Mind Mapping

Challenge:

My challenge is linked to the concept of “what is the nature tourism?” I would like to develop  an innovative and added value tourism project linked to nature but, I do not have any specific  background or job experience linked to tourism. So, I have been searching and reading a lot of  information about what is nature tourism, trying to read online forums about this subject to  get some inputs from real nature tourists.

Selection:

To address main challenge I selected the Mind Mapping tool. This tool allows me to map all the  topics linked to the subject and to have a more clear view on their interactions and  connections. In this specific case, as I do not have any experience in this business, I need to  map all the information and data collected this tool helped me to organize the information and  the data gathered from this business and from online forums from nature tourists. Using it  permits me not only to have the information but to have a visual form of all the topics and  how they connect to each other. This tool is used during the “what is?” phase of design  thinking, so I realized that this should be the better tool for me to use while I want to better  understand what is nature tourism.

Application:

As I was reading the information and collecting the data, I was writing, what for me were the  most important topics, in post-it. After every reading I grouped the post-it by specific topics  and gave a name to each group of post-its. In the meantime, in a large piece of paper I wrote  the subject I wanted to better understand, “nature tourism”, at the center of this paper. Then I  fixed all the post-it in the paper, building up the Mind Map.

Insight:

From not knowing nothing about the nature tourism to have a good view of what are the main  topics that it is necessary to take care before entering this type of business. I got three main  insights while building and analyzing the Mind Map: different type of customers and their  requests, especially in terms of services; location is a key topic to enter and develop this type  of business and sustainability is a very important and trendy topic that needs to be addressed  in a very careful way. Having all these topics in a visual form gave me a more detailed vision on  what this business is about in a faster way.

Approach:

This time I did this exercise by myself and only based on the read information and data  gathered. I did it like this because I wanted to better investigate, starting from zero  information, about this type of business. Next time I will do it, trying to involve a group of  friends that usually do some nature tourism trips.

My name: Adelino Carneiro

