How can the use of a mobile application change the course of a sightseeing tour? A question of pace, gaze and information processing

Abstract

When we use a smartphone as we move about, we see our surroundings in a different way, adopting new practices to combine physical exploration of place with digital navigation on the Web. This article seeks to identify how consulting digital information as we go along modifies our behaviour. Specifically, we will focus on the use of a mobile application dedicated to the presentation of a tourist site. Our exploratory study is based on a comparison of two groups of visitors: the first group was provided with a printed tourist guide, and the second had the same guide plus a smartphone with a tourist guide application. For the purposes of comparison, the visitors were followed step by step (their movements were tracked by GPS) and click by click (the application recorded the user’s browsing history). At the end of the tour, participants were also invited to comment on their experience, in semi-structured interviews. The results of the study suggest that the use of a smartphone while sightseeing modifies significantly our walking pace, the number of halts and slowdowns we make, and also the type of circuit we follow. Using the smartphone leads visitors to follow more carefully the itinerary proposed and, as a result, to explore the world with greater application