Category: Uncategorized (Page 3 of 6)

The Cahokia Ar App is an accessible app for both the Monks Mound Tour and the Grand Plaza Tour. With this app, you can take images throughout the historic site and examine ancient dwellings artifacts, landscape features, and more. The app has more features for $5. The app has audio you can listen to if you prefer audio as well. They recommend listening with headphones only. What does the app do so well? 

The app enhances the audience/visitor’s experience at Cahokia Mounds. It has augmented reality that digitally reconstructed the mounds helping us visualize what the site originally looked like. The Cahokia app enhances access to visitors, tourists, researchers, historians, etc. The groups it excludes are those who are unable to visit in person, those with physical disabilities, those without access to a smartphone, those who aren’t experienced with technology, and even those who don’t purchase nor have headphones. In my opinion, I think it’s a great app without the additional costs. The only thing I don’t agree with in regards to the app is that it requires you to actually be there.  

The Cahokia Virtual Reality allows for the user to use their smart phone or tablet to view how the development of the Cahokia mounds over a thousand years from certain points at the site. This app is successful in immersing the user into the past and allowing them to see the development of the mounds. It is used primarily as an educational piece and it succeeds. It is also successful in letting people enjoy the site through interactive visuals rather than just reading everything on small signs throughout the mounds.

Though the app is successful in its educational aspects and helps bring better understanding of the mounds, it does feel slightly exclusive. Though it is extremely common of course, some cannot access a hand-held device at anytime. Some people also may not feel they have the budget to help with the additional cost of the using the app as part of the sites experience. The app feels also particularly for a younger generation that has grown up with devices. Older groups, specifically the elderly may spend the money to enjoy the experience than have absolutely no clue how to use it. Being only able to use the app while at the mounds as well is slightly disappointing for an additional cost that really won’t get used again after an hour.

Overall, I believe the app is successful but there are many shortcomings that I believe take away from the final benefit of using the app at the Cahokia Mounds.

The Cahokia VR app/ video gives insight as to how the shifting from the world of today to the world of a thousand years ago as the city of Cahokia takes shape on the screen from just the device in your hand or the one around you. Having an augmented reality opens up a new lens to view things from the comfort of wherever you are without having to really be in that physical space. Having this setup is really helpful for those people who have access to a phone or a computer but its limitations for people who do not have a phone or any device this would make it more harder for people to enjoy this experience. It does well with giving detailed explanations about certain parts of the VR experience and having visuals is key especially if there are people that are more comfortable with having visuals than just a bunch of words in their face. 

The Cahokia VR Tour is an app that provides an augmented reality experience to the user. Essentially it allows you to view a setting by putting a virtual version of a place over your camera view.

The app does well in allowing you to explore the insides of buildings, giving exact dimensions of the area, and not having that weird AR clipping since the Cahokia tour has it’s own plot of land. Though with it having a specific area to use it, you lose a bit of accessibility with AR because you can’t just use it anywhere.

The app is fairly accessible since all you need is the app, a phone, and the ability to use the camera app. Though for those who aren’t tech savvy, and those without a phone, they have no way of understanding/experiencing this.

Cahokia Mounds, in my opinion, is one of the most important Native American ruins in America. Therefore, many of the app’s shortcomings severely disappoint me. When I first heard of the app, I figured that it was a way to remotely view Cahokia Mounds and see how it would have looked in the past. This would have been great for access, as a five-dollar price tag to view Cahokia Mounds from across the country would save many people so much time and money, however, this is not how it works. From my understanding, the app does not allow you to use it remotely, instead, it limits the user to use it in specific areas of Cahokia Mounds. Because the designers were so invested in the idea of AR technology, they failed to realize that the main goal of the project, to be able to view the Cahokia of yesteryear, could be done through a signpost. I will admit that there is one aspect that may be decently executed, that part being, the guided tour. This is narrated, so some could argue that this opens Cahokia Mounds to the blind, however this in only a half-baked attempt at redemption, because, let me remind you, the app’s main purpose is to visually show what Cahokia used to look like. Slap on top of that a five-dollar price tag and you get a novelty that adds practically no accessibility to the viewing experience. 

Got so mad that I forgot to read the requirements, haha. As seen above, I don’t think it does anything really well. It does not enhance accessibility unless you really stretch the term in relation to the blind. It excludes the blind, the ones who cannot make it to Cahokia Mounds, and those who cannot walk to name a few.