HotStepper Makes Hiking Trails Fun
iOS: I still believe augmented reality is the future. Yes, Google Glass was creepy and repulsive, and yes, the Snapchat Spectacles flopped , but when I twist my neck after a morning drive to work staring at my phone, I feel nostalgic for the promise of a heads-up display that will replace my most mundane phone features. Especially navigation, the most ridiculous task to be done with your head buried in a device. The HotStepper app for iOS 11 reminds me how fun AR navigation can be.
HotStepper is a pedestrian navigation app that doesn’t draw a map for you. Instead, it gives you an AR guide who, when viewed through your phone’s camera, guides you down the best footpath with brisk stride and bouncing synth beat. Your guide is a chubby cartoon dude dressed as Sergeant Pepper on the beach.
In practice, the application is buggy and inflexible, but you have to work with it. The real problem that turns this tool into a proof of concept is that it’s on your phone. It is simply impossible to keep the phone up and down throughout the trip. But if you could watch this guy through glasses, he really would be very helpful. AR navigation makes mobile maps and voice prompts seem hopelessly archaic and even dangerous.
As Google and Apple are rolling out VR and AR to their existing devices, users are facing physical limitations. We struggle to keep our phones high for minutes at a time, or we strap heavy slabs to our faces. We’re starting to dream of digital glasses as more than a novelty for Silicon Valley sociopaths. Of course, AR glasses are a kind of dystopia. But aren’t mobile phones? HotStepper is just an awesome platform waiting app, one step ahead of us.