Recommendations

After this phase with explorations and iterations we achieved a concept direction that have been proven to add value to the experience of tourists in a van. We covered a potential gap within van tours by creating a more immersive tour by using technology. However there are still features to consider, which could make the experience even more immersive, exciting and surprising. These possible features are explained below.

Gloves

To let passengers immerse, it is important to trigger their senses. Especially if these triggers relate to the story. Therefore, one of our recommendations is to give gloves to the passengers which have vibrators or other actuators (e.g. one that changes temperature) which can response to the story. In this way passengers can 'touch' objects they see while sitting in the van. The idea is explained in the video below. After testing it appeared of value to be able to feel what you see, especially while being able to touch objects that you are in real life not allowed to touch (old objects behind vitrines etc). More explanation can be found in the inspiration and vision page.

Interactive Table

Although exploring, seeing and making decisions are done together, the passenger in the middle seat will have less opitons to interact himself/herself. Therefore, placing an interactive table in the middle could help to create a more shared experience. An option is to show different information or features on this display to stimulate conversations and interactions among the passengers. For example the route or a game in which they have to work together because every window and the table contains different pieces of information. For inspiration on possible interactions, we would recommend to take a look at de Tovertafel from active cues.

Scents

In our project we quickly discovered the added value of triggering the sense smell by scents that are related to the story. Smell is closely linked with memory, which could evoke emotions and make the tour more immersive. The video below demonstrates one of our test. In another test with more participants we witnessed how smell started a conversation and thus stimulated social bonding.

Picture feature

The feature to be able to take a picture with your window, like a screenshot of your view, was one of the features of our previous concept (see previous notion page, link below).

However, tourists like to make pictures, especially of things they never saw or experienced before. Therefore we recommend to look in this feature as well since it is a way of covering this need without letting passengers get distracted from the experience itself. Also, because it can be a way of advertisement for Ford, by having passengers showing pictures to others or sharing these on social media. As technology one could think of a little camera on every window, facing the outside.

It would be good to test whether adding this feature would not distract the passengers from the immersive experience.