Value-Sensitive, User-Centred Design for Augmented Reality in Tourism

Abstract

This Thesis Study, building on an experimental proposal submitted in June 2022, delineates the current field of Smart Tourism research and sets out the grounds for the greater use of Augmented Reality (AR) in the pre-trip, ideational phase of holiday-planning. In current research efforts in the field there is a tendency to focus too much on Virtual Reality (VR) applications, despite a growing body of evidence showing this to be potentially problematic for the stated aims of most destinations’ tourism marketing efforts and plentiful examples of AR’s success in other business sectors. Additionally identifying that the tourism field represents an interesting cross-cultural use-case for technology that has until now been poorly covered by existing Information Systems (IS) research, a case is made for an experimental application of Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) as a means of discovering cultural differences within the design-relevant values systems of diverse user-groups. Applied in early user requirement gathering with a view to a later wider experiment in differential prototyping for the proposed novel AR use-case in pre-trip planning and destination marketing, the core functional and non-functional design value and User-Experience (UX) requirements are established for a theoretical mixed Chinese and Swiss user group.