Gamified navigation system: enhancing resident user experience in city exploration

A memorable city exploration experience requires some unexpected surprises. For pedestrians exploring in city blocks, ordinary route planning and navigation system cannot meet the need of interesting exploration and would even miss the possible surprises on the way. In order to enhance resident user experience in city exploration, we designed a gamified exploratory navigation system. Our system would engage the user when they are close to a point of interest (POI) by proposing interactive activities and "conversing" with them. We conducted preliminary field experiment with 5 participants to evaluate our system and observe how mobile technology and navigation system are practical used in city exploration. We hope our study could provide some reflecting for the further design of these kinds of services and systems which would engage residents in exploring the city and strengthen the connection with the city.