School Project @ Parsons
Desing Research, Visual Design, UX Design
Oct 2021 - Nov 2021 (2 months)
Manhattan, NY
Not just in economic terms, not just growing number of visitors or revenue. Successful tourism has to embody well-being of the country. It means nature, human health, and community identities of the country should be all respected and treated mindfully.
A large number of travleres are not aware of cultural contexts of their travel destinations and it leads to harming local communities environmently, economically, and culturally.
Linking visitors to locals with overlapping intersets by building cross-border relationships which helps tourists be conscious and respectful of local community and culture.
Secondary Research - User Research - Ideation - Iteration - Final Design
Towner is a mobile app that matches locals & travelers based on their interests.
it enables travelers to search activities by locations, dates, # of party, and interests. Travelers are recommended activities based on the interest they listed during onboarding.
Thorough yet engaging onboarding & profile-building process ensures interest-based matches between the hosts & travelers
Activity host lists an activity based on their interest & expertise. Host can review the travelers’ profile before accepting.
Travelers can send requests to hosts to join activities. Travelers can check and manage activities status in My Page screen.
Activity host will recieve requests from travelers and mange acitivies status in My Page screen.
Once requests have been accepted, travelers and hosts can send messages to each other.
Subject matter experts interviews and surveys were conducted to get better understanding of status quo of tourist industry and travelers perception on local culture when traveling.
What makes modern tourism unsustainable?
How do we solve cultural irresponsiblity?
How much travelers' respect for local culture mattered to them?
Does traveling with a local make a difference in their travel behaviors?
A survey was conducted on 51 participants in varying age grups from 18-24 to 55-64, almost half of whom were in the 18-24 group. 80% respondnets based in NYC; rest in the West Coast & Midwestern US and Seoul, Korea.
69% of participants showed higher interest to slow travel
75% of participants reported knowing local culture matters to them when traveling
70% of participants answered fellow travelers' respect for local culture highly matters to them
65% of participants reported their behaviors change when they’re traveling
49% of participants reported their attitude changes when they travel with a local vs when they don’t travel with a local
1. One of the directors of an international NGO on global sustainable tourism, Ph.D in ecotourism & forest recreation
2. Environmental science graduate student, trip leader/designer with 5 yrs of experience across Europe & Asia
Overtourism - there is a problem with capacity management and a structure that enables irresponsiblity
Tourism in the midst of crowds detracts travelers from respect or appreciation and imposes a culture of "consuming" culture
This consumption culture eventually leads to damange and vandalization
There is a perpetual cycle: influx of people and capital prompts building infrastructures and vice ver sa.
Cultural irresponsbility - education is key. A lot of times, the impact comes from people not knowing
More value added when you have someone who knows the place intimately
Here are the primary & secondary research results that informed our project direction
Reduce overtourism through diffusion into other activities
“[Expanding] cultural tourism by appealing to travelers interested in food, art, history or music” Frank Haas, former VP of Hawaiian Tourism Authority
Take input from local residents
“... linking visitors with locals who share their passions for things like history or food and making storytelling central to sites like its World War I battlefields”, VisitFlanders, Northern Belgium region tourism representative
Problem restatement
How might we reduce the overcrowding of tourist attractions and prevent culturally irresponsible travel?
Our two goals for this app are:
1) matching locals and travelers based on there interests
2) diffusing overcrowded tourist activities
After we set our goals, we moved on to building the structure and user flow of this app starting from a sign-up process to managing travel activities.
These diagrams show two different user flows. First one is for a first time user who needs to go through the sign up process. The second one is focused on sending/receiving activity request as either travelers or hosts.
Sign-up, Search, Explore, Create Activities, My Page, Sending & Receiving Requests screens were developed with detailed UI elements based on the user flow defined earlier.
The quick sketches of each flow has been developed again as black & white wireframes. In this stage, the alignment and spacing of each UI element was considered thoroughly.
“Everyone is a Towner” (current process). Users can switch between being a traveler and a host. Also, we can separate sign up processes for hosts and travelers
For example, swiping interaction like dating apps do
Ensuring the flow makes sense for a diverse set of audiences
