SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE BEACH: INSPIRING DESIGN WITH EGOCENTRIC POINT OF VIEW VIDEO, Mads Bødker, assistant professor, ITM

Tourist sites, whether they are constructed materially or communally, are inherently social. This prompts us to consider turning to the social to seek inspiration for the design of tourist technologies and services that stimulate and enable tourist interaction. We wish to propose a number of design sensibilities that might inform and inspire the design of innovative in-situ tourist social media: new mobile, social and locative media to enhance on-site tourist experiences.

We find that the design of mobile digital technologies intended for tourists (e.g. mobile information systems, mobile guides, or mobile social media) generally rests on the assumption that tourism prac- tices are predominantly guided sightseeing activities, which require timely information procurement to be satisfying and rich. They seem to draw on a particular trope of tourism, which suggests that tourism is driven by an urge to “master space”, a notion that privileges an organizing (and orderly) gaze.

However, tourism practices are more complex and diverse than sight seeing or similar canonical tourist practices. Rather than the tourist as sightseer, the tourist as networker can be a useful trope or “placement” for informing design work that focuses on social and locative mobile tourist technologies.