Introducing the space recommender system: how crowd-sourced voting data can enrich urban exploration in the digital era

Abstract

Navigation systems like Google Maps and TomTom are designed to generate the shortest and less time consuming path for the user to reach a certain destination from his origin location, not taking into account the user's actual walking experience. This paper investigates physical and digital urban navigation and describes a new approach by implementing common digital online methods of commenting and recommender systems into the physical world. Those methods are being translated into the urban environment, using Facebook voting data to generate an alternative to the shortest route in order to maximize the pleasure of an urban walk. Initial findings highlight the general importance of the walking experience to the public and suggest that implementing recommendations, based on social media voting systems, in route finding algorithms for mobile applications may enhance the pleasure of urban strolling. The testing of the system in a real world context together with collected feedback and the observations throughout the design process stimulate the discussions of wider issues.