PickMeUp

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  Screenshot of the

Inspiration

Gamification is a powerful tool to provoke engagement in a community. It can reach otherwise uninterested people especially when it is paired with activities in the physical space.

What it does

PickMeUp provides a puzzle-game that has the user searching for the optimal route when picking up (or not picking up) potentially interested car passengers. The user can intuitively click or touch the prospective ride-alongs that indicate their preferred starting and ending position on the map. The user is rewarded with "Miles" which depend on the transport effort that the user provided. The challenge for the user with the car i then to carefully balance the amount of detours that he accepts with the amount of miles that he gets. The games environment with the in game currency "Miles" provides a captivating experience which leads to customer loyalty.

The demo that was implemented for this hackathon provides a test dataset that is located in manhattan which can be used in order to experience the puzzle. It also provides a demo for an interface for the interested passengers.

A third demo with the concept of so called quests is also implemented. Quests can be used in order to achieve synergies of potential travels with the sustentation of car fleets. Small tasks as for example bringing a car to a gas station can be crowd sourced while intriguing the user with humor and a certain sense of adventure.

How we built it

The app was fully built in HTML with javascript and will run on pretty much every device. It also takes use of the Graphhopper path planning API.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Achieving a graphically and algorithmically rather complex map application in html while retaining a very fast and responsive interface.

What we learned

A lot of tips and tricks as well as challenges when using the concept of html web-apps.

What's next for PickMeUp

Implementing even more engaging game mechanics and engaging people to share their rides and have fun while doing it.

Built With

• graphhopper
• html
• java
• openstreetmap