Peel X worked with Northallerton Heritage Hub on one of our most unique and fun projects so far, to develop a brand new augmented reality app called Discover Northallerton. The hub is part of the Northallerton High Street Heritage Action Zone (HAZ) Programme, which is funded by Historic England with the goal of promoting the town’s cultural heritage and making high streets more attractive, engaging and vibrant places for people to live, work and spend time. We were very happy to get involved with the project.
Northallerton Heritage hub, operated by North Yorkshire Council with funding from Historic England’s ‘High Street Heritage Action Zone’ programme aimed to take both locals and visitors to the town on a journey to discover more about the heritage of Northallerton. The “Portals to the past” element of the app was designed to transport users into days gone by, uncovering hidden stories, fascinating people, places, and events that have shaped the historic town of Northallerton through the centuries.
Users were encouraged to take photos and share their journeys with friends as they learnt and discovered more about Northallerton.
One element of the app was built directly to appeal to children and young people and allowed our creativity to really go into overdrive. The Peel X team loved this! We built a Autumnfest trail and had full creative licence to come up with characters and games that would be immersive, engaging and fun.
For centuries, people in Yorkshire have told stories about a magical group of creatures called Hobs. Legend has it that Hobs love to be helpful and can often be found lending a hand in farmer’s fields, cleaning peoples home and doing an array of other useful jobs. However, the Hobs can also be very mischieveous and love a prank. Peel X had an opportunity to bring these characters to life…..and that’s exactly what we did. Our Autumnfest trail featured guided users round the town with the aim of finding each member of the Mowbree family, a cheeky Hob family. The trail had 8 different GPS tracked locations where augmented reality games and challenges brought the Hobs to life. From popping ballons, growing pumpkins, swatting bats with nets and throwing pies, the Peel X team made the games fully interactive and lots of fun to play.
The project was hailed as being a success in not only getting kids active and promoting exercise but adding fun to the annual Halloween celebrations in Northallerton.
Lead developer Jon Martin said of the development phase:
“Developing the Hobs was so much fun and the most enjoyable part of the project for me. For previous projects, we had used characters and built gameplay into apps but for this project, we got to build the storyline around the Hobs and design and develop the characters from scratch……I was in my element!”
Find out more about this project here:
https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/your-north-yorkshire/can-you-help-hobs-hidden-around-northallerton
https://northallertonheritage.uk/discover/discover-northallerton-heritage-trail
To download the Discover Northallerton App, click below:
