Place-based design as method of accessing memories and meanings: Historical augmentation in the harbor promenade of Lahti

In this chapter, we present an analysis of participant experiences of an augmented reality (AR) application that was piloted in the harbor promenade area (Satamaraitti) in the city of Lahti, Finland. The application was designed to digitally augment the historically interesting promenade and its surrounding area, which is a popular site for outdoor enjoyment. Overall, we chose to utilize an architectural, place-based approach to inform the participatory design process, the design of the application, the research method, and the analysis of our participants’ experiences. Here, we focus on the latter, employing the concepts of embodiment and emplacement to connect our analysis to existing research literatures. Our findings demonstrate the importance of participants’ personal histories with the place in question-that our AR application was able to connect these individual personal histories to the identity of the place itself, rendering the experience meaningful for our participants. While these results are exploratory and must be understood within their context, they suggest that designers of urban technologies would do wisely to connect their designs with the identity of place as a method of engaging also their participants’ individual experiences in a meaningful way.