For my practicum project, I'm playing around with ARIS. ARIS is an acronym for Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling. It's an app for the iPhone and iPod, and I'm using it on my iPhone. Its description on the App Store says ARIS "is a tool for making location based educational games, stories, tours and mobile data collection activities for place based learning curriculum and mobile citizen science designs."
Well, that sounds boring.
In actuality, ARIS is actually pretty cool. It's a location-based game, kind of like what I imagine Foursquare being like (I've never played). There are games that you can select from, and each one sets you out on a "quest." The quests have you travel to different places on campus (it's extremely local since it was developed by UW faculty) and it uses the iPhone Maps functionality to determine where you are. If you're not at the next stop on your quest, the app is pretty much useless — it won't do anything until it detects you're there.
These are the games you can play on ARIS.
As you can see, I'm currently playing "UW Campus Tour." The game began by telling me to begin my tour at Memorial Union. With the app open, I walked to the Union and as a I reached the front entrance, ARIS actually showed some signs of life. An image of the Union showed up on the screen, and this British-sounding guy began telling me a little bit about the building and its history. I was surprised by this touch, as the app went from modern-but-really-boring to almost medieval as the narrator tried to give the "quest" a more traditional feel.
The steps of my first quest.
After the audio clip was done giving me a brief history lesson on the Union, it dropped some not-so-subtle hints about where to go next, hinting at a "big, red building" nearby. Using my finest navigational skills, I found the Red Gym, or Armory just down the street. Once again, the app came to life.
After the armory, I was directed to the Library Mall Fountain and then the bottom of Bascom Hill. I was instructed to go Lathrop Hall next, but by this time it was dark and pretty freaking cold. I'll have to check it out soon.
My first impression of ARIS is that it's better than what I thought it'd be, but it still could be more useful and entertaining. The facts are basically the same ones they tell on tours here, and if I paid attention to those back during the days of my college search, I wouldn't really learn anything new now. As a result, the app provides very little incentive for people to actually use it. Maybe my experience was soured a bit because I went at night when it was cold, but I was basically just walking around a part of campus I already know pretty well. Perhaps, it would be more interesting for people who aren't student, faculty or otherwise heavily involved with the campus.
Next, I'll continue my quest and see if it gets any better.
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