Tadanori Nagasawa: Virtual Airport Design Scenarios

Ilthough I designed the scenario, I would like to quote John Thackara's summary of it given at the second world design conference on aviation two weeks ago in Tokyo.

The Japan team's design scenario is based on the concept of an intelligent agent, which the team metamorphosed into an online 'virtual purser'. This is the embodiment of the personal service. This strange half-alive creature, who's aim in life is to look after your travel needs alone, is an example of the new online paradigm. That service is about finding out about what customers need and then giving it to them. It is not about designing a service and then selling it to them.

The agent we called 'virtual airport purser' connects the user only to those pieces of information he or she needs. It does not swamp or drown the user in vast quantities of data that are hard to use. So, let me show you a short and quick version of our work as an example.

Virtual Purser is stationed at the virtual airport here. The Schiphol Virtual Purser is there and the Narita Virtual Purser there. And the Schiphol purser is taking care of the blue area and the Narita virtual purser is taking care of the red areas. If someone going to my university at Yamagata - where it is, perhaps no one knows (even) in Japan, because it is far away from Tokyo. So if you would please imagine, here is a living room in Amsterdam of someone who wants to visit my university - don't ask me why; it's just a story.

So here is the theatre, so option one: I don't know where the university is and how do I get the information. Oh, I found it, it is CD ROM - good, I try to use it. It starts on your desk. Say this is Schiphol Airport and the purser is asking you the question and you just answer it. So if you want you can change the figure here. Is your wife or your friend or whatever (going)? And this indicates how the computer is working for you. And he is trying to find the information from the database, as the main database is there, and also he can link with any other website...So he asks the Japanese purser - here - and with this flag he indicates the language. So all Japanese people have a language problem, so this has an interpretation function. The database in Japan is all in Japanese, so the Japanese purser sends the information there and he translates it.

So this is the airline route...and this is the highway bus. It is a sort of timetable and someone needs a printed out paper. Then we have to find out which hotel he is going to stay. So now the Japan purser in charge of all the information about Narita Airport, here. All the information is reached from the home page of the airport. So the purser edits the information for you.

This is Tokyo station ... and you will take a train from Kyoto to Yamagata, and this is Yamagata station. So the people want to see the scenery, so we are taking this information from the homepage of Yamagata Prefecture government. So this is my university...Those there are going back to the house.