When we turn to our GPS or MapQuest for directions, we usually seek precise instructions and the quickest route to our destination.

Mark Shepard, however, is using location-based technology to reveal the interesting world found along the way between point A and point B.

"To introduce some sense of drifting again, the ambulatory walk. How do you see the city in a way you haven't seen it before?" asked Shepard, an assistant professor of architecture and media study at the University at Buffalo.

Shepard and a few colleagues have developed a mobile application for the iPhone and iPad that helps its users stumble onto something new or see a familiar place in a different light.

Their Serendipitor app uses Google Maps to provide a route to a requested or random destination, but with a set of whimsical instructions to follow.

Walk behind a dog until it notices you. Find the nearest tree and sit under it for one minute. Locate a dark alley and walk down it, and if you can't find one just close your eyes.

"The applications that I write are trying to get us to stop doing this," Shepard said, holding his face close to his phone, "and start looking outward again."

About 1,300 people have downloaded the free app through iTunes, and Shepard has received e-mails from users in Denmark, Italy and elsewhere who shared their routes.

Serendipitor is nominated for a major international digital arts award, and a reviewer for Wired approvingly said the app combines movement and art into an "alternate reality game."

"I think this quality of exploration and adventure is something we've been losing as technology increasingly helps us be more efficient in all our tasks. Since when did we become so practical? Why not stop to smell a flower, or follow a cloud?" Patricia Schraven said in an e-mail from the Netherlands.

Schraven, who grew up in Amherst and attended UB, visited the lab where Serendipitor was under development and helped test it in the real world.

She and Shepard believe people can spend too much time buried in laptops or smart phones.

Someone using one of those devices, or listening to music through a pair of ear buds, is putting up a barrier to human connection, said Shepard, calling it a "personal cocoon" for the user.

The idea behind Serendipitor and similar programs is to use location-based technology to break down those barriers and cultivate informal interactions.

Shepard came to UB in 2005 to work on a joint project between the departments of architecture and media study. He previously worked for 10 years in New York City as the head of a small design studio, dotsperinch.

Shepard and his collaborators developed this app over two months this summer at the V2_ media lab in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Serendipitor, which went up on iTunes on Aug. 17, isn't the only app that relies on GPS-equipped mobile devices.

The Urbanspoon app, for example, can guide users to nearby restaurants, with results filtered by type of food and price.

And MyTown combines a Monopoly-like game of buying properties and collecting rent with a location-based directory of nearby businesses that can offer surprising results.

Building a "notion of serendipity" into the tools we use on a regular basis, such as mapping software and search engines, would encourage new discoveries, said Jeffrey J. McConnell, a computer science professor at Canisius College who uses the MyTown app. "If search engines get better at giving me narrow results, then something gets lost," McConnell said.

Serendipitor adds whimsy, and the free app can be downloaded through iTunes for the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

It begins by determining the current location, before users enter where they want to go or they let it pick a random location about one mile away.

Serendipitor maps a route, and the user can adjust the route to make it more or less direct.

The app then instructs the user to start walking and assigns one of hundreds of possible tasks, often accompanied by a request to take a photo of something.

Last week, Shepard demonstrated the app with a random, 20-minute route that began at Caffe Aroma in the Elmwood Village.

It included following the next siren he heard and walking toward shade and taking a photo of something inspiring -- Shepard selected a vase of flowers in the window of the Homeward Bound store.

One of the last instructions told him to hitch a ride from a passing car to see where it takes him. "Again, a lot of this is about getting people [and] putting them in situations where they have to trust their judgment, not the machine's judgment," Shepard said.

The app is not city-specific, so some instructions that may be easy to follow in Manhattan, for example, are trickier in Western New York, Shepard said. He said that's the point -- the instructions are suggestions, and aren't meant to be followed so strictly.

"There were certain responses when we were beta testing it. People were saying, 'Oh, I got really frustrated because there was no bridge in this town. What am I supposed to do?'" Shepard said.

Serendipitor saves a record of the route and any photos taken, and people around the world have e-mailed copies of favorite routes to Shepard.

Not everyone gets the concept.

"I tried to give a flower to somebody in Rotterdam, and they were like, 'Why would you want to give me a flower?'" Shepard said. However, he talked to her for 15 minutes as she explained she would have trouble carrying the flower on her bicycle -- just the kind of interaction the app tries to encourage.

swatson@buffnews.comnull