Fair winds and following seas, we said as we cast off the lines and steered our first co-creation cruise. We sailed towards finding ways to utilise gamification in forestry decision making, crowdsourcing and nature experiences.
Could gamification help forest owners benefit more from the forest services, by making digital applications more engaging and enjoyable to use? Could virtual and augmented reality help in understanding the possible impacts of different decision options? Is there a playful but rigorous way to visualise uncertainties in thematic forest maps? Could new tech bring nature experiences to those who can not access nature physically?
These are some examples of questions our enthusiastic group of researchers and representatives of companies and other organisations were pondering during the cruise. Groups were navigated by researcher captains on a route towards a future where science-business collaboration has led to breakthroughs in human-forest-machine interaction.
Next steps were already taken, and meetings for further cocreation agreed. There will be a technology-specific workshop on virtual nature experiences, particularly on application of Virtual Reality technologies, and mobile/Augmented Reality technologies.
Another group of researchers and company and organisation representatives will work further with how gamification could improve use of forest information systems and services. Several other research ideas for future collaboration projects were identified and will be developed further in the follow-up meetings.