Cultural Tourism Hackathon

Nowadays in every project, it is important to collaborate and work together with different fields and combine the know-how to gain the best result. On 5th December 2019 a Cultural Tourism Hackathon will take place at HAMK Design Factory that involve students from Häme University of Applied Sciences and Tavastia Education Consortium. The goal is to co-create new mobile app game tasks for cultural tourism destinations

In the hackathon, student groups will work together to co-create mobile app game tasks or dilemmas for one cultural destination of their choosing. Searching information, experiencing the destinations, as well as, materials given for the students beforehand will support the work of the hack day. So, remember to prepare, empathize with the visitors of the destination, and have a good look on the material before the hack day.

The background materials include 14 main stories with different themes like medieval time, Sibelius, glass, pilgrimage etc. Under the main stories are destination stories. For these destination stories the goal is to co-create a task/dilemma that will work on mobile app, and the solution/answer that is related to the destination story.

There are some restrictions that help to scope the tasks/dilemmas for a destination story:
1. The task needs to be a place that is possible to complete also when the destination is closed. The best place is somewhere outside, near the culture destination.
a. An example of a task can be to find two numbers from the destination’s surroundings, to add them together and give the answer to the mobile application game.
b. The task can be also simple. For example, the player reads some sign near the destination and writes a word as an answer to the game application.
2. The task can involve maximum 500 characters (including spaces).
3. The answer needs to be clear and unambiguous. Good examples are numbers, years or names. Answer cannot be a word that has many synonyms.
4. The task can involve a picture. The picture can observe what the player should do or search, but it can also only be just an illustration. Or the task can also be related to the picture, e.g. What year do you see on the picture?
5. In the task can also be related some videos.
6. The task can also have some AR (augmented reality) implementations. In this case the player needs to scan with the help of the mobile phone some special point or an icon near the destination. What happens next, is up to your imagination! 😊
7. Propose a certain place near the destination for the task point. A point, where the player should accomplish the task. These places should be given with exact coordinates.

The group, who pitched the best task/dilemma, will be rewarded with a fantastic price! The price is an intensive room escape game for the whole group next to the Häme castle! So, this hackathon is worth to take part and do your best with your group.

The co-created tasks will be implemented into the pilot mobile game. The game will be published in the beginning of April 2020. The hackathon is organized in collaboration with VIKKE and Häme Design Factory projects.

A wireframe model of the mobile application can be viewed on web browser from Fluid UI app. You can also install Fluid UI iOS (FluidPlayer) and/or Android app and view the application on your mobile phone.

In the wireframe model, you can see examples of how stories can be implemented as game tasks in cultural tourism destinations.

The mobile game tasks co-created in the hackathon, will be implemented to the mobile application by software developer Jerry Lehtisyrjä from HAMK Smart. We will be using storyboards to describe and pitch the created game tasks. During the hackathon you can use also the following template for designing your storyboard.

Happy hacking!

Authors: Heidi Kerkola, Annamaria Laine, Jerry Lehtisyrjä & Jari Jussila