Wild Wander – Augmented Reality Trail App

The Client

Chester Zoo

The Brief

The team at Chester Zoo wanted to create an innovative trail app to encourage visitors to explore and engage with 4 walking/cycling trails within their nature recovery corridor, an area that stretches between the zoo and the city of Chester. Aimed at an audience that don’t usually engage with nature it needed to be fun, to encouraging people to get out and explore their green spaces and gain an understanding of how easily they can help to ‘join the dots’ connecting habitats to one another for biodiversity to flourish.

We created Wild Wander, a GPS – based AR trail app that enables users to collect 3D species as they follow each trail, building their own virtual wildlife haven with every step; the more they walk, the more their biodiversity score improves and their wildlife haven flourishes. These virtual species are also then available in their AR collection to be used in AR photo opportunities anytime they like.

At key locations along each trail,  users can explore AR Wonderzones – virtual habitats that grow around them with hidden species for them to find and discover more about.

At the Supertrees an iconic spot in the city common to all the trails, visitors can grow their own virtual wildlife scene in AR, filling the urban space with flowers, fungi, butterflies and bees.

Along with all the AR activities, the app had mindful moment activity zones to encourage app users to spend quality time in natural environments, getting hands on, or simply taking in the sights and sounds around them.