Trace Demo

Rosner, Daniela, Hidekazu Saegusa, Jeremy Friedland, and Allison Chambliss. “Walking by Drawing” To appear in Proceedings of the ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’15).

Trace is a TATLab and FizzLab project that explore how GIS-routing might be designed to emphasize guided wandering over destination-oriented travel. We developed Trace as a mobile mapping application that generates walking routes based on digital sketches people create and annotate without a map. In addition to creating walking paths, Trace enables people to send the paths to others, thus developing a unique form of digital communication. While today’s navigation apps lead users from one point to the next (much like connect-the-dots games), we wonder how traveling the city could feel more improvisational (like freehand sketching or letter writing), prompting new forms of expression and insight.