Project Synopsis: A Path of Stories

Tracklines is a trail-based mobile media installation; a guided interpretive strategy in which hikers employ GPS-enabled smart phones to navigate a landscape seeded with location-based stories. Tracklines is not a game, per se. Instead, it is more closely related to a museum audio tour or sound walk, and as such the project falls more properly within the emerging genre known as the mediascape. Think of it as a kind of "walkumentary" combining elements of traditional documentary, land-based oral storytelling, and trail-guiding with new trends in mobile digital media delivery. A stroll of imagination in which single users or groups (2-3 maximum per phone) explore Banff trails through an open-ended, non-linear mode of geo-cached information access.

The objective of Tracklines is very simple: take a walk, enjoy the hike, and find a number of location-based stories and media hotspots scattered along the trail. In addition to its obvious entertainment value, Tracklines is conceived as a learning experience that will open doors of perception concerning select aspects of natural and cultural history, location-based narrative, and other topics appropriate to the augmented experience of place. Tracklines also acknowledges that location-aware technologies may present an opportunity to explore the very old relationships between landscape and memory, storytelling and sound, in exciting new ways.

Often, knowledge and observation of human and natural history is the principle take-home experience sought by visitors to Banff National Park, while a sense of having bonded with either the mountain environment or its people in a meaningful way can prove the most elusive. As a self-directed guided experience, Tracklines addresses these issues by creating an opportunity for hikers to physically immerse themselves in alpine environments while accessing place-based stories about subjects of interest. In this way, it is hoped that users will interact more intimately with the living landscape of Banff, perhaps achieving a heightened "sense of place" through narrative engagement - perhaps even a longer lasting sense of participation, dialogue, and exchange with wild places. Ideally, visitors will also return home with a greater sense of the place where nature, culture, and technology intersect.

Tracklines Project History

Tracklines is a location-based storytelling experience (ie, mediascape) designed to be delivered on wilderness trails in Banff National Park using GPS-enabled mobile phones. Tracklines is also software application created with the Mobile Experience Engine (MEE) locative media platform developed by the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), 2005-2007. The Tracklines project was funded in its first year of development by Canadian Culture Online as part of the Mobile Digital Commons Network, Phase II grant allocated under the New Media Research Networks Fund.

The concept was then produced by the Banff New Media Institute / ART Mobile Lab design and engineering team between Summer 2006 and February, 2007 using a rapid prototyping approach that included frequent technical testing in the field to ensure the stability of the application and troubleshoot unexpected challenges, as well as a rigorous program of user testing. This iterative design process resulted in a fully-functional Beta prototype finalized in March, 2007.

Significantly, during Summer 2006 the BNMI entered into a special partnership with the Banff EcoIntegrity Project (BEP), an initiative of Banff National Park / Parks Canada, in order to collaborate on one "layer" of locative content for Tracklines. That summer, the BEP hired a Content Writer (an experienced Park naturalist) to join the BNMI design team and co-author the narrative script for what would eventually become "GEOLOGY: A Walk Through Time". During the subsequent Fall and Winter periods, the BNMI team developed this script into a full multimedia experience design for GPS-enabled mobile phones, and built Tracklines as a working prototype application using the Mobile Experience Engine (Java2ME / Nokia version) co-developed across the MDCN.

In Fall 2006, the BNMI team also collaborated with researchers from across the MDCN (notably the Evaluation Mobility Useability (EMU) group from Concordia, and OCAD's Paula Gardner) to develop a series of user integration research protocols, and to conduct a series of rigorous evaluation field tests with volunteer public participants. This research aimed to integrate potential members of the Tracklines audience into the design process. Field tests used participant observation and other ethnographic strategies to evaluate early iterations of the Tracklines prototype for useability, design integrity, audience receptivity, and overall appropriateness with respect to audience and location contexts. Data from these public field trials was used to improve the design of Tracklines in subsequent iterations, and proved invaluable.

In March 2007, production was completed on a final Beta version of Tracklines. This prototype represents:

• A widely field-tested and technically stable software application.
• An experience design template that has proven effective on the Hoodoo Trail through technical and audience testing.
• One fully completed content "layer" entitled "Geology: A Walk Through Time".
• An extendable architecture that will, upon future development, permit the addition of expanded interactive functionality to the existing experience template, and also allow Tracklines to house multiple content experiences or "layers", accommodating different story genres and/or walking locations.
• A locative experience which has been thought through from start to finish with respect to the target user's experience.

Broadly speaking, as a research initiative, Tracklines represents a locative design experiment that, over the 2006/07 term, served to generate a significant body of knowledge in the field of mobility research. The project functioned to:

• Drive technical development/rapid prototyping of the MEE locative software in directions appropriate to trail-based activities and applications.
• Generate significant audience research data concerning the potential of locative media in National Parks and other outdoor/wilderness/cultural/heritage environments.
• Generate significant design insight in the area of wilderness-based locative media, particularly in terms of experience design, sound, graphics, interface design, information visualization, location-based narrative, and sustainable design practice.
• Explore system cognition issues as they pertain to trail-based media experiences.
• Expose cultural practitioners such as media artists, designers, and teachers (via live demonstrations and design workshops) to a functional prototype that reveals the potential of locative media experience delivered in remote locations, and demonstrates the capacities of the MEE as a locative design platform.

As a further evolution of the Tracklines project research, during the Summer/Fall of 2007 the ART Mobile Lab was contracted by Parks Canada to undertake a program of research evaluating audience response to the Tracklines prototype, and assessing public receptivity to Parks-based mobile media applications in general. A program of survey research and field trials took place between August 1 and September 30, 2007. The output of this research is summarized in the report entitled Public evaluation of a handheld locative trail guide created by the ART Mobile Lab for Banff National Park, completed in March 2008.

PROJECT DOCUMENTATION

Whether you're unable to get out in the wilds of Banff National Park's Hoodoo trail or looking to relive those happy hours spent learning about the natural history of our beautiful backyard, this is Tracklines: the movie. Happy Trails!