Seattle Design Festival

Trace helps us reimagine the question of equity in the design of GIS routing applications — how we might built tools for travel that prompt meaningful dialogue across social, cultural, economic and geographic difference. The application generates walking routes based on digital sketches people create and digitally mark without a map. In addition to creating walking paths, people can share their paths with others.

Instead of emphasizing transport, the project foregrounds experiences of travel. Rather than orienting toward end goals, the project supports social connections. Beyond precision and step counts, the project promotes exploration and indeterminacy. In other words, Trace asks how existing technologies might be done in different ways.