Master of Arts in Design

In this section I have included a small brief about my MA project which had the theme:

 

“Experience History of a walled city now!” Designing the future of interactive & immersive guided tours

 

Brief Explanation/ Outline of Project

Emerging technology offers new perspective in creating & designing the future of human lives. Augmented Reality (AR) is a very promising technology which provides a “new view” of our world without the need to leave our physical one. Moreover, Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR) can offer new types of experiences and are beginning to have significant impact on industry and society. All the above technologies with the use of contextual web can easily personalise our user’s needs and make our life easier. In the tourism field, brand destination, the goal of which is to create unique tourist experiences and add emotional connection with a place, along with the increasingly rise of city break tourism are changing the way tourism is being made. It’s now time to consider the combination of tourism and technology which is the next step for a complete new interactive travelling experience.
Thessaloniki is a city in the north of Greece and an excellent destination for city-breakers because of its unique history and famous night life. The municipality of Thessaloniki has recently adopted a new touristic marketing trying to convert Thessaloniki into a competitive destination in Europe.
This project is an interactive guiding edutainment experience in Thessaloniki which uses AR and MR concepts in order to enhance visitor experience, turning a traditional guiding into an entertaining, fun and learning experience.

Context/ Rationale

I have a work experience in personal guiding and throughout this process, I realized that travellers not only need the option of being guided fast and easy in the town but also have fun in their own pace. This observation forced me to search for digital guiding applications that offer a digital guided tour in Thessaloniki. While researching those applications I realized that none of them offers travellers the ability to live and experience the city in a more entertaining but also interactive way. Moreover, a very important experience which is the memory of the trip isn’t counted in neither guiding application nor web pages.
People’s intention, when they travel for a short time, is to see and experience the city in a few days. Most applications and web pages which guide the traveller into the city focus more on informing the user a lot about the city’s monuments or history but they exclude the main purpose of the user which is their need to escape from their routine and enjoy a small trip in an urban place.
With my proposal I am firmly convinced that travellers will not experience guiding in Thessaloniki like another dull activity but, they will enjoy every moment of history in combination with fun and playfulness

Indented Outcomes of Project

This project is the design of a guiding edutainment application in the city of Thessaloniki using Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) practices. One of the priorities in the designing procedure of this application is to develop a new enhanced travelling experience in the city of Thessaloniki. Moreover, critical part for the design experience of the traveller will be to actually “live” the history of the city in the way locals lived it through the years. Another crucial part of the guiding experience will be to produce an immersive experience which will allow the visitor to getting to know the history of the city while also entertaining and sharing all this experience in social media keeping that memory alive when he gets back home.
With this design I strongly believe that I will alter the traditional way of the guiding procedure, from a more learning-centered into a more “tech-entertaining”-centered method, which is what the tourism industry requests. Also this project will make the beginning of a new AR and MR guiding experience in Thessaloniki which will of course transform the city into a competitive European destination, resulting in tourism development of the city which is extremely vital for it.

Key Areas of Research

My primary research included questionnaires with professional guiding companies from the city of Thessaloniki. This research took place in guiding walks which I participated in. Also, I conducted interviews with a well-known archaeologist, a storyteller, a museologist and a gamification specialist. My secondary research included, firstly, researching literature about all the historic background of the guiding route I am designing. Secondly, a thorough research with innovations in designing experiences outdoors but also indoors with examples from museums, thematic parks etc. Lastly, it also included reading articles and books about museum-pedagogy, Thessaloniki’s history and urban legends, User Experience, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality practices.

View the application demo here

View the user live action video here

Download the poster of the presentation here

 

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