AIRCacher: Virtual Geocaching Powered with Augmented Reality

Nowadays, smartphones and digital networks are being heavily used as data sources for research on social networks. Our daily experiences, interactions and transactions are recorded thanks to the digital traces that users leave behind their activities, both individual and social. In this work, we describe AiRCacher, a mobile app for virtual geocaching enhanced with Augmented Reality. By following gamification and Game With A Purpose design approaches, the aim is to bring people outside and make them move, by hiding and seeking virtual caches. As a side effect of their gaming activity, they became like social sensors able to provide geo-located social data. Therefore, the aim of our work is to carry out data analyses about users' outdoor behaviors, by looking for several findings such as trending places for different cache's typologies, and the detection of interesting events emerging from the concentration of caches in specific places.