Ask Local: Explore a Place Like Locals
In this paper, we explore the ways of utilizing wearable technologies and social networking to cultivate a medium of cultural exchange between local communities and travelers in order to preserve and share local cultures. As wearable devices emerge and become a mainstream technology, a massive amount of potentials rises to empower micro-cultural habitats to present genuine characteristics of cities and neighborhoods to visitors through introducing contextualized and just-in-time communication. We introduce AskLocal, a novel location-based assisting system that mediates the communication between visitors and locals, allowing visitors to make real-time queries using Google Glass, and gather the user-generated information provided by the local network. We developed and tested a prototype that allows tourists to ask questions with our Google Glass application and receive local’s answers on the device’s display. Proposed system allows visitors to communicate a particular context that they encounter such as wayfinding in the city or making decisions on leisure activities. User testing demonstrated that the prototype adds a new level of freedom that allows tourists to traverse an unfamiliar place while providing them personalized information.
