“Images and other cultural artefacts selected for local relevance, are more likely to carry scientific knowledge in ways we find engaging… The social affordances of AR, when combined with imagery that has strong local relevance, can scaffold constructions of social formations and personally-relevant activities around scientific data.”
As someone interested in how data and especially real-time information about ecologies, environments and people, I think Pocket Penjing is a really interesting app and study. It is not surprising that local information and data creates more interest, especially when it is our immediate world that we interact with on a regular basis, which becomes our best frame of reference. It could be interesting for the app to work in collaboration with an organisation such as C40, who research, make goals and implement policy regarding environmental issues in major cities. It seems there may be real potential in partnering with an organisation such as this to utilise the data and individual involvement to make positive change in our biggest cities. Maybe this model will be used in future iterations of such studies.
