The Revel Challenge: Creatively Strengthening Community Relationships

We recently learned of a cool new interactive mobile app designed to initiate the discovery of public spaces and their hidden potential for meaningful and fun exchanges between people and their cities. Revel turns sets of instructions, called challenges, into adventures and experiences that can be shared by friends or strangers. You can write your own challenges in any of Revel’s seven categories: Appreciation, Exploring, Fitness Traning, Games, Neighbors & Networks, Photography, and Storytelling. Players are simply encouraged to be creative with their interpretations of these fields! One main ground rule for the game: challenges have to take place in public space, such as a city street, sidewalk, or park.    

BACKGROUND

Created by a highly skilled and creative team of technologists, community outreach advocates, gamers, educators, and ‘experience’ designers at Citizen Logistics, Revel is a new  contest that rewards people for writing challenges for public space. Challenges are short sets of instructions that make up an experience or activity, that can be performed alone or in groups, with friends or with strangers. Revel is funded by the Knight Foundation, Collaborative Fund, Rob Weisenthal, Mitch Kapor, Michael Ovitz, among others.  

HOW IT WORKS

Players can either choose a challenge for themselves, or a friend can suggest a challenge. Revel then sends invites to participants for an activity that is going on in a location near them, based on the selection of one of the seven categories of topics noted previously.

The possibilities for challenges are almost endless. The app can send the players messages, ask them questions, or get their location. The players can reply with text or with pictures. Players can communicate with each other in person or via an interface in the app that allows them to live chat, share reports, and even see one another on a map. (In challenges where communication between players isn't desirable, this interface can be shut off.)

CHALLENGE IDEAS

Revel also provides some ideas for folks who are interested in participating but are having trouble coming up with a challenge. They identify some potential goals for challenges to guide you through the process and inspire you. Challenge ideas can be raw or conceptual, the Revel team is there to help work out all the particulars and details once an idea is submitted. Any challenge that meets the following criteria would be considered highly desirable to the Revel team:
           

1. Helps people discover public spaces and the city’s hidden potential for fun.
2. Creatively re-imagines boring, mundane, or everyday experiences.
3. Builds in social support, by way of cheering, back-up singing, hi-fives, etc., as a way to encourage participants to courageously carry out challenges.
4. Improves players' health or overall quality of life.
5. Strengthens relationships between neighbors and community-members.
6. Goes above and beyond these guidelines—show them what matters to you!

EXAMPLE CHELLENGES

Instant School
For 3-7 people. Say your names, then have a brief discussion about what kinds of things you might want to learn. See if anyone in the group can teach those things or knows someone who can. Make sure the meeting ends with next steps and thanks if connections are made.

Forage
Take a look around your neighborhood. Pay special attention to yards, patches of greenery on the sidewalk, and high-reaching branches. What kinds of plants do you see? Can you identify any edible plants? Describe what you've found and where you've found it. Take a picture.

The Revel team also ups the ante for potential participants by selecting one winner per month to be recognized on their blog, in addition to being entered into a year-long contest to find the best challenge out there.

Here is one example of a monthly winning challenge:

Turning Imaginary Places Into Reality (3+ participants):

1. First player writes a one-sentence description of a positive emotion he/she would like to experience (ex. relaxed, excited, satisfied).

2. This description is sent to other players, who are asked to find and photograph a location that evokes the emotion described by the first player.

3. All photographs are sent to the first player, who judges the images and locations based on their ability to evoke the emotion described at the beginning of the challenge. Players are encouraged to meet at the location where the “winning” photograph was taken, possibly to enjoy a coffee.

Find out more about this challenge and why Revel choose it as a winner >>

Learn more about Revel or submit your own challenge >>