Geopark Terras de Cavaleiros

Initial situation

The City Council of Macedo de Cavaleiros is a public entity with ongoing projects in the tourism sector. As owner of an extensive natural inheritance, they created the geological project of Sítio de Morais, a small village in the Macedo de Cavaleiros region, with strong geological significance.

The big issue was that they were still using paper-based touristic guides, which can be easily outdated and has a huge impact for the environment.

Having in mind the promotion of their remarkable natural heritage, the value creation for visitors and the environment, they decided to acquire technological solutions for their touristic points of interest, in order to attract new visitors and investors.

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Solution

Ubiwhere took the challenge to develop multimedia mobile guides and custom-built Kinect applications, the website and the back-offices. The project was proposed as a mean to addressing the need for the qualification of the geological, floristic, economic and cultural heritage of the small village Sítio de Morais.

In order to achieve this, a Centre of Interpretation was created, to which Ubiwhere developed an amount of technological solutions and applications, such as:

  • An outdoor mobile guide for the Android operative system, including geological and walking routes, offline and online maps, custom mapping imagery, fine-grained location, custom-built multimedia data (e.g. images, videos, audio, among others), POI, distance-measuring, geocaching support, and QR Code recognition;
  • A custom-built Kinect applications for indoor environments, with which visitors can search on an interactive surface with quizzes, gesture-based character control and a gesture controlled geological timeline.

The target market is people from 8 to 88 years old, so the User Interface (UI) needed to be simple but appellative. The guides can be downloaded by tourists or can be supplied by the municipality at the Welcome Centres. Ubiwhere have also provided a number of physical devices, such as:

  • Custom-built website and brochures, as a way of broadcasting and keeping visitors updated;
  • A guide map that consists in a book, regarding Sítio de Morais, containing the geological routes.

 

Project results

  • By using these technological solutions, visitors are able to experience the most important POI in the region, in a more pleasant way;
  • The developed solutions are improving their visit, allowing them to access a significant amount of information on-site, in an innovative and intuitive way;

Ubiwhere has been receiving a very positive feedback, which was used for the improvement of the applications. As a consequence of this feedback, new experimental features were also developed for other products. All these solutions are still in current use in Macedo de Cavaleiros.