The second group in my class worked on a product for Philadelphia Tourists. They come up with a set of services that is designed to replace a tour guidebook. The mock-up user interface is shown below.
The key idea here is that this device is designed to replace tour guidebooks. Its size, weight and appearance are all based on the typical tour guidebook. Much of the contents will be integrated into Google Map service with Web 2.0 type content managements, where people can contribute and evaluate the contents. For example, restaurant guide will include feedback and pictures of foods and places from visitors, not from restaurants. The price of the device will about $250 per unit and they will be sold to hotels and travel agents. They can be rented through popular internet search engines and tourism web portals. The key challenge will be how to create an alliance with potential business partners by creating a new ecology of services that can offer a powerful experiences to many different types of tourists who come to visit Philadelphia. Also, the question is how to make it scaleable. Again, an interesting observation here is that people want pedestrian level navigation systems and leveraging physical places as information sources.
