Trip 4 All: A Gamified App to Provide a New Way to Elderly People to Travel

Abstract

Abstract Older adults have much to gain from bringing technology into their daily lives. The extent to which this is possible strongly depends on careful design and accessible, easy to use products, developed using an elderly centered methodology. The senior tourism is a market in expansion and the old travelers need new and innovative technologies to help and support their trips. These technologies should contribute to a fun and safe experience, while promoting feelings of pleasure and self realization. In this paper we follow this design approach and put it to the test in developing the “Trip 4 All”(T4A), an application that works as a gamified virtual assistant to the elderly during a walking tourist visit. The gamified interaction with the visited environment intend to improve motivation to accomplish the visit and make the content absorption more fun and easier. The T4A works on georeferenced maps where the users’ geoposition is a trigger to launch storytelling content and/or challenges based on the aspects of the visited site as such: geographical, art, religious, historic, cultural and human. The success in the challenges give the user prizes, new resources and abilities to try more complex challenges that brings more valuable prizes and so on. Furthermore, the proposed application intend to work as a companion that provides self confidence, support and social integration to elderly tourists.