Tuku Slow Wander

Supported by the Yunlin County Government, shared electric-assisted bicycle networks have gradually expanded across Yunlin, Taiwan, becoming an emerging form of local public mobility. For both residents and visitors, e-bikes now offer a convenient way to move between town centers, local shops, cultural sites, and surrounding landscapes. While this infrastructure provides the means of transportation, Tuku Slow Wander explores how mobility itself can become a medium for discovering and understanding a place.

Designed specifically for Tuku Township, Tuku Slow Wander is a location-based audio cycling guide that transforms an existing e-bike network into a place-sensitive travel experience. Rather than developing another transportation system, the project adds a digital experience layer to the mobility infrastructure already embedded in everyday life.

Through a web-based interactive map, visitors can follow curated cycling routes without downloading an additional app. GPS positioning identifies the rider’s location and activates corresponding AI-narrated audio stories as they approach selected points of interest. Navigation therefore becomes more than wayfinding: movement through the town continuously triggers contextual interpretation of local streets, businesses, architecture, industries, landscapes, and everyday culture.

The experience is intentionally designed around slow wandering. Instead of directing visitors toward only a few major attractions, the system encourages them to notice smaller and often overlooked elements distributed throughout the township. A street corner, an old hospital, a traditional oil mill, a market, a temple, or an agricultural landscape can become part of a connected narrative experienced while cycling.

By combining shared micro-mobility, GPS-based interaction, digital mapping, and location-responsive audio storytelling, Tuku Slow Wander creates a lightweight form of destination infrastructure that requires minimal additional physical installation. The service builds upon resources that already exist — the bicycle network, local roads, businesses, stories, and everyday places — and reorganizes them into a new visitor journey.

Ultimately, Tuku Slow Wander proposes a new role for rural micro-mobility: not simply as transportation between destinations, but as an interface through which visitors can encounter the identity, rhythm, and spatial character of a town while moving through it.