Gameful Urban Mobility

Mobility in cities is facing many challenges, including congestion and pollution. Dominik Stampfl is exploring how these challenges can lead to a lack of enjoyment in moving within urban communiities, and how many of these issues not only affect the mobile experience for individuals, but also whole communities in an urban environment.

Gamification promises to have great potential to contribute to discussions surrounding such problems in urban mobility and may also help create a much more enjoyable experience for mobile citizens. Thus, liveability of an entire city depends on the options of mobility and the way it is organized, executed on and adopted.

The core objective of this research is to evaluate the potential of gamification when applied to urban mobility, using people centred, participative design methods, and to suggest a design approach to increase liveability through urban mobility.

Participative design methods include workshops, which have been conducted in Beijing with our partner Peking University and in Melbourne during the Melbourne Knowledge Week. Based on the outcomes, a prototype application has been implemented with our partner Stuttgart Media University. Two stages of 'Traffic Companion' have been developed: The first prototype was designed with the 'cutesy' of the original 'virtual traffic companion' concept in mind, whereas the goal for the second prototype was to achieve an efficient and reliable detection functionality for traffic jams and red traffic lights.