Stories & the city: Building urban AR tours

A project by: Evelyn Francourt

£0
pledged of £10,000 target

This project did not reach its target.

Completion Date: Mon 22 Nov 2021
Immersive stories from the city straight into the palm of your hands

Stories & the city

Greetings from the team bringing you immersive, urban, augmented reality (AR) tours, straight to your smartphone. Think Pokemon Go, meets Strava, with your favourite podcast thrown in.

We bring you stories from the city straight into the palm of your hands, all while helping you up your step-count. 

In fact, we are building an app that lets you point, scan and get the info you need to uncover the layers of history that London holds.

Imagine this, you’re the event-planner of your friendship group and have planned an epic night out-and-about in London, 

You are about to meet your friends, you turn the corner and come across a cobbled alleyway and interesting looking pub. 

You know in your bones that there is more to this alleyway than meets the eye; it's olde-worlde and has a definite vibe.

You could do a Google search, but that means trawling through endless results and, to be honest, who has time to do that?

OK, we have a solution. 

Using the sexiest AR technology, efficient geo-location tech, and with access to databases of historical info, we can provide you with interesting, shareable soundbites, and info for you to share with your friends or delve deeper into.

Hold on, 'I don't care about history!’, we hear you say - you're too busy being young and free? 

Well, we plan to give you tours, podcasts, soundbites, and gorgeous media content on the diverse subcultures that London holds in abundance.

History of grime in East London? We've got you covered. 

The emergence of Punk in 1960’s SW10? - Just add that to your filters.

Illegal London raves from the 90’s? - Yes, we have a tour for that, too.

Hungover and in bed on a Sunday? 

We can ping you a tour for you and your friends to do, as well as recommend a decent bottomless brunch venue at the end of it.

Up at the crack of dawn and commuting to work? 

We’ll deliver salacious city tales as you power-walk through Soho on a Monday morning, that makes your toes curl and your journey go quicker.

In fact, part of this exciting project is developing our budding algorithm to provide you with the content that you want, when you want it. 

Our tours will help you become the most interesting person in the room...ok the most informed person in the room.

Who are we?

We are a tech start-up interested in accessible, immersive story-telling. 

The accessible bit is really important to us.

We have over 10 years experience in digital media production with a skillset that includes UX design, user research, content design, film, photography and social media. 

We are incredibly geeky about immersive tech so join our newsletter and learn more about all things start-up AR and gelocation related.

We are also part of the Fast Track Programme, an awesome Kingston University initiative to help turn students into entrepreneurs.

Where will the money go?

We are raising £10,000 to build our first urban augmented reality (AR) tour on our native app.

Free tours for all! It is really important that this app remains, at its core, a free experience. 

Accessibility is really important in ensuring that everyone can enjoy our immersive tours, so considerable research and development will be allocated to making our app as accessible by default. 

If we hit our minimum target we will spend the money on a MVP prototype and branding.

Here is a breakdown of costs if we reach our full target:

  • Tour development including AR build: £3000
  • Branding and logo design: £2000
  • Website design: £2000
  • Marketing: £1000
  • Staff costs: £2000

Rewards

We have some fab rewards to thank everyone who donates, whatever the amount you might give. Check them out.

Help us succeed!

*You don't need to give money to help us succeed!

We get it, you are saving for a spa break staycation in Edinburgh and definitely do not have the funds to invest in a start-up.

You can still show your support by being a founder member of our tribe.

  1. Sign up to my newsletter. We blog and have newsletters covering topics such as the Fast Track Programme, lean start-up, augmented reality, and other niche tech based subjects. Over the coming months, we will be sharing insight into our journey. We will also be sharing incredible geeky niche content on AR, NFT’s, geolocation tech, and smart cities. Subscribe to the newsletter and follow us on our start-up journey.
  2. Get involved in user testing: become a beta tester Get first dibs on having a go on the app. Sign up to be a beta tester for the pilot AR tour. You can be part of the first cohort to test the the app and have a go using a tour. Sign up to the newsletter and tick the box to become a beta tester.
  3. Simply share our project You can simply stay up to date with the journey on social media and share our journey with your tribe. In fact, share it with everyone you know as we think it's a great idea, and the more people who know about it, the more likely we are to make this work out brilliantly. Please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on Facebook, ( Twitter and Insta is coming soon)Visit our website where we will be sharing blog posts on our start-up journey. Use the hashtag #StoriesInTheCity #UrbanARtours

* We know we said you don't need to give money to help us, but we'd love it if you did! Please sponsor us and help make this happen.