Pleasant travel experience with mobile photography

Abstract

This graduation assignment is created by my interest in photography, mobile photography and travelling. The direction of this project is to create a meaningful service or product for people that travel in combination with mobile photography. The start of this project was very open and the method ViP was used to define a future context for a new service or product. The first phase was very explorative and the domain: mobile photography on holiday was explored in many different directions. The broad domain helped to discover many possibilities for design directions and prevented limitation in any direction. This extensive research included literature studies, interviews and questionnaires. Interesting directions showed up together with states, principles, trends and developments. The two most striking findings for this context is the importance of the balance between individualistic and social behavior and the smooth transition between online and offline attention. Besides that, people will have in the future more need to get reliable information and resources at any moment in time at any place. People live more efficient and fast and time is precious, therefore people like to communicate fast and efficient. Communication will become more visual and because of the digitalization and technical developments more accessible for many people. Sharing content on internet, the rise of social network sites and the increase in use of visual content contributes to more awareness and prudence on what is actually real. Therefore visual content has to be trustworthy. Travelling and going on holiday is something people always will do and need. Because every tourist and traveller is different it is necessary to personalise a trip or holiday. Tourists in 2018 will have many more possibilities to make a trip that match their wishes. Travelling and holiday is all about experiences. You see new things, eat unfamiliar food and you try to blend in a foreign culture. Photography is very powerful and images can express these experiences more than words can do. These findings resulted in a vision for a new service/product of the future. The evolved design direction or statement is part of this vision and it is a guideline for further design decisions: “I want people to travel with more pleasure, by giving more meaning to pictures they take”. Besides this statement an analogy for the desired interaction is made: “It should feel like your friends are with you while travelling”. The interaction between product/service and user is defined further by interaction qualities. The design direction is narrowed down by describing product characteristics. Several design ideas were created and combined to one concept that fits the vision most. A user test with a prototype and an online questionnaire helped to detail the concept. The final concept is the application HoyJoy. Travellers can capture experiences by photo, film and text to create meaningful recommendations to share with friends. Pictures that are uploaded represent your experience; they are honest and made with a mobile camera. HoyJoy is a home for inspiration on what to do while travelling. A trustworthy community of friends gives information on where to go. This app helps to discover places that are worth visiting. Browsing though the experiences is very visual and a choice is based on first impression. Recommendations of friends can be saved in the wishlist. Travellers can look forward to the saved places they want to visit, or they can look for inspiration at the moment they need it. This project ends with recommendations for further development of this concept and an evaluation of the applied ViP method and results of the final concept.