History Hunt : Raising User’s Curiosity towards Places of Historical Value using Narrative-driven, Location-based Augmented Reality

Today our society is greatly built on modern technologies. In most parts of the world itis a social standard to have access to a smartphone and the Internet. Being able to keepin touch with others, consuming information, or being entertained independent of placeand time are assumed standards. From an entertainment perspective, the interactivemedium has changed in the modern society, the gaming community is still growing, andfor many it is a daily routine to play some sort of game, either on the computer, tablet orsmartphone. However, new ways to engage the user in fun activities are still beingexplored. At the same time, the consumption of media and use of digital technologiesraises concerns towards health issues and time spend outside in the nature, according tocritics. Pokemon Go, a smartphone application released in 2016, presented a possiblesolution to this problem, encouraging users to go outside and catch Pokemons due to thelocation-based nature of the application. The need to physically move to certain placesin order to catch a certain Pokemon facilitated not just people’s exercise, but also socialaspects as one would likely meet other players trying to catch Pokemons. While this is astep in the right direction, I strongly believe that this technological advancement couldalso be used for other entertaining and beneficial needs to people. This thesis investigates an approach of using similar technologies compared to thoseused in Pokemon Go, combined with narrative elements and a linear task system, inorder to create an experience with the purpose to engage users with local places ofhistorical value. By using geolocation-based technology, the application guides the userto places of historical value, while augmented reality (AR) elements are used to raisethe user’s interest, and further engage them in an interactive way. The developedapplication allows the user to solve tasks, which require interaction and exploration withthe real world environment in order to gain the necessary information, related to ...