Expected User Acceptance of an Augmented Reality Service for a Smart City (original) (raw)

2018, Design, User Experience, and Usability: Users, Contexts and Case Studies

Background: This paper describes the preliminary results an ongoing project in the area of accessible tourism, which is currently being run by different universities, industrial partners and selected hotels. The first goal of the project is to systematically identify the barriers that travelers with disabilities encounter today when going on holidays. Another goal of this project is to build so-called Hotel-Living-Labs (HLLs). These are hotel rooms that are generally accessible and which are equipped with assistive technologies as well as assistive services. The HLLs serve as a test bed where assistive technologies and services can be evaluated in a realistic holiday environment. The last goal is to iteratively build an overall service for travelers with disabilities who wish to enjoy accessible holidays in a customer-centered way, together with the different customer groups with disabilities and their accompanying persons. Method: Firstly, a literature review of potential barriers for travelers with disabilities and elderly travelers was performed, and assistive technologies/services were proposed for overcoming these barriers. These identified potential barriers are currently being verified in a series of ongoing interviews, which are being conducted with 25 individuals, separated into four categories: persons with vision impairments, persons with hearing impairments, wheelchair users, and elderly persons. Each interview lasts 1 hour. The findings from the interviews will be compared with the findings of the literature review. The results will then be used to develop a number of fully accessible "hotel living lab" rooms, where the travelers' experiences will be evaluated via a questionnaire. Key results: The initial literature review revealed that, apart from facilities or services not being accessible themselves, many of the identified potential barriers are related to information offered by missing, inaccessible, outdated, inaccurate or inadequate information offered to the guests by the providers of assistive technologies/services before and during the holiday stay. Conclusion: Accessible Tourism is an important goal to achieve in order to allow travelers with disabilities and elderly travelers to enjoy their holidays to the same degree as anyone else. Because the preliminary results of this project have indicated that many of the existing barriers occur because important information is missing, inaccurate, or inaccessible at different steps of the holiday journey, the project will focus on applying digital assistive technologies that allow this information to be provided in an accessible manner.