The idea for LocaLore spawned as I was walking around Austin and was suddenly struck by the richness and vibrancy of the city around me. Austin is teeming with interesting people and fascinating local culture, and I found myself wishing that I knew the stories behind local Austin legends like the “I Love You So Much” graffiti on Joe’s Coffee Shop, or the “Fair Sailing Tall Boy” mural under the train tracks over 5th and Lamar. LocaLore is a mobile application that offers people the ability to discover their neighborhoods and cities in new ways by telling the stories behind these types of local legends.
Winner of the Texas State University 2017 Showcase Concept Award.
The two screens where users will spend more of their time are the Map View and the Live View. The map view is a local area map showing locational beacons where users can travel to find embedded local content. The Live View is where these beacons are overlayed over a user’s live environment using augmented reality technology. This forces users to actively get out and explore rather than being able to consume all of the content from their couch. This adds an element of gamification and encourages users to get out, learn, and share their discoveries.
To discover their local city lore, all users have to do is find a beacon on the map, travel to the area, and flip over to the live view to see what lore is available around them. They can then read, watch, listen, and learn about the interesting local stories they never knew were there. They can also comment on others submissions as well as post their own local stories for others to share.
Users have the ability to be both consumers and producers of Localore, and can consume and produce content in 4 formats: image, video, audio, and text. Users can submit their own lore stories through the app, which would be curated before posting to the map. This allows content to be user-generated, continually populating the app with fresh and unique stories that only locals can tell.