Designing Tourism Futures in SINCO Lab

Research output: Contribution to conferenceAbstractScientific

Abstract

This paper reflects on a foresight and service design based Masters-level course where a design lab is used to facilitate future tourism thinking. The course, which is called “Designing Tourism Futures”, is part of the curriculum of three Master’s degree programmes in tourism at the University of Lapland. By drawing upon
experiential learning perspective, the course aims to help students gain a holistic understanding of past, present and future of tourism. Whereas service design tools foster creativity and help students understand
user-needs, foresight methods provide students with a way to understand the important drivers of change in local and global environments. The course and the assignment given to the students is planned and implemented in close collaboration with the tourism industry. The authors have acted as both teachers and
commissioners through the different editions of the course.

Working in the service design lab “SINCO” has been an essential pedagogical part of the course since its first implementation. SINCO, which stands for Service Innovation Corner, is a service prototyping laboratory located at the Faculty of Art and Design of the University of Lapland, Finland. SINCO is a holistic hands-on approach to service design, co-creation and user-experience-driven innovation activities.
(SINCO Lab, 2019.) During the course the students create and present future oriented service concepts by relying on the different tools of the lab. As an experiential learning environment, SINCO contributes to students’ learning by supporting interpersonal interactions, problem solving and critical thinking. The foresight perspective taken in SINCO help students to questioning embedded tourism practices and mindsets. Some of the biggest challenges of this pedagogical approach is resource limitations such time, teachers
and physical space.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 23 Oct 2019
MoEC publication typeNot Eligible
Event28th Nordic Symposium on Tourism and Hospitality Research - Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Duration: 23 Oct 201925 Oct 2019
https://events.ruc.dk/28thnordic-symposium-on-tourism-and-hospitality

Conference

Conference28th Nordic Symposium on Tourism and Hospitality Research
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityRoskilde
Period23.10.201925.10.2019
Internet address

Field of science

  • Tourism research

Citation for this output