Step up in VR tourism
- Tuyen Nguyen
- Oct 31, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 31, 2020
This will be the next chapter of my journey to develop tourism in VR and tourism in general. In the previous chapter, I have covered the problems encountered and the direction I take on the path of seeking insight into the tourism industry in the future. You can review it in the link below.
In this chapter, having an insight into the tourism of the future and gained a clear understanding, the next step is to create an artifact of my own for the future. And of course, this is not a short process that I can speed up or complete in a short amount of time if I want it to be perfect. That is why I have to create a comprehensive plan to meet the progress requirements and manage my time.
My plan was written in week two after receiving help and advice from the faculty. The plan was pretty straightforward, including:
Exploring the surroundings of my insight (including what things, what people, and where) - this will give me a better understanding of what I want to create, as every idea comes from related objects around it. Thus if I can grasp the environment inside my insight, I can imagine new artifacts for the future.
After learning about surroundings, the next step is to create a system board to show the circulation of that insight in the future - this is a seemingly straightforward but is a challenging step to me because my vision is about tourism in the future as the tourism industry is an enormous system assembled by many layers of small systems below such as VISA, restaurants, resorts, hotels, entertainment, and more. But luckily, because I have incredibly dedicated and excellent instructors who help me shrink that system, or rather focus on a small internal system instead of trying to perfect it so that I can finish the board.
Once the system board has been formed, the next move is to create new ideas from small areas of the system and find the artifact that we want to build most. This is also a little trick the instructor gives us, by observing individual point within the system, we can think and come up with ideas in a much deeper and more accurate way.
But of course, things cannot go as smoothly as I would like. Before I entered week 4, I realized that my ideas weren't very much integrated into the VR system, where my insight began. This gave me a headache because I was caught up in the words "artifacts" so that my ideas were both physical and not inside the virtual world. But fortunately, Krishna (the class lecture) was of great help in finalizing my concept. He made me realize what I should and shouldn't do, and that was why the process eventually turned out to be much more favorable.
After having the final idea, this is also the final stage of the process, which is the fabrication stage.This stage was more difficult than I imagined. First, we had to finish the work of finding the ideal design or mood board pattern. I searched and searched from many sources and even countries around the world. But what makes me awkward is that these models do not feel new because most of them are everywhere today, and some models are even out of date. That's why I have to go through many modifications to bring a design that í futuristic and somehow feels luxury to the user. From those modifications, I draw more different perspectives on design. I drew out so many new experiences that I never thought I would encounter in this design process. And finally, what I created is the booking system through VR, where people can experience a whole new style of travel, where they will be able to experience the destination they are planning, even before they get there.
And this is the result of the last two weeks but also the process of the past twelve weeks. I am proud of myself as well as want to thank all the people who have helped me through the concept and production process. Although this is only a prototype and a design that the future can complete, this is definitely a step forward in my design studies and a valuable experience on the journeys of becoming a designer.
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