Project partner: City of Lübben

Challenge: Redesign the short-term tourism experience for visitors and citizens in a small City in Brandenburg in a world where ”digital natives” from metropolitan areas look for quick experiences in the countryside.

In order to get a feeling for the city of Lübben and to learn about possible leisure time activities, the student team travelled to Lübben in Brandenburg and explored the city individually. After this first exploration, they made several trips to Lübben for conducting interviews with tourists, inhabitants and local merchants.

The interviews and explorations of the city revealed that Lübben is a popular destination for day trips and for short stops of visitors who are passing through Lübben on their journey. The average visitor decides spontaneously to travel to Lübben which means that they are not well prepared concerning possible activities. Therefore, many interviewees criticized that there is no user-friendly, digital information portal with information on leisure facilities in Lübben. Furthermore, many tourists mentioned that there is a lack of direction signs in the city.

Based on these findings, the students developed different ideas and created prototypes to test those ideas with the target audience. This helped them to evaluate the potential of the different ideas. After the testing phase, the students decided to develop a concept for a digital treasure hunt in the form of an app. This app is supposed to allow a playful exploration of Lübben for tourists and locals.

The App „Lübben. Spielerisch. Erkunden“ provides tours for different user groups such as families with small children or active holiday makers and makes use of the existing infrastructure of the city. An integrated coupon-system encourages visitors to explore local shops and other leisure facilities.

Photo: HPI School of Design Thinking / Jana Legler