The One Reason Tourism Apps Fail
When the Guide Dog Bites: A Case Study
Joe Tourist came to see the famous Rembrandt painting The Return of the Prodigal Son on exhibition at one of the best museums in the world: The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. Throughout his trip, Joe’s smartphone had been an invaluable aid, helping him to find and buy the best deals on airfare and hotel, alerting him to a last minute change in his flight, navigating him through an unfamiliar city, and giving him tips about the best places to eat. Like a highly trained guide dog, it never faltered, never failed. App after app delivered on its promise.
Now, finally, he is standing in front of the Rembrandt, smartphone in hand. He has purchased a new app that promises to guide him through the exhibits, including the painting before him. Excitedly, he taps the app icon on his device and launches the app.
Then the guide dog bites him.
Head bowed, eyes glued to the tiny screen of his device, furiously tapping and pecking, he works the app. Rembrandt’s magnificent masterpiece, the very thing he came to see, hangs before him, glanced at but not fully appreciated. The app is no longer an aid or enhancement to the traveler’s experience. Rather, it has become the worst possible travel companion ~ a distraction. The app has failed him, failed the Master, and failed the Hermitage.
Why?
The major reason apps fail is due to poor design, primarily of the User Interface (UI). The UI is that part of the app with which the user interacts ~ screens, buttons, sliders, knobs, and the like. The UI is to an app what a dashboard is to a car. If the UI is poorly designed, as many are, then the user will waste time dinking around with the app, trying to extract its benefits rather than enjoying them. (“Dinking” is a polite verb one can use to replace its much coarser F-word equivalent.)
Imagine if author and theologian Henri J.M. Nouwen was distracted by a smartphone when he visited the Hermitage in the late 80’s, where he studied Rembrandt’s masterpiece for hours, gleaning the painting’s every nuance and secret. We would not have today Nouwen’s insightful book “The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming.” But we might, however, have a selfie of him from the museum cafe. Lovely.
On the other hand, imagine how an app might have helped Father Nouwen if it had enabled him to hear the voice of the artist expanding on his creation ~ his motivation, his influences, his purpose, his techniques. What other insights might Nouwen have gained? How might that have changed his experience of the painting? How might it change ours?
Only the individual tourist can decide if, when, or how technology enhances or detracts from their experience. Our job, as app developers, is to deliver excellence and then let the individual choose for herself.
Driving in the Rain
As an example of a well-designed UI, imagine you are driving your car, and it starts to rain. Even if you have rented the car and are unfamiliar with it, chances are good you can turn on the windshield wipers fairly quickly without taking your eyes off the road for too long. You are the beneficiary of a well-designed UI. It is important to car manufacturers that you, the user (driver), not become distracted by their UI (the dashboard), for then you might wreck the car, become injured, and (in the United States at least) sue them. For that reason, car manufacturers are very careful UI designers and follow rigorous standards for design practice and quality.
Not so for app designers. UI design and quality can vary from app to app. Most are not designed by UI professionals at all, but rather by the nerd who coded the app. He or she may be a great programmer, but UI design is a completely different skill set, and one most development shops are unwilling to pay for. Sure, the app gets built, and it works, but the UI is flawed and in the case of our Hermitage visitor, it becomes a distraction rather than an enhancement.
The Hermitage would be right to be annoyed, for that app has not served them well. Museums and other tourist destinations would be wise to know what apps are being used in their environment, and steer visitors to the better ones. If no such app exists, the organization could always build their own.
Now with Fewer Features Than Ever Before!
It is beyond the scope of this book to cover all the elements of a good UI, but there is one recommendation I will make: Less is more. This advice is especially true for travel apps, where the point of interest should never be the app itself but rather the very site, person, or object that draws the tourist in the first place. The key is simplicity or simple elegance as I like to say. I would be cautious of any app that offers too many fancy but useless features as they tend to divert the user’s eyes down to the device (such as to watch a video). Rather, tourism app designers should borrow a page from the car dashboard design manual, ensuring the user’s head and eyes are up and on your points of interest as much as possible. Using more audio content and less visual content is best practice for a travel app.
The “less is more” design method has proven its appeal again and again, with companies such as Apple and Google using it with great success. The original Google page was simply their company name and a box into which we entered our search term ~ nothing more. But notice what happens over time. Pressures to add more bells and whistles inevitably creep in, if for no other reason than to keep up with the competition. Imagine one of those companies announcing a new version of their product with the headline, “Now even fewer features than ever before!” or “Good news! Nothing has changed.” It rarely happens; the Google search engine is a notable exception.
Techno nerds and geeks love to add features because they admire what the technology can do, and often lose focus on what the technologyshould do. A good UI designer never loses that focus, always keeping the User Experience (UX) front and center in the build process. Thepièce de résistance of an exquisitely designed UX is when the technology completely fades into the background of the user’s life (yes invisible), a phenomenon we refer to in the computing industry as “Ubiquitous Computing.”
A Caveman Lights a Fire
A great example of ubiquitous computing is the humble thermostat. As cave people, we regulated temperature by throwing another log on the fire ~ not very
ubiquitous. That required effort and vigilance. Eventually, we evolved out of that drudgery and invented central heating and the thermostat you probably grew up with and may still have: the one where you set the temperature, and the system maintains that set point within a degree or two.
The next evolution of the thermostat is the programmable one, where you can identify periods of time (say from midnight to 6 AM) when the set-point can be different from other times, say after the kids get home from school. This is definitely a step forward in ubiquitous evolution, as the evolved thermostat requires much less human attention than its predecessor.
But what if the thermostat could sense when the kids came home from school by virtue of some human presence sensor? What if it were smart enough to learn, on its own, the unique lifestyle patterns of your family and set the temps accordingly? When you are at work and the kids are school, it would know, without your having to tell it, and it would adjust the temps in order not to waste energy, saving you money. You would never have to touch this device ~ it would simply fade into the background of your life as a very sophisticated piece of ubiquitous computing.
Such a thermostat, in fact, exists ~ the Nest thermostat from Tony Fadell, the guy who led the team that created the first 18 generations of Apple’s iPod and
the first three generations of the iPhone. It is an amazing device and a perfect example of ubiquitous computing.
You should not be surprised by Nest’s provenance. Under Steve Jobs, Apple products were designed with an unwavering focus on the UX. Apple was not the first to build MP3 players or smartphones ~ plenty of geeks had done so before, but had burdened their devices with oodles of fancy gadgetry, the weight of which sank them. Apple, however, made quality design and ease-of-use a top priority. Success required that kind of leadership and vision, and that is what your app will need too ~ if it is not to fail.
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Brant Huddleston is the author of the free ebook “How to Build the Perfect Smartphone Tour (Without Geeking Out): A Guide for Executives, Tour Operators, or any Non- Technical Professional in the Tourism Industry.”
Written for the non-technical reader, this book covers:
- How to create jobs jobs, opportunity, and wealth in your community with smartphone technology.
- Three major technology trends you can use NOW to stimulate your tourism economy
- The ONE reason mobile tour apps fail and how to avoid it
- Seven practical tools, tips, and techniques for building your first mobile tour
- Five ways to draw your visitor into a deeper experience, and make money in the process
