Enhancing the travel experiences of people with visual impairments through application design

Abstract

While current iOS applications, or "apps", successfully meet the basic requirements of visually impaired users, the higher-order needs such as self-esteem and self-actualisation have not yet been sufficiently addressed by existing apps. Academic research that focuses on the different areas of psychological needs of people with visual impairments remains in its infancy. One such area is travel and tourism. This study demonstrates how gamification, a means by which game mechanisms are applied to non-game content, can assist in designing mobile applications that enhance the tourism experiences of people with visual impairments beyond merely the booking and navigation between different tourist sites. The study introduces a "research through design" project that incorporates hybrid empathic design research and methods such as multisensory observations combined with interviews that are derived from sensory ethnography methodology. These methods when combined together have created a more empathic and intuitive application that caters for the tourism interests and needs of people with visual impairments in Hong Kong. Thematic analysis was also conducted, featuring a data analysis method which refers to systematically identifying, organising, and offering insights into patterns of themes among qualitative raw data. The material collected indicated ways in which engagement, motivation, and enjoyment could be increased using gamification elements. Agile app development was then adopted in the researchers' design practices. The final app user testing session was then conducted in Hong Kong using 30 people with different levels of visual impairment, aged between 18 and 55. The results of the user testing suggested that adding gamification elements into mobile applications has great potential for enhancing the emotions and experiences of people with visual impairments while travelling. The app experiments are the first to examine the perspective of applying gamification techniques to travel for people with visual impairments. This research will benefit the visually impaired community by providing its members with more meaningful travel experiences. As such, the research provides insights for government entities, social enterprises, and organisations serving people with visual impairments. The study results represent a further step towards developing advanced design research about people with visual impairments by proposing appropriate empathic insights and solutions in regard to user experience design (UX), and specifically in terms of travel experience design.