(Summary: Orienteering with the navigation and movement separate. This exercise requires both people to be specific to not get lost, and it can be extended by adding in a race aspect (trying to be specific under pressure!).)
The last paragraph made me think of “MoboGoGlobo”, which is an orienteering event where there are two participants: one doing the navigation who guides the other via phone.
(I’m not sure how familiar with orienteering many people are, so I’ll give a quick intro)
When participating in an orienteering event one normally has to visit a series of markers in a predefined order as quickly as possible (or not, if one isn’t feeling like racing, entirely up to the participant). One has a detailed map (although, importantly, it rarely has street names) that indicates the location of these and the order to visit them in, e.g. the two maps here (the pink (or purple) triangle is the start location and the numbered circles are the markers).
When competing, one uses all sorts of clues to make sure one is going in the right direction and one isn’t lost (and to become unlost), like most obviously the shape of nearby buildings, the topography (e.g. a steep hill), a fork in a track or stream, or more subtly things, like a bend in a track or the position of a power line on the next hill. (Conventionally, one also has a compass, which one uses to orient oneself correctly.)
In this exercise you need two people: one with the map (“navigator”), the other actually on the territory that corresponds to the map (“runner”, this doesn’t imply that one needs to run though): it requires the navigator to describe exactly where to go (“go past the building” < “go to the left of the building that has a round canopy outside”), and also for the runner to describe what they see so that the navigator can keep track (“There is a line of trees” < “A line of trees starts just to my left and goes directly away”).
There are multiple levels of specificity too: the best teams will have a navigator who gives a good general overview of the location of the marker but also detailed instructions along the way, and the runner who gives compact but detailed progress updates (There is limited bandwidth too).
I’m sure many people won’t have done any orienteering before, so this would have to be kept simple. Even just a reasonably large building and using its floor plan as a map, maybe adding some details, and removing any names of rooms (preferably neither participant would have been in the building before). (Other possible locations include parks and university campuses (these can be very complicated though!))
Doing it as a competition adds an element of pressure which is possibly too much for people who are unpracticed at the skill (and at reading a map), but it would be an easy way to extend the exercise and test the skill more.
(Summary: Orienteering with the navigation and movement separate. This exercise requires both people to be specific to not get lost, and it can be extended by adding in a race aspect (trying to be specific under pressure!).)
The last paragraph made me think of “MoboGoGlobo”, which is an orienteering event where there are two participants: one doing the navigation who guides the other via phone.
(I’m not sure how familiar with orienteering many people are, so I’ll give a quick intro) When participating in an orienteering event one normally has to visit a series of markers in a predefined order as quickly as possible (or not, if one isn’t feeling like racing, entirely up to the participant). One has a detailed map (although, importantly, it rarely has street names) that indicates the location of these and the order to visit them in, e.g. the two maps here (the pink (or purple) triangle is the start location and the numbered circles are the markers).
When competing, one uses all sorts of clues to make sure one is going in the right direction and one isn’t lost (and to become unlost), like most obviously the shape of nearby buildings, the topography (e.g. a steep hill), a fork in a track or stream, or more subtly things, like a bend in a track or the position of a power line on the next hill. (Conventionally, one also has a compass, which one uses to orient oneself correctly.)
In this exercise you need two people: one with the map (“navigator”), the other actually on the territory that corresponds to the map (“runner”, this doesn’t imply that one needs to run though): it requires the navigator to describe exactly where to go (“go past the building” < “go to the left of the building that has a round canopy outside”), and also for the runner to describe what they see so that the navigator can keep track (“There is a line of trees” < “A line of trees starts just to my left and goes directly away”).
There are multiple levels of specificity too: the best teams will have a navigator who gives a good general overview of the location of the marker but also detailed instructions along the way, and the runner who gives compact but detailed progress updates (There is limited bandwidth too).
I’m sure many people won’t have done any orienteering before, so this would have to be kept simple. Even just a reasonably large building and using its floor plan as a map, maybe adding some details, and removing any names of rooms (preferably neither participant would have been in the building before). (Other possible locations include parks and university campuses (these can be very complicated though!))
Doing it as a competition adds an element of pressure which is possibly too much for people who are unpracticed at the skill (and at reading a map), but it would be an easy way to extend the exercise and test the skill more.