About

A mobile application that helps you build a self-paced responsible tourism experience in the Indian state of Kerala.

Project background

Responsible Tourism Mission is the nodal agency formed by the Government of Kerala to spread and implement the ideologies and initiatives of Responsible Tourism all over the State. The Mission is envisaged as a 'triple-bottom-line' mission that comprises economic, social, and environmental responsibilities. The mission aspires to provide additional income and a better livelihood to farmers, traditional artisans, and marginalized people along with creating a social and environmental equilibrium. The post-Covid time offered a moment of introspection and an opportunity for rebooting the RT mission. The platform-led tourism and its social and ecological impacts pose a massive concern for RT practices and against this is an emergence of noteworthy, even if small alternatives that seek to reclaim locally responsible tourism experience. I have taken up this project of designing a mobile application to harness the digital advantage and assist the responsible tourism mission that the Kerala government is currently undertaking.

Understanding the market and the user's

Secondary data collection and analysis

·         What is responsible tourism?

·         Theories and models

·         Tourism trends and statistics in Kerala

·         Effect of tourism and post covid strategies

User interviews

I conducted five user interviews with people from the community who offers tourism products, travelers, and tourist guides currently working in some of the RT destinations. This was focused to identify users’ pain points, goals, needs, and frustrations. looked for patterns within the qualitative data collected through user interviews to discover common themes that can lead me to insights. This helped me identify user needs, prioritize them and arrive at product features.

The Users

After the user interviews, I focussed on two main user archetypes to tackle the critical pain points and address their needs based on the research

Framing the Problem statements

The insights were turned into POV statements to frame the problems from users' perspectives and how might we statements to actionable design solutions.

• How might we bridge the gap between the local communities and the tourist in an informed way so that both parties benefit from it?

• How might we help the tourists to be informed about the cultural sensitivities and be fully prepared for experiences?

• How might we assist the local community to attract more tourists?