Soundscapes of Belonging

Mobile phones can augment our everyday experience of place, but too often they pull attention away from the environment rather than deepening our connection to it. This project asks: how can context-aware mobile technologies foster place attachment without being intrusive? Your task is to design and prototype a mobile app that plays short, tailored audio sentences (around 5 seconds each) that resonate with the user’s immediate surroundings. Drawing from large-scale datasets like HappyDB and spatial data from OpenStreetMap, the system will select and adapt sentences to reflect specific types of urban spaces (such as parks, plazas, or streets). You will then evaluate whether these micro-audio experiences can meaningfully enhance people’s sense of belonging and emotional connection to their physical environment.