You have a table with many coordinates of archaeological finds in Arnhem. Or an overview of all monuments and stumbling stones in the city. And city maps from different periods. What can you do with that? A team from HAN University of Applied Sciences, the Kadaster, and the Municipality of Arnhem took it on and created the StappenVerteller: an app that guides you through the city and tells historical stories about what was found in and above the ground. With this idea, they won the HackaLOD last weekend, where they were the best of ten teams.
The winning team from HAN University of Applied Sciences (Academy IT and Media Design), the Kadaster, and the Municipality of Arnhem.
StappenVerteller
The StappenVerteller combines heritage, movement, and play into a special walk through Arnhem. Fun for visitors and residents alike. Heres how it works: you choose an object in the app. Then the app guides you to the place where that object was found. Along the way, you hear stories about the many heritage items you encounter. At the find spot, you are virtually congratulated and immediately receive a new object to search for. This way, an ordinary walk turns into a treasure hunt full of history.
Designing an app in 24 hours
During HackaLOD, the team came up with the app idea and created a prototype. The next step is to actually develop the app. But there is much more possible, says the winning team. You can easily add extra heritage information. Or create a link with social media so you can share what you found. Geocaching is also possible: for example, by placing a replica of the find with a QR code for the next challenge.
Open and transparent
Alderman Maurits van de Geijn: As a municipality, we want to be as open and transparent as possible. That concerns documents related to decision-making, but also the many historical data we have. Data that used to be only in tables now come to life in the city. Thanks to this creative idea, we give residents and visitors something special back: a playful and educational way to discover Arnhem and its history.
The creators want to explore in the coming period how to turn the prototype into a full-fledged application for residents and tourists.
Accessible to everyone
HackaLOD is an annual hackathon with heritage data, this year at the Dutch Open Air Museum. Teams of programmers, historians, designers, and heritage specialists work together to create new, creative applications with linked open data. Linked open data is a way to combine and share information so that everyone can easily use, combine, and reuse it. This makes heritage accessible to everyone.
