Imagine you are going on vacation. You get to your final destination and just want to explore everything, get to know the place, see the hidden gems. Or you moved to a different city and want to get to know it better. But in all of these explorations, you don’t want to miss anything by looking on your phone the whole time to get directions, or – god forbid – look like a tourist. There are plenty of ideas out there to make your life and travels easier. No matter where you are, these wearables will definitely help you to get to your destination without getting lost – and in style.
Remote Control Tourist by Tourism Victoria
Starting with a destination marketing campaign might be a little off, but destination marketing is a big part of the final decision making for tourists. A great example for an unusual and fun campaign using wearable technologies comes from Tourism Victoria. In their campaign Melbourne Remote Control Tourist (RCT), Tourism Victoria equipped four people with a GPS enabled camera. For five days, online viewers sent instructions and requests via Facebook and Twitter, like going to a certain bar or café or high-fiving a total stranger. Viewers could watch their instructions being executed in a live stream. In the end, the team travelled 109 km, gave 205 high-fives and hugs, took 62 selfies, executed requests from 8,726 users, and streamed 270,000 seconds of live footage.
Triposo Travel Belt
Everyone has his own way of travelling – whether they plan it way in advance, or not. Triposo feeds explorers, who want to get off the beaten track, with up-to-date information, maps, intelligent recommendations, tips and tricks, etc. But, to quote Triposo: “you won’t really look like a local if you have to consult your phone the whole time”. To avoid this, Triposo is making a belt to guide you to your destination: the Travel Belt. The belt connects to the headphone jack on your smartphone. You only have to open the Triposo travel app and select your destination. The app sends signals to the belt telling which direction you should take – the belt then vibrates at different spots, telling you to go straight, back, left or right. Unfortunately, Triposo didn’t meet their funding goal on Indiegogo, but we would love to see that belt.
Wearable Experiments NAVIGATE
A similar approach to not look like a tourist and be hunched over your smartphone comes from Wearable Experiments. WE:EX was founded by Billie Whitehouse, the designer of FUNDAWEAR and one of the speakers at our WTconference in San Francisco in July 2013. The NAVIGATE is a jacket with built-in GPS, integrated LED lighting and haptic feedback. Destinations are stored in the corresponding app on your phone, which uploads the directions to the jacket. When walking to destination, the jacket’s sleeves visualize the instructions. The lights indicate how far to the next turn, and the current stage of the journey, vibrations alert the user when to turn and in which direction. NAVIGATE is a fashion accessory that can be used to explore a city walking or riding a bike.
This text has been written by Andréa Catel de Prates Soares and published by Zuriñe Dopacio González
