State-of-the-Art - Marcus Dypbukt Källman

One of the problems I learned from my interviews was the lack of signs and information when taking the ferry which makes apps with information and directions of Stockholm more useful. Even with the lacking amount of signs they weren't all translated into English, this sign that stated that passengers traveling to Skeppsholmen should tell the crew was only in Swedish.

 The first app that comes up when searching for “Stockholm” is a app by Stockholm stad called “Upptäck Stockholm”. It supposed to display all the exciting outdoor activities Stockholm has to offer and how to get there. The problem is that it doesn’t work, it crashes on startup and after reading a few reviews it seems I’m not the only one. The app hasn’t been updated since late 2014 and has a low 1,5 stars from reviewers with most of them complaining about it crashing. With it being the first search result and it not working it becomes a big problem for tourist who’s looking for a app to guide them through Stockholm. Even though the app doesn’t seem to target tourist but in fact people who live in Stockholm. I think they should first of all fix the crashes and secondly widen their target group to also include tourist searching for outdoor activities and to include indoor activities as well, like museums and such.  

Another app “Res I STHLM: SL reseplanerare” which allows the user to search how to travel with public transport between two locations. The app seems to target residents of Stockholm but is still very usable by tourists. A positive thing about this app is that it allows a search between two addresses and not only stops which makes it easier if you’re perhaps searching from your hotel to Skansen and don’t know the closest stop. The problem with this app is that since its focus lies on showing the fastest route it doesn’t display the more interesting route like ours, the ferry. I was only able to get the ferry as a suggestion if I started from Slussen but if I chose Gamla Stan or addresses closer to T-Centralen it suggested the train. Therefore, it’s hard for tourist who doesn’t know about the ferry to be able to find out about it.

Both of these apps require a internet connection which might be a problems for tourists. "Upptäck Stockholm" could be changed to only rely on GPS to guide you and use offline maps but seeing as Stockholms stad hasn't updated or fixed a major bug since 2014 it doesn't seem likely they'll try to improve the app. "Res I STHLM" relies on updated timetables to provide the best possible routes and is therefore hard to change to not need a internet connection.

Interview - Marcus Dypbukt Källman

I interviewed three women aged between 25 and 30 years old.

Where are you from?

All three of them were from Germany and lived in Berlin but one of them was originally from Sweden and had lived in Stockholm for the majority of her life.

How often do you travel on this line?

It was the Germans first time traveling on the ferry but the swede had been on it several times before.

What is the purpose of your visit?

They were in Stockholm just to visit and they were going from slussen to djurgården to visit skansen.

Why did you choose this boat?

They chose the boat since it would be the easiest and fastest way to travel to skansen from where they were living. They had also chosen the boat since it would be a more interesting than taking the bus.

How did you get a ticket?

Since one of them had previously lived in Stockholm, she already knew how and where to get tickets and she did so for the Germans. The two Germans agreed that it would have been hard to do on their own if they would have had to do it.

How has the travelling experience been so far?

They thought that the ride had been too short and that it could have been a bit longer.

They also felt that if the swede hadn't already known about the ferry and how to travel on it, that it would have been hard to know when to get off and where to go. A few more signs would have been good.

Were there any surprises?

There were no surprises

Did you find sufficient information about the route of the boat?

They didn't have to find out anything since the swede was guiding them but believed it would have been hard without her.

Would you use a smartphone application that guides you towards your destination?

A smartphone application would have been good since they felt it would have been hard to find the information if they were on their own and with the lack of signs it would have been hard to find their way once they were of the boat.

Would an audio guide in the app be of use to you?

They did not believe they would use an audio guide that was implemented in the smartphone application since this would require wearing headphones and since they weren't alone they would not use it.

They did think that it could be useful for a person traveling alone. Instead they suggested there could be a person speaking on the boat or a soundtrack talking about the sights around the boat would be better since you then easier can choose to listen or not.

They liked the idea of putting up signs along the sides of the boat with information on what is outside the window with information about the popular buildings and sights of Stockholm.

It could also be a app which contained the information and perhaps a function to point with the camera and get information on what you're pointing at.

State-of-the-Art analysis

GPSmyCity is an app for Android and iOS that offers walking routes, through a city of choice, to sites and attractions for tourists. It uses GPS that places the user on a map and presents colored lines through the map to guide the user to the next site. As the user walks around the map is updated in real time to match the user's current location. There are different kinds of walks (for instance, sightseeing walks and discovery walks) and you can create your own custom walks as well. Each attraction has a description with historical and cultural information that the user can choose to display at any time or when the site is reached. The description can be translated to different languages and its text-size can be modified. A selling point by the provider is that since the app uses GPS, it works entirely offline so no roaming or data plan is needed. The app is mainly aimed at tourists, which is our target group, but it can of course also be used by people who have missed some attractions in their own city.

During our second pilot study we had some ideas that roughly correspond to this app. An obvious limitation of this one is that it is meant for walking tourists only so it doesn't solve transportation problems, nor does it provide tickets to the attractions. It lacks an online mode so it doesn't provide real time updates on for instance traffic conditions or current events like temporary exhibitions and clubs. Another useful thing would be the ability for external organizations to put their own attractions in the guide and have it automatically show up in the app under some good classification system. If this is then combined with users putting up their own curated tours, you'll have a self driven system that evolves to an extent independently from the actions of the app provider.

Contextual Interview

Where are you from?
We are from Denmark and Sweden, but not from this city. We're here for a day.

Where are you going?
We don't know, we just came here.

Do you have a smart phone?
Yes.

How did you find out about this ferry?
Through the hotel.

Which one?
I don't remember, wait... Best Western, it's a 50 minutes drive from here.

Where did you buy your ticket for this ferry?
We have no ticket, the machine is off and we're standing here trying to figure out what to do next.

Can you think of a way to improve how tickets are bought?
There should be a human in the booth that can help!

Was there any difficulty getting here from where you are living in this city?
It was difficult to find this place with GPS, google maps, and the roads are confusing.

How?
There are no signs.

Can you think of anything that would improve your vacation experience today?
We would have liked help with planning from the employees at the hotel. They could have set us up with activities and tickets to the activities, and parking space. And also, better weather.

You know, you can buy your tickets from the SL app.
Really? We'll check it out... How many zones do we need? Anyways, good luck with your project!

Thanks for the interview. Good bye.

Pilot Study - War and Miro

Interview

The picture was taken on Skeppsbron to illustrate our readers how the fairy that we did our interviews looks alike.

Question: How often do you travel on this line?

Answer: For all the tourist that we asked this was the first time they travelled on this line.

Question: Where do you live?

Answer: The tourist that we interviewed came from USA, France and Germany.

Question: What is the purpose of your visit?

Answer: All of the 4 tourists were going to visit Vasa Museum.

Question: Age interval? 0-25, 25-50, 50+

Answer: All 4 tourists were in the age interval 25-50.

Question: How did you get a ticket?

Answer: - All 4 tourists got a ticket from the ticket collector, they just showed the ticket collector where they wanted to go on there map or on there phone and got a ticket that we paid for.

Question: How did you find out about the journey?

Answer: The tourist find the information in different ways, some found this information in a 72 hours guide about Stockholm and some find it online that should them this travel rout.

Question: Why did you choose this boat?

Answer: All the tourist choose the boat because this rout took least travel time.

Question: What was your experience like?

Answer: All the tourist liked the travel experience but they fought that could have signs that tells them which station there at.

During the seminarium 1, we in the group discussed that we should do a pilot study to see if any of our target group is present and if we need to improve our question. Miro and I personally went to the boat on the 4^th mars and did this pilot study. We had during exercise 1 discussed different ways of gathering data and we decided that questionnaires should be a good approach. The data gathering is a very important process during our field studies due to the fact that the data that we collect should establish the requirements needed for our product to fulfil. The question that we did in the group came up with was a mix between qualitative and quantitative data. This was done so that we can search for recurring patterns in the answers that we get from the tourists and so that we can translate some of our data to statistic data. By doing so we will get more interviews done.

Now to the evaluation of the interviews, on the boat trip we interviewed 6 people where 4 people where tourists. The answers that we received from the 2 swedes are not included in this text. When we went on the fairy and started to do our interviews we almost immediate realised that our question wasn’t that efficient as we planned. Firstly we need to readjust our questions, some of the question were to obvious like question 4,5 and 6. The tourist we interviewed replied identical to these questions. Everyone knew about the boat due to the fact that they had a 72 hours guide of Stockholm or they had checked online which was the fastest route to their destination. All the tourist that we interviewed took the fairy because their goal with their boat trip was to visit Vasa Museum and the fastest way from their hotel to the museum is the rout that involves taking the fairy. That was the only reason why they chosen the fairy over other transportations. Some of the tourist got confused on which destination they should go off. One of the tourists that came from Germany asked us if this is the destination that she would go of to get to the Vasa Museum. This was also confirmed by observation, when we observed the tourist they saw little confused on which destination they should go of.

                              

Our main conclusion from this pilot study is that we need to create more question that give us more information about how the tourist felt about the 72 hours guide and how well the online version of the guide works etc. During the interviews we almost sounded like automated robots when we asked the questions. So a more human approach is preferred.

Seminarium 1 - Shahad Shubbar

Vem har inte fått ett uppdrag att skapa, utveckla eller designa något för en användare. Den första uppgiften är alltid att man ska ha datainsamling och den enkla vägen är att skapa en enkät i google form eller genom att intervjua folk på stad. Om man vill ha en bra resultat och slutsats, måste man tänka på ett bättre sätt. Man måste ha några tydliga mål, pilotstudie, struktur och planers design. Det räcker inte ofta med att vandra runt med några frågor och be slumpmässiga människor. Man måste ha ett mål grupp med välformerade frågor. 

Det bästa sättet för ett uppdrag är att börja med ett gör en fältstudie. En fältstudie innebär i detta fall att vi väljer och provar en specifik rutt med en viss transport. För att få ett bra resultat måste vi till exempel ta tunnelbana från A till B ett par gånger för att samla in så mycket data som möjligt om resan. Vi kan också fundera över vad saknar områden som behöver förbättras. Genom att göra intervjuer, enkäter eller observationer kan vi samla mer data. Vi måste också ange vilka krav vi har för vår produkt. Det vill säga, hur produkten ska fungera. Ska den fungera som vägledning för resenärer/ turister? Det är också bra att tänka på mer specifika funktionskrav som vilka funktioner produkten ska innehålla. 

Som jag nämnde tidigare, det är viktig med ett målgrupp. För att underlätta arbete så är det viktig med att ta reda på användareegenskaper. Till exempel om man ska utforma en produkt för turister, pensionärer, barn m.m. När man har ett målgrupp kommer man att få ett bra resultat i slutändan. 

Seminar notes

Today, we discussed our assignment in relation to the chapters we read for this seminar. Our main discussions were around the unknowns - the product or service itself, as well as how to handle the interview objects. Here's our plan:

* Pilot study spread out over time:
- We need to see if there are any relevant variations over time. For instance, our target group may be more active close to the end of the week. We want to spread out our observations over a few days, with an initial loose check - every group member must have visited the location at least once before March 11th, and report the results on the blog. We will discuss our findings and observations, and perform the main interview session in full group on March 18th.
- We want to factor in how much we influence people by our methods (group size, question wording, disturbing the experience). Therefore, we'll try out the base questions we have on our pilot studies before making sure we all ask exactly the same questions.

These are the base questions we will start with:


* How often do you travel on this line?
* Where do you live?
* What is the purpose of your visit?
* Age interval? 0-25, 25-50, 50+
* How did you get a ticket?
* How did you find out about the journey
* Why did you choose this boat?
* What whas your experience like?