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DIT-Design in Tourism was an EU-funded project to develop tools suitable for everyday use within the tourism industry and to promote service design competencies from terminology to strategies and concepts.
The project has – up till now – not been very well communicated (the site has a lot of empty pages), but a book is in the making and one of the chapters is finished and it is strong. Very strong. Although it doesn’t have much to do with tourism. In the 19-page article, CID Group design strategist and futurist Jari Koskinen (website) advocates an entirely new vision on tourism:
Koskinen, who clearly has an eclectic mindset to just about everything, takes a resolutely Finnish cultural angle, and makes remarkable connections: Alvar Aalto and Naomi Klein, Hilary Cottam (Participle) and the Finland Futures Research Centre, a book published in 1923 (“Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins) and the discipline of interaction design, the Finnish Red Cross and digital fabrication. I really like this piece of writing. The article is conceptual in nature, calls upon interdisciplinary approaches, and is just a highly refreshing and intellectually stimulating read:
(via InfoDesign) |
| Posts in category 'Tourism' |
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21 November 2008
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11 August 2008
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CNN reports on the cell phone boom in Africa:
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10 June 2008
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NH Hoteles and Philips have announced that they will conduct an intensive two-year study into the optimization of well-being amongst hotel guests.
To support the research, NH Hoteles and Philips have teamed up as a first step to create a unique room at NH Hoteles’ flagship Barbizon Palace hotel in Amsterdam featuring the latest in ambient solutions. Researchers will collect consumer insights into how different room settings and technologies affect the guests’ hotel going experience and well-being as well as their interaction and relationship with entertainment systems and lighting. The partnership builds upon other experience research between the two companies on how to optimise the hotel experience. The results from the current study will help Philips to continue to become more customer-centric and provide innovative and timely solutions that improve people’s lives based on indepth consumer insights. NH Hoteles, on the other hand, will in the future apply Philips’ solutions in its hotels to set the standards in the hotel industry and continue to improve the hotel experience of their guests. |
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24 December 2007
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‘Experience Design in City Tourism‘ is a study by the Nordic Innovation Centre to gain more insight into what and how visitors want to see and experience during their stay and what the tourist industry can do in the long run to satisfy their needs.
The study starts from understanding how tourists of Nordic & Baltic cities design their own experiences, and how they experience these cities. In total some 5,000 visiting tourists are being interviewed. The results are used to improve the design of tourist experiences in cities — taking into account the existing characteristics for each city — and to help cities meet the expectations and behaviours of their tourists.
The project is headed by Wonderful Copenhagen, the official Copenhagen tourist organisation. The other participants are Malmö, Arhus, Uppsala, Stockholm, Bergen, Oslo, Turku, Tampere, Helsinki, Reykjavik, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. The project is financed by the Nordic Innovation Centre under the auspices of the Nordic Council of Ministers. The results of the survey will be published during the spring of 2008. Other related projects and studies on the Nordic Innovation Centre website: |
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30 September 2007
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I just took a 7 day trial subscription to the online database of the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) – which allows you the download of 5 papers – and discovered a treasure trove of information.
Two papers in particular caught my attention: The emperor’s new clothes: technology is useless if consumers can’t use it Transforming leisure with ethnography Since it’s a subscription based service, I cannot link to the papers but the site has a good search engine. Unfortunately, full subscription is rather expensive. |
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28 September 2007
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The mobile platform is currently undergoing somewhat of a revolution in the developing world — and so are people’s lives — with Africa now more advanced than the rest of the world in terms of mobile banking. The user experience challenges are only beginning to be addressed.
If you want to keep abreast on developments in this field, here is a crop of news stories from just this last week:
Note by the way that all the user research work by Jan Chipchase and others seems to have paid off: Nokia dominates the mobile handset landscape in India with an astonishing 74% market share. |
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25 August 2007
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Even for those who don’t understand Italian, this is quite a spectacular introduction to Turin (or “Torino”), Italy, and its surrounding region.
The videos are shot in gorgeous high definition quality by the Turin movie director Luciano De Simone and narrated by Carlo Massarini (who was also responsible for the highly entertaining videos in the excellent Turin Museum of the Mountains). Eventually the site, which was produced for the Italian Ministry of Culture, will introduce a number of Italian cities but for now the only one online is Turin, the city where I live. Structured in nine chapters, accessible via a horizontal menu on the bottom, the series includes: The interface is quite simple: the “+” sign gives you a larger image, “link utili” provides you with links to what you just saw, and “mobile” allows you to download the movie files. The site is not at all interactive though: the only thing you can do is watch. Another concern I have is that the creators did not add (optional) English subtitles, which would have not been so difficult to do. Graphically, the meaning of the bar code design element is beyond me. But it is beautiful. Enjoy. |
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2 August 2007
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Artur Bergman recently had the opportunity to tour a Virgin America plane and was impressed with the attention to the user experience:
(via Core77) |
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24 July 2007
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Trabber [a contraction of travel + grabber] is a new and seemingly simple search engine that simultaneously searches on the main online flight providers: online travel agencies, lowcost carriers and traditional airlines.
Trabber compares all the flight offer from [a still somewhat limited list of] providers and shows the final prices of the flights, without hidden cost. The Trabber results are the same that one would get by directly going one by one to all the web sites. The difference is that, with Trabber, one only has to search once to find all the available flights. The tool was launched by two young Spanish entrepreneurs, with the help of a usability expert. The first version was in Spanish and that seems the most advanced site for now. Meanwhile, beta versions of the site have launched in the US, the UK, Italy and Germany. Their business model is based on traffic redirection, they told me. The first impression is one that feels like Google, so perhaps being bought by Google might be their other business goal. Some hickups need to be fixed still (it didn’t recognise Milan as a “nearby” airport to Turin and has only 6 traditional airlines in the Italian version), but on the whole it works rather well. |
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16 July 2007
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Blognation Italy reports on Segnaloitaly, a user generated recommendation service for the Italian tourist market.
Blognation Italy caught up with Tiziana Ferrando and asked about monetising the site and future plans for development. |
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23 June 2007
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Sustainable tourism is one of the main focus areas of the Dott07 initiative (a year of community projects, events and exhibitions in North East England that explore what life in a sustainable region could be like – and how design can help us get there).
Programme director John Thackara has invited Leandro Pisano and Alessandro Esposito to an upcoming expert meeting. Pisano and Esposito are partners in Ufficio Bifolco, a marketing and cultural planning company that works on ICT strategies for development of rural areas in South Italy. They are producers of two festivals in Southern Italy – Interferenze and Mediaterrae – that bring together nature and technology, tradition and vanguard, past and future, local and global. This unique convergence of sounds, images, landscapes and carnival rites of a rural land, are signals of new ways we might visit and experience new locations. (via Doors of Perception) |
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16 June 2007
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Hotel giant Marriott is partnering with hotelier and real-estate developer Ian Schrager to create a new brand of as many as 100 hotels that will combine the personal, intimate, individualized and unique lodging experience on a global scale.
The brand, the brainchild of the new partners, responds to new cultural and social imperatives that Mr. Schrager says have emerged. This brand will reflect these changing lifestyles and cater to a vast underserved market of guests expecting and in turn demanding a unique experience not merely a place to sleep. “Together Marriott and I have a new vision and plan to radically rethink and catapult the lifestyle boutique hotel into the present by capturing the spirit of the times,” said Mr. Schrager. “People today are sophisticated and they understand good design, quality, originality and commitment to excellence. They will not accept something derivative and they want the ethos and soul of a hotel to be authentic and have character. They also expect and deserve impeccable, modern and gracious personalized service that is at the same time luxurious yet down to earth. It is the ultimate balancing act of these apparent contradictions to create a hotel that is simultaneously specific and customized yet universal. We intend to make this type of lodging widely accessible and available for the first time in the key lodging destinations across the globe and to everybody around the world who wants it.” The hotels will be located in gateway cities throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. The initial list of markets to be explored includes New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, and Las Vegas in the U.S.; London, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan and Rome in Europe; and Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Bangkok, Seoul and Tokyo in Asia. With an average size of 150-200 rooms, each of the hotels will reflect the best of the cultural and social milieu of its location and of the time. A diverse set of world-renowned architects and designers will be recruited to create one-of-a-kind buildings spanning the complete range of project types, from new construction, to conversions, to dramatic renovations. (via influxinsights) |
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8 May 2007
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Delta Air Lines launched a new advertising campaign to mark a new era, introduce an updated, boldly modern corporate brand and showcase a reinvigorated customer experience. The campaign, entitled “Change,” honors Delta’s strong 78-year heritage with a renewed sense of vitality and is focused on Delta’s effort to rethink every moment of the of the travel experience, enhancing the time customers spend at each stage of their journey – from trip planning to arrival – to make it as rich and rewarding as possible.
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9 January 2007
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Over the last year I have sporadically been keeping you informed about the plans for Torino, World Capital of Design 2008.
Things are now taking shape and a website is up. A friend of mine, the young, dynamic and very globally focused Paola Zini, who has been the de facto lead of the initiative of the initiative for a long time, has just also been appointed the official director. Paola immediately selected a scientific committee not to be ignored: Gilo Dorfles (Italy), Guta Moura Guedes (Experimenta, Portugal), Michael Thompson (UK), Enrico Morteo (Italy), and Bruce Nussbaum (Business Week, USA). I will write soon (a lot) more about this exciting initiative, which is energetically chaired by the Mayor of Torino. To make this happen, I am happy to be able to count on the collaboration with some top-level people that I will soon let you know more about. [To be continued, of course...] |
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26 September 2006
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The UK usability firm Webcredible has published a usability white paper on the online travel sector, based on a comprehensive study of online flight booking services on 25 travel websites in June 2006.
Webcredible states that poor usability, including hidden charges, cumbersome search functions and booking forms that are hard to find, is driving away customers. The company presents ten key guidelines to help online travel companies significantly improve the user experience and effectiveness of their website. Though based on the online flight booking process, many of the guidelines are valuable and transferable to other online travel sectors, such as booking holidays, hotels or car hire. Practical advice and examples of best practice are provided throughout the report. |
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6 July 2006
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Dott is a ten year programme of design innovation, initiated by the Design Council, that will take place every two years in a different region or nation across the UK.
The programme encourages the innovative use of design as contribution to economic, cultural and social success of the UK and will provide the opportunity for designers, businesses and public service providers to engage with citizens in improving national life through design. Dott will be an inspiring, involving and educational initiative for young people and various groups of citizens. Its aim is to raise knowledge of the value and importance of design to our wellbeing. Each Dott biennial will respond to the specific needs and ambitons of the region concerned. The aim is to foster an inclusive and participatory approach to design that will stimulate long-term change and create a lasting legacy. The first Dott – Dott 07 – takes place in North East England in 2007. It is organised in partnership between the Design Council and the region’s development agency, One North East and led by programme director John Thackara and executive producer Robert O’Dowd. Dott 07 will take eight core themes – energy and environment, sustainable tourism, school and community, health and wellbeing, mobility and access, town and country, food and nutrition, and housing and home – and work with local communities within the region to frame specific challenges as design opportunities. Dott 07’s projects are organised into three programme strands: Public Commissions, which involve real people in real places, exloring how design may improve an aspect of daily life; Education, aimed at school pupils, college students, teachers and local communities, working together in collaborative projects; and Design Showcases, which are events in museums, galleries and festivals that explore the present and futures of design. The recently relaunched Dott 07 website – which comes with its own blog – illustrates some of the projects, which are already in the works: Lo Carb Lane, Future School, Health Wise, Alzheimers 100, Move Me, Smart Town and City Farming. The results of all Dott 07 projects will be presented at the Dott 07 Festival in October 2007. |
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25 June 2006
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Most of us find it rather hard to picture ancient times when viewing old bones and stone fragments in dusty museum display cabinets. Now archaeological artefacts can come alive with the help of EPOCH, a European research project that uses augmented reality, computer game and 3D-image technology to resurrect cultural heritage sites, according to IST Results, the online magazine of the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies (IST) research initiative.
“From an archaeological point of view, it now becomes possible to reconstruct large sites at low cost. Previously, 3D modelling has all too often focused on a limited number of landmark buildings, without the context of sites surrounding them. Producing entire city models was just too expensive, so we got a Parthenon without Athens, and a Colosseum without Rome. Thanks to EPOCH this no longer needs to be the case,” explains the University of Leuven’s Prof Luc Van Gool. Computer-generated humans – avatars, will act as multilingual guides in this computer-generated world, explaining about the visited site. With the help of interactive storytelling, visitors will be able to personalise the story according to their interests and the time available for the visit, explains Franco Niccolucci, EPOCH Director for Training and Dissemination at Florence University. To further enhance the user experience the project has developed a cost-efficient prototype that uses widespread techniques known as ‘rapid prototyping’ and 3D scanning. |
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24 April 2006
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With globalisation, most anticipate an inter-connected world with greater understanding of multiple cultures more than ever before. Martin Jacques, a senior visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore, argues in The Guardian that this assumption is at odds with the tone of globalisation, based on a “one-size-fits-all” model of western cultural imperialism.
Whereas European colonialism included exporting self-defined values of civilisation, it did not strive to refashion other cultures in the image of the West. Underlying globalisation, on the other hand, is the belief that the world is moving toward a common culture. What is disturbing for Jacques is that the shift is taken to mean the mass export of US, neo-liberal and mass-consumption values at the expense of traditional mores and standards of other societies. Often, self-proclaimed experts on cultural exchange hold but a mere surface understanding of other cultures that are rapidly becoming receptacles for the transfer of western politics, economic models and lifestyles. In an age of connection facilitated by technology and tourism, a lack of respect for difference has emerged. Globalisation has produced a worldwide intimacy that is, sadly, coupled with intolerance because mental distances have changed little. Globalisation has fostered the illusion of intimacy while intolerance remains as powerful and unyielding as ever – or rather, has intensified, because the western expectation is now that everyone should be like us. Ironically, the non-West continues emerging as a world force. Jacques points out that the current hubris of the West hints that future reactions and conflicts will not be so benign. |
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2 March 2006
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Aeroports de Paris presents the first ethnographic study about men’s buying behaviour in an airport. This unprecedented survey was carried out in January 2006.
In an airport environment, a man travelling on his own becomes a true shopper: He is more autonomous; he takes responsibility for his own shopping and buys more easily. Most men when alone at the airport go through a methodical and quite thorough shopping tour. Contradicting their urban shopping habits, they stop by almost every window and enter in several boutiques. Their behavior is totally different from the man travelling with his spouse who generally relies on her to guide him. More experienced than him, she validates his choices. The airport environment greatly modifies the behavior of male passengers. Shopping and window shopping, generally considered as trivial activities, become here natural conduct. Downtown, only 1 man out of 100 enters in a perfume shop alone; at Aeroports de Paris, the visit rate totals 21%! Read full story |
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24 February 2006
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Design Continuum CEO Gianfranco Zaccai imagines an airline that strives to provide an overwhelmingly positive customer experience
I recently visited Boston’s new Ikea store with my two young children. A few days later, I flew to Italy on my usual carrier, Alitalia. The two experiences offered quite a lesson in the design of a customer Ikea, the Swedish chain of retail stores for the home, is a worldwide success in customer loyalty and profits. Alitalia, the Italian national airline, seems perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy, with a shrinking base of often-dissatisfied customers. All the while, Ikea provides a taste of Sweden to a receptive global audience, and here the contrast with Alitalia is dramatic. Far more tourists travel to Italy than to Sweden — 40 million last year alone. Yet Alitalia does little to leverage Italy’s positive “brand,” ignoring opportunities to offer a unique experience for its customers and to actually design itself out of its financial predicament. Imagine if Alitalia thought about the customer’s total travel experience the way Ikea thinks about the customer’s total shopping experience? Here are some touch points that would be part of the total designed “Ikeatalia” experience. |