Inventor develops app to help people appreciate nature
Former council executive Ben Darlington, who turned to nature after struggling with his mental health, has developed an app to help others better appreciate the great outdoors.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00So SEEK is a completely new service for Maystone that's designed to help people get more out of the time they spend in Maystone's green spaces, whether that's parks, nature reserves, whatever it might be.
00:12SEEK lets you photograph or record the nature you see and then the app will tell you about it, so what's the plant, what's the insect, what's the birdsong you just recorded.
00:22And that's great, that makes a walk that much better, but the magic happens because then we also take that data that you've created and we turn it into eco data, so we store it and we analyse it.
00:34So the mere process of walking around the park and noticing it and recording nature means you're also generating data that can help protect that park or that nature reserve.
00:45And what we've done is we've not only taken that, we've also combined it with some mindfulness, so at the same time as you're recording nature you're also noticing and recording yourself, how are you feeling.
00:57So we sort of have a strap line where we basically say SEEK is about noticing yourself and noticing nature and then creating eco data and we think it's a radical new first for Maystone.