WalkApp

Abstract

People visit peri-urban recreation areas and nature reserves for a variety of reasons: to relax, observe nature, go for a walk, walk the dog, do sports, meet friends and much more. They are often not informed in depth about the different habitat types and their inhabitants and are also not aware of how much work goes into maintaining such areas. With the WalkApp, we tried to inform visitors on site and to involve them by context aware content presentation.

A key feature of the WalkApp is that the Mitwelten datasets of the Reinacher Heide nature and recreation area are presented in the local outdoor context. Images, texts, infographics or sound documents are offered location-sensitively and thus context aware via a mobile device. A medial expanded walk should feel like you are on a walk with a biologist friend who occasionally points out interesting biological phenomena or sociopolitical conflicts. The eyes should not be constantly fixed on the mobile device so that the surrounding nature receives sufficient attention. Only when users approach a hotspot, they are alerted by a beep to a possibly interesting topic. The app also invites visitors of the Reinacher Heide to upload photos of their observations via the reporting platform WildeNachbarn. WalkApp users can choose from three different experience modes: ‘Living creatures and habitats’ informs with texts and images about the surrounding nature, ‘Points of View’ offers audio documents of expert interviews, and ‘Contributions of the Community’ displays uploaded visitor photos.