The 60 Seconds Guestbook – An Auditory Place Media for Guesthouse Residents

Abstract

In recent years, travelers have demonstrated a preference for guesthouses as their form of accommodation to enable them to make friends or have good interpersonal interactions. Travelers may record their experience and the interactions they had in the guesthouse by writing and drawing in the guestbook. However, the traditional guestbook has several shortcomings. Besides, compared to the visual sense, the auditory sense allows travelers to recall the atmosphere more impressively.

“The 60 seconds guestbook” is proposed as an auditory place medium that enables travelers to record their reviews and memories by using a vocal and auditory method in the guesthouse in 60 s. “The 60 seconds guestbook” enables residents to communicate with others who visited before and will be visiting after them, a to inform themselves about various aspects of the guesthouse and the area. This contributes to making travelers’ stay not only interesting but also more meaningful.

Our research for this article also included two experiments: First, we tested and identified the shortcomings of the “The 60 seconds guestbook v1.0,” by developing a prototype to allow residents to use it by themselves. Second, we produced a camera and voice recording of a BBQ party to verify that people derive more joy from listening to a recording than by looking at a photo of the same event.

1 Introduction

In recent years, besides beautiful landscapes and culinary delicacies, travelers have increasingly focused on meeting people on their journeys. These travelers usually choose a guesthouse (or a hostel) for their accommodation.

The reason is not only the relative affordability of a guesthouse, but also the opportunity to make friends or have interesting encounters with other travelers, staff members, and local people. Travelers may record their memories of the experience and the interactions they had in the guesthouse by writing and drawing in the guestbook (Fig. 1): the greater the number of stories, the greater the value of the place. Although the readers can relate to other guests’ feelings by reading what they wrote, a traditional guestbook has several shortcomings:

Fig. 1.

A guestbook

• Travelers cannot read the guestbook once they have departed from the guesthouse.

• The guestbook can easily become soiled.

• People who are not good at writing and drawing may find the guestbook difficult to use.

• Past messages are difficult to review.

• Writing or reading while others are using the guestbook is difficult.

In order to solve the problems and provide a special recording experience in a guesthouse, “The 60 seconds guestbook” is proposed as an auditory place medium, which enables travelers to record their reviews and memories via voice and sound in the guesthouse in 60 s. This contributes to making the travelers’ stay not only interesting but also more meaningful.

2 What Is a Guesthouse?

A guesthouse is a place that offers accommodation similar to that of a hostel. Different from the usual hotel, a guesthouse operates on the principle of “sharing.” It typically provides a common relaxed space for socializing, as well as a dormitory (shared room), shared kitchen, and shared bathroom. Because they “share” these facilities with others, travelers find it easy to open their minds to new perspectives and they have more opportunities to communicate with others.

Besides, a guesthouse typically has a café or bar as its common space. Travelers can also meet local people, as well as members of staff and others. In Japan, some guesthouses also play important roles in community building [1].

3 Concept

3.1 Web Media Services

Hotels and guesthouses usually use web media services as follows:

Homepage:

Since the homepage is created by the guesthouse, the contents might be subjective. Besides, constructing a homepage is sometimes difficult for the staff. They eventually enter basic information such as the concept, location, rooms, and prices only.

Social Networks Services (SNSs):

Since it is easy to use these services to upload information, guesthouses usually use Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to upload text and photos. Travelers can also learn more about the atmosphere of the guesthouses from SNSs or by communicating with each other.

Booking Site:

Compared with the homepage and the pages on SNSs, both of which are created by the guesthouse, a booking site (for example: Agoda, or Booking.com) places emphasis on objective reviews and ratings from previous guests.

A traveler’s relationship with a guesthouse and the web media can be divided into three parts (Fig. 2):

Fig. 2.

Traveler’s interaction with the guestbook before, during, and after traveling

• Before traveling

• While traveling

• After traveling

Travelers are known not to use the web media when they are traveling. Therefore, it may be possible to create an online medium for travelers’ to use while they are staying at a guesthouse to enable them to record and ensure that their experience becomes more enjoyable.

3.2 The 60 Seconds Guestbook

Travelers usually use photos and handwritten descriptions to record their memories. Compared to the visual sense, the auditory sense allows travelers to recall the atmosphere more impressively [2].

The core concept of place media is to link the web space and real space by allowing the spatiotemporal feeling of a place to be experienced [3]. “The 60 seconds guestbook” (Fig. 3) aims to apply this concept to guesthouses, so that people can communicate with others before and after their stay. Because staff members, travelers, and local people have different viewpoints, listening to “The 60 seconds guestbook” would inform the listener about various aspects of the guesthouse and the area.

Fig. 3.

How to use “The 60 seconds guestbook”

As for the visual sense, we can look through the text at our own pace. However, the auditory sense is restricted by the time limit of the music, melody, or recording. The recording might be boring if it is too lengthy. In view of that and the copyright law of Japan, this design sets 60 s as the time limit for every recording.

4 Experiment I: Using the 60 Seconds Guestbook v1.0

4.1 Method

This experiment was run at the Guesthouse Hakone Tent [4] from December 24, 2016 to January 8, 2017, “The 60 seconds guestbook” was set on an iPad to allow users to record their messages by themselves. In addition, instructions were printed on two A4 pages to allow users to use their own mobile device by scanning the QR code.

The guestbook is designed to enable users to easily and quickly upload their recording and data, i.e., the homepage of “v1.0” is also the upload page (Fig. 4). Except for the recording and name, this experiment also requested the user to provide their age, gender, nationality, comment, and e-mail address. Besides, with regard to the recording programming, “v1.0” uses the original iOS camera application to help users to record and upload their recording; however, it only uses voice data.

Fig. 4.

Structure, flow, and interface of “The 60 seconds guestbook”

4.2 Result

During the 16 days of this experiment, 14 data entries were recorded; furthermore, only five groups recorded their messages (the others only left comments). The contents (Table 1) are mostly simple words of thanks or self-introductions. Since the users usually are unsure what to say when they are recording, it sometimes also felt awkward listening to the recordings.

Table 1. Contents of the recordings

4.3 Review

The results we obtained with “The 60 seconds guestbook v1.0” suggested that we would need to solve the following problem in the next version: 1. Attracting more guests of the guesthouse to use this service. 2. Simplifying the upload procedure. 3. Decreasing the number of awkward recordings and make the recordings more interesting to encourage guests to make more recordings.

Furthermore, from the viewpoint of the guesthouse, as this experiment used one iPad to allow customers to make their recordings, staff members need to be prevented from losing the device. This means they need to take care of the iPad and store it in a safe place every night when the lounge closes, and need to remember to replace the device in the morning. Therefore, we would need to find a way to prevent their work from being disrupted.

5 Experiment II: Comparison Between Recording and Photo

5.1 Method

According to Tauchi, compared to the visual sense, the auditory sense can allow travelers to recall the atmosphere more impressively [2], but we also need to be concerned about the feeling obtained by the user (audience/reader). This experiment tried to determine whether people derive more joy by listening to a recording than viewing photos of the same event.

In this experiment, we recorded the BBQ party of a crewmember of Guesthouse Hakone Tent by using a camera and voice recorder. After one week, we separated the members into a recording group and a photo group, both of which contained four people, asked them to complete a questionnaire and recall their memories by producing a 5-min recording (Fig. 5) or 100 photo frames by using the following steps:

Fig. 5.

Episodes of the 5-min recordings.

• Step1. Questions about the mentation and the characteristics of subjects.

• Step2. Exam questions about details of the BBQ party.

• Step3. Listening to the recording or viewing photos group by group respectively.

• Step4. Further exam questions about details of the BBQ party.

• Step5. Further questions about the mentation.

In the case of questions about the mentation, we used 24 adjectives from the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist (UMACL) [5], giving them not only a 5-rated evaluation, but also positive and negative values to judge the mentation of the subjects (positive: 12, negative: 12). We also probed the characteristics of subjects by asking the subjects to provide some information about themselves and their prior experience with media and memory.

5.2 Result and Discussion

We devised a “Mentation Value” (MV) to quantize the mentation of the subjects. The formula of the MV is:

$$ MV = \sum positive\,adjective\,points - \sum negative\,adjective\,{{points''}} $$

Observing the change in the user’s MV as a result of using the medium, i.e., between the time at which they started using it and again after they finished using it (Fig. 6), it is clear that listening to recordings can increase the MV even though it was negative before, whereas viewing photos decreases the value in 3/4 of the cases.

Fig. 6.

Variation in the MV before and after using the media.

Besides, in terms of the exam questions about the details of the BBQ, subjects are allowed to answer 50%–80% of the questions before touching the media; however, even after touching the media, no subjects were able to obtain more than 90% (Fig. 7). All questions that are answered are corrected by more than three people.

Fig. 7.

Variation in the MV before and after using the media.

We also asked subjects about their favorite and most impressive episode/photo. All of the members of a group photo usually selected the group photo as their favorite; the two most impressive photos are those showing food, one for showing funny gestures, and the other being the group photo.

On the other hand, all of the members of the recording group chose their most impressive episodes from situations in which they were spectators, which means they were not the main actors in the recordings but that felt strong emotions in those episodes. Two of the members chose the same favorite as their most impressive episodes. Compared to the attention the member of the photo group paid to the group photo, only one member of the recording group referred to the scene in which members were greeting each other upon departure from the guesthouse (as the group episode).

This experiment enabled us to discover that recording is a valuable medium with potential. Out discovery that people’s mentation, which was lower even when viewing photos of happy memories increased after listening to recordings, is interesting.

6 Conclusion

According to Oldenburg [6], “The great third place can let residents have the same feelings of warmth, possession, and belonging as they would in their own homes.” A guesthouse, in its capacity as a place where travelers can interact with other residents, is always fresh and fascinating. Our attempts to record these kinds of interaction and emotion involved using a vital auditory place medium to save the recordings in an interesting and dynamic way.

Although this was not successfully achieved in the experiment we carried out with “The 60 seconds guestbook v1.0,” we nevertheless tested and verified the advantages of making the recordings in the compared experiment.

Currently, our aim is to allow residents to record the auditory emotion and information by themselves and to enhance their enjoyment of using the media. Thus, we are designing a new version of “The 60 seconds guestbook.” This time, the objectives of “The 60 seconds guestbook v2.0” are: First, to obtain more inspiration from and to communicate more easily with others than before, the user will be able to listen to a random recording before they start their own recording. On the other hand, in terms of conducting the experiment, we decided to avoid troubling the staff by only providing instructions that are easy to understand with a QR code rather than using an iPad. We plan to carry out this experiment during April for two weeks as before (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8.

Design of the user interface of “The 60 seconds guestbook v2.0”