Designing Mobile Guide Service for Small Tourism Companies Using User Centered Design Principle

摘要

This paper describes the design and development process of a mobile web service for tourism sector by using User Centered Design (UCD) principles. The result of applying UCD method is a robust mobile application that fulfilled the essential needs of all stakeholders. The designing and development are based on active involvement of all stakeholders involved at various stages of the product development e.g. user study, concept design, prototyping and usability testing. This method enabled us to define concrete business benefits to all stakeholders and provide a usable and functional product regardless of stakeholder's role. The application assessments' result reveals that iterative user centered design processes increase significantly the number of touch points to the end users, and therefore integrate faster user and business needs. The resulted development is a mobile service that has helped especially small tourism companies, which often have limited resources to build and purchase customized mobile applications.