Mashki
Reinventing local design - a mobile app to transform tourism in Tunisia through immersive, authentic, and playful itineraries, co-constructed by users.
Product Designer — Final Year Project Product Design — ESSTED
Context
Tourism in Tunisia often follows the same classic routes, focusing on well-known attractions and neglecting hidden gems and underground culture that truly define the local experience. There is a need to offer tourists a unique and immersive way to explore Tunisia, going beyond mass tourism and highlighting the country's authentic essence.
Solution and concept
As part of my final year project, I designed Mashki (مشكي), an innovative mobile app that reinvents the tourist experience in Tunisia. By integrating chance and gamification, Mashki transforms travel planning into a playful and spontaneous adventure, standing out from traditional tourism. The platform values users' symbolic capital and locals' knowledge to offer personalized, unpredictable, and immersive itineraries, allowing discovery of hidden treasures and authentic cultural experiences.
Expected results
- 1. Immersive exploration: Tourists would discover Tunisia off the beaten path, diving into its culture and lesser-known places.
- 2. Community content: Mashki would be enriched by locals' contributions, guaranteeing authentic and original activities.
- 3. Personalized itineraries: The app would have offered itineraries adapted to individual traveler preferences, making each experience unique.
Methodology
The product and research methodology I used to design Mashki relied on in-depth research and iterative design. I started with surveys and interviews to gather opinions from tourists and locals. Using this data, I created personas and user journey maps to visualize the experience and identify friction points. I designed low-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes to test the idea, gathering feedback to refine the concept. The integration of gamification, like the “dice reroll”, would have made travel planning more playful and captivating.
Although this is a concept and not a developed app, Mashki represents a vision of how tourism could be reinvented in Tunisia, with a more immersive and personalized approach.
This project was my final year project in 2016 to obtain my product design bachelor's degree. I was still a baby designer back then! Thinking about it today, I feel great pride, and it is obvious to me that design is truly my vocation.
