Play Bikes!: A Sonic Alleycat by Maryland Institute College of Art

‘Play Bikes!: A Sonic Alleycat’ is a multi-sensory data experience built as a love letter to bikes, to maps, and to data. Personal bike ride data collected from a fitness app is transformed into sound, animated on a map, and gamified as a scavenger hunt and bicycle race, otherwise an alleycat. Data sonification is used as an amplifier to imbue the data experience with personality and character leaving the user with the ‘feeling’ of a bike ride rather than just the knowledge of one. Playful visualizations, sporty sonifications, and minimalistic design intertwine to make the experience of riding a bike novel for the daily rider and accessible for the person who has never ridden a bike before.