Pokemon Go Fix Your City?
On 7/10 this message hit my Facebook wall,
“Ben Berkowitz I hope you’re getting all these 7–35 year olds running the streets capturing Pokemon to report SeeClickFix issues while they’re out there.” — Alex Hoffnung
With the follow on response from a friend of friend,
“SeeClickFix is basically my favorite thing these days — I’ve turned into a grumpy old lady. Maybe I can bring my emotional age down a few notches by downloading Pokemon, too?”
This morning I went to download the game to understand the phenomenon. While capturing my first Pokemon I was relieved to receive a tweet which would remove me from a potential pedestrian fatality. The tweet,
At this point I realized I was not going to escape Pokemon for the morning. I sat down to write some quick thoughts on Pokemon, AR and Civic Reporting. Within two seconds Zack Beatty walked up to where I was sitting, pointed his phone at me and told me, ‘sorry just capturing a Pokemon’
Josh Stearns and I have been curious about gamification of the civic web as well as integrating the civic web into traditional social media for a while now. Josh wrote a post about this here. Pokemon Go has reinvigorated that curiosity a bit as real humans take to the real streets to play a digital game.
To follow are some of my thoughts on the intersection of Pokemon and Potholes at…intersections. Spoiler alert: A SeeClickFix issue may or may not already be a PokeStop.
Augmented reality is a really novel user experience for location aware devices with cameras. I’m actually surprised that a game like Pokemon Go has not taken off sooner. I love the idea of using AR and gamification to help citizens discover their cities and their neighbors in ways they would not previously have done. Pokemon seems like it might just create real world connections and discoveries while it’s hot.
If there was an open API for Pokemon go where we could feed SeeClickFix issues to the data set citizens looking to capture the nearest Pokemon could discover how the city has improved the public space. They could also discover their neighbors’ aspirations for improving it in the future.
Gamification for encouraging discovery seems like it could be positive for the civic web. I would have concerns about gamifying requesting city services as it might incentivize the wrong behaviors. I.E., people asking for city services because they want to level up as opposed to actually wanting to improve the public space. We have had a civic point system at SeeClickFix since the beginning. A user earns points for reporting issues. We have deliberately not iterated this system to the point of gaming for the sake of gaming out of concerns that it will dilute the value of the platform.
One subtle civic benefit of Pokemon Go was begrudgingly pointed out by my co-worker Tim Neems when he acknowledged that the dense City was a better place to play the game than the suburbs where there are less landmarks to help you level up. Could Pokemon and AR games help us densify and stimulate economic development? Maybe it’s crazy but it might have some small effect on cities while it’s hot.
To put a bow on this rant Tim pointed out that an infamous SeeClickFix issue had actually already been incorporated into the Pokemon Go Game. Our beloved SupaThug mural on the back of our building, which was debated vandalism itself and then later vandalized and then later removed…has become a “PokeStop.”
Below is an image of the PokeStop and The SCF Issue. If you’re interested in a fascinating debate on art vs vandalism take some time to read this thread: http://seeclickfix.com/issues/617243-thug-graffiti-vandalism
Another fascinating insight is that the virtual avatars are actually causing real world traffic issues with folks walking into streets blindly. My co-worker Amanda Parr just pointed out that users could report unsafe avatars on SeeClickFix. Are we going to need an unsafe pokemon request type in the future?
Maybe you’re onto something Josh Stearns.
