LATCHkey Kids Explore The Appalachian Trail with New App
Philadelphia- P’unk Avenue, a design studio, is creating an app, called LATCH, that will allow users to experience, and share their experiences of, the Appalachian Trail. This app works as a collective aggregation of photographs, audio and video recordings and stories from hikers on the trail and allows them to be relayed to others using the app. LATCH then posts those moments to an interactive map, letting future hikers and nature enthusiasts experience the trail’s natural magnificence all over again.
P’unk Avenue is developing this app in partnership with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and over the past year, P’unk Avenue has been doing research in collaboration with the community the ATC serves, mainly hikers and conservationists. P’unk Avenue is currently building the beta version of the app, and hopes to launch it for user testing in time for the 2017 hiking season. They also hope to host workshops on using the app in the approaching fall.
According to P’unk Avenue, “Latch allows users to live and relive their Appalachian Trail experiences through capturing, sharing and viewing a collective tapestry of trail moments. From the trail, users can share their Appalachian Trail experiences – the trials, the triumphs, the joys and the community – in a way that can sometimes only be told through an image, a sound, a drawing, a song, a video, a word or a sentence. While dreaming of the trail from home, you can check in on the trail and your Appalachian Trail community… Latch allows individuals to share these snapshots with others without interfering with the experience itself. The Latch app’s simple and minimal interface allows users to capture and share these moments while still being in them – whether on the trail, or looking back at the images, videos, sounds, and thoughts of a previous excursion, months or years later.”
Other projects P’unk Avenue has undertaken include designing websites for Moore College of Art, Franklin and Marshall College, the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the American Poetry Review. Their Kickstarter has currently raised $5000 out of their $25000 goal.
About P’unk Avenue: “P’unk Ave is a full-service design studio that engages in problem solving for mission-driven organizations by creating strategic, visual, and technical solutions. P’unk Ave partners with clients who strive to improve the social good in the fields of health & wellness, education, arts & culture, urbanism and the environment – and seeks to remove the roadblocks that prevent them from serving their missions.”