Skift Take
The biggest trendline in travel is personalization, but that can only truly evolve if people decide that they want to share more and more personal information.
Have you ever wondered: What is the real value of a smartwatch? What makes a smart city smart in terms of the human user experience? What is the Internet of Things? And how will this affect you in a positive way that makes your life better?
At the University of Stuttgart, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO is a "house of knowledge work" helping answer those questions. The Institute is comprised of a series of innovation laboratories housed inside the strikingly modern Centre for Virtual Engineering.
The different labs here, along with a network of sister labs at other Fraunhofer Institute locations in Europe, develop new ways to design digitally connected "smart" environments where people congregate, including office workspaces, meeting venues, hotels, and "integrated urban systems," aka cities.
More specifically, the labs focus on how humans can engage those environments as an integrated whole, and how the environments can engage humans in return via smart technology. In essence, Fraunhofer Institute is designing elements of the smart city of the future that streamline and personalize the user experience for both locals and travelers.
Those elements will also eventually do a better job at connecting like-minded locals and travelers, which ultimately is the greatest potential benefit from a tourism and economic development standpoint.
Although, after visiting here, you get a very real sense that there's another purpose behind the smart city of the future. One day we will all inhabit a giant 3D reproduction of the programmatic Amazon purchasing ecosystem, where consumer decision touchpoints are embedded
