Swedish event company Green hat People is extending its portfolio with GPS-enriched games, building on prototypes developed in cooperation with students at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Ericsson Research.

Green hat People specializes in selling mobile-based activities to customers such as conferences and team-building events. Two flagships in its portfolio are historical city tours, where colleagues can challenge each other, and a collaborative game – “The creative mission” – designed to promote team building and cooperation within groups.

Alexis Barnekow

Alexis Barnekow, one of Green hat People’s co-founders, says that another of the company’s business branches, as well as its long-term strategy, is licensing of its software development platform to others for designing games and activities. 

Barnekow says the contact with Ericsson Research and Uppsala University presented the company with an excellent opportunity to look into the possibility of developing its technology further.

“Because stability is extremely important in our world – our games must never fail – we are very cautious when introducing new technologies,” Barnekow says. “So we decided to start by focusing on adding GPS functionality, which doesn’t require interaction with a foolproof mobile network. We gave the students the freedom to come up with their own ideas, focusing on GPS-based games that would work everywhere, anytime, and could be played by as many people as desired.” 

Rasmus Haglund

The 12 students involved produced five concepts, and developed prototypes for these. Three of them were GPS-based.

“Their ideas were really cool and we were very pleased with the outcome of the cooperation. Since then we have put a lot of effort into investigating how to best explore their ideas, and adapt them so they fit our concepts and products.”

Based on the work done by the students, Green hat People eventually decided to add two new GPS concepts to its game platform, to enrich the company’s existing games, and to be incorporated in new games.

These add-ons have given the company a very flexible tool for widening the scope of location-based games, Barnekow says. As an example of what they can be used for, he mentions collaboration with a Swedish event company specializing in treasure hunts with rigid inflatable boats (RIBs), where the players need to quickly go from one place to another.

“We are really pleased with this cooperation with Ericsson and Uppsala University,” Barnekow says. “For a small company like ours, with limited financial resources, it is tough to take a decision to start a project like this, something we probably wouldn’t have done on our own.”

Three of the involved Uppsala students are now temporarily hired by Green hat People, during two to three months, to implement the new GPS-based ideas. 

Rasmus Haglund, who managed the student team that worked with Green hat People, says he is very happy that the company has chosen to take his team’s ideas further and that their work has shown to be of practical use.

“The cooperation with Green hat People and Ericsson has meant a lot to us students and been very inspiring,” Haglund says. “Besides the pure technical knowledge we have acquired, we have also learnt how real businesses operate, which we would not have done in an ordinary academic course.”

By Benny Ritzén

Read our first article about this cooperation
Green hat People