-Founder