A collaborative tourist system using serious games

Abstract

Smartphones are trending and most tourists already own one. Many applications exist for smartphones, in order to help tourists in their journeys. Applications available share the same problem, though: content may not be complete or updated and, they lack user feedback. The best information about a city is usually held by locals, or by recent visitors. An application fed and maintained by its users, seems a good solution to improve the information contained in mobile applications for tourists. Motivating travelers to share their knowledge, in a long-term basis, poses a problem. We propose to tackle that problem through the use of Serious Games, to achieve user's collaboration in the building and maintenance of a tourism database. A prototype for Android platform was developed and deployed. A group of 20 individuals tested the application in the terrain. Data was collected from their experience. A survey to the users showed their feelings towards this new experience. Results showed that Serious Games are a viable approach to achieve several objectives. Users from the test group showed to be interested in the gaming environment, enabling them to share their knowledge, possibly in a long term basis. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.