inspiración + empatía
tourism map
Background: One of the first high impact, high interest project ideas introduced by the "Tourism Collective" (the name we have granted our assembled group of tourism-related organization) was to create a tourism map. The map would provide information to visitors (potential and actual) about tourist activities on the island. It would also be utilized as a tool to share with partner organizations and hotels afuera de la isla.
There were several phases to this work:
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Phase 1: This initial meeting was utilized to identify the most important places and businesses to include on the map.
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Phase 2: Finalize the list of locations in subsequent Tourism Collective meeting after speaking with local business owners.
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Phase 3: Engage a designer who could help bring the vision of our map to life (one of my connections from West Monroe Partners --Thank you, Sarah!)
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Phase 4: Show the version map 1.0 to the Tourism Collective and get feedback! It is not customary in Costa Rica to critique work in public, so we had to get creative in our questions to get true feedback.
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Phase 5: Officially "publish" the map -- share, share, share! We utilized the map as a "coming out party" for our Tourism Collective. First, it was a way to demonstrate the benefit of the collective to others businesses that hadn't committed to the organization. Second, it was a great reason to connect with current and potential tourism partners and allowed us to start or reinvigorate conversations for impact work.
Purpose: To engage the community by utilizing human-centered design and user experience techniques to develop a visually appealing and informative tourist map
Audience: Isla de Chira community members (tourism-related organizations)
Materials:
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Sign-in sheet
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Whiteboard
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Markers
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Blank maps of the community
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Pens
Lesson Learned: We partnered everyone in the meeting up with another person that they didn't necessarily work with on a regular basis. This decision allowed for participants to share ideas one-on-one with another and learn about their community. There were a lot of exclamations like, "I didn't know that was there!" or "That's the name of that area?!".
