LEAVES

The simplest possible AR app?

> I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,

> And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,

> Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Whitman, Song of Myself

The idea

The basic concept of AR is to locate digital objects in the physical world. It's often mixed up with VR, which is about being able to visualize digital objects in a space. Most AR apps try to do both: to overlay a VR space onto a view of the real world in order to be able to see and manipulate AR objects.

But I don't think this is necessary, or even all that desirable. By projecting the real world into a device, we virtualize it. LEAVES treats your device as an object in the world, not the other way around.

The basic user journey is as an explorer:

I install LEAVES on my phone and point it at a source of digital objects which have been associated with IRL locations. Let's say I plan to visit a new town, and someone has curated a set of items about places of interest there.

When I visit the town, I can open LEAVES and see the items which are in range of my location.

As I move about, different items come in and out of range, and I can see new items.

The vibe

I want LEAVES to get out of the explorer's way. It's really a kind of browser. The content is the main attraction.

The mode of interaction should be as simple as possible. Moving about in the real world should be the main interface. I think a map view is a temptation to be avoided.

Creators shouldn't be unnecessarily limited in what they can associate with a location. In practice this means lightly-sanitized HTML.

That said, I'm not prioritizing being able to create content within the app. There can be separate tools for that.

Offline access should be promoted, as many real world locations have limited connectivity.

Digital objects should come in downloadable sets (sheaves?) for curation and versioning, and to make offline access more practical.

What LEAVES doesn't need

I thought I would use notifications to let you know when a new resource is in range, but I can't get this to work with a PWA, it seems that background geolocation is native apps only. I think I can live without it though. The same way as you might go round with a guidebook or map, experiencing a place through/with LEAVES is more of a deliberate action.

I thought I would need LEAVES to have a server-side component that stored the objects, but I think I only need a standard for associating Web resources with locations.

Similarly, I don't think optimizations like databases are currently necessary. Individual sheaves are unlikely to have more than a few hundred items in. I'm envisaging this landing somewhere between a creative work and a social media account. Interestingly, I am coming to a similar position thinking about how to manage user interventions in the cave game.

The cave game

Try it

Currently you won't see much here unless you're in Nepal.

LEAVES, the web app (install to your device from the browser menu)

Next steps

TODO: 54 (3332) Explorers want to be able to add a new source for items by URL

TODO: 24 (3222) Explorers want to be able to manage the sources they're using

TODO: 18 (2331) Creators want to be able to bundle items into a downloadable sheaf and host it on a website as a source

TODO: 12 (3221) Explorers want sources to be updated when they're online (can the service worker's cache be used for this?

TODO: 0 (3220) Explorers want to be able to find items in a more natural way than through compass bearings (there isn't currently a cross-platform way to access a device compass)