2015 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
eWOM Generation Systems for International Tourism Promotion with Augmented Reality
Project/Area Number |
15K16599
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Research Institution | Seibi University |
Principal Investigator |
エリック ハーキンソン 成美大学, 経営情報学部, 助教 (50625994)
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Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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Keywords | International Tourism / Augmented Reality / eWOM / Internet Marketing |
Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Three prototypes of augmented reality enhanced environments have been created for tourism activities. The first prototype was an augmented reality booth that was created for TEDxKyoto. This was designed in a way to show the use of AR in MICE tourism as well as possible connections and merits of AR in motivating tourists to create and upload content to social media and other electronic word-of-mouth(eWOM) mediums. The second was an AR enhanced collaborative game used at a university open campus, this was to test how the initial use of AR affected the users’ perception of learning new information about a venue or destination. The third was a self-guided tour based on AR to start testing the practical use in larger scale environments. Field tests have begun using augmented reality in tourism related activities. An AR quiz rally was created and tested on a group of 120 participants in Fukuchiyama, Japan. In collaboration with Fukuchiyama City Hall and local tourism officials, 12 teams of 10 people got to know the city of Fukuchiyama through an AR enhanced quiz rally. Data was taken on how the activity was received along with data collected by web analytics. Those results are now being analyzed for publication and presentation.
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Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
With initial prototypes having a substantial amount of success, I can now move forward on creating a larger scale version for general testing and data collection. This is generally the stage I expected to be when I wrote my proposal. There have been only slight changes to the use of budget to help accommodate the pace of research.
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Strategy for Future Research Activity |
I am pleased to report that my activities in this research have been recognized by the international community and I have been asked to give a workshop on these AR environments at the Global TED Summit this June. This is a highly prestigious event and I will get the chance to share my research thus far and get the input of the world’s top minds in various fields. Looking to the next steps in research, I plan on creating a large scale production level AR enhanced tour to be used on a larger scale. I currently have two locations in review for this activity. One is Amanohashidate and the other is Citizen Plaza next to Fukuchiyama Station. I plan to create AR tours and tourism based games for one or both of these locations. Next I will be connecting this tour to a website to start measuring the amount of useful travel information that is generated from the AR guided tours. Then I will analyze that data to report and present at several places in the final year of this project.
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Causes of Carryover |
Augmented Reality systems and platforms are still an emerging technology. This is why I have shifted a major purchase to this fiscal year. The platform I had intended to use was scheduled to be discontinued at the end of 2015. This is why I have decided to develop a different platform for this project. The costs in creating and licensing the software needed to create the larger scale AR environments have simply shifted to the current year.
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Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget |
The main portion of the budget will be used to create and develop the AR platform to be used in a large scale AR tour guide. Some additional costs will be in implementing the test. The remaining portion of the budget will be used to present findings and get feedback for the final stages of the project.
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Research Products
(13 results)