Last weekend I had a booth at ArtBeat in Davis Square with some of my work as well as an experimental crowdsourced mapping project where visitors could add their experiences to a map of the Davis area. I’ve never done an interactive project before, and it was definitely a learning experience. I tried to anticipate what problems might arise, and I’m pleased to say that there weren’t any big problems, besides participation. I think that there were just too many steps — I tried to make it as open-ended as possible, which helped a little bit, but still most people just passed by, even if they expressed interest. It’s also the kind of project that only really gets off the ground when enough people have added to it to show value (and make individual submissions less prominent), so that can easily push it into a cycle of non-participation.
The booth started off with a list of instructions, flyers for recording inspiration, stickies and a blank map:
By the end of the festival, the outer edge of the map was covered with stickies, and the corresponding dots were interspersed throughout the map:
Some selected stories:
and other booth shots:
