Bucketfood: A Crowdsourcing Platform for Promoting Gastronomic Tourism

Abstract

Food is far more than nourishment to humans; it can be a gastrimargic experience, an expressive form of art or even a social manifestation. Hence, applications that allow searching for best food options have become essential part of food experience for many. Technological advancements have brought the opportunity for custom search of food options at our fingertips. Tourist applications increasingly incorporate food search as an integral functional element, as gastronomy becomes an indispensable part of the travelling. However, most applications emphasize on the venue neglecting the menu options which is the primitive reason for food searching. The main objective of our work is to create an innovative food searching application tailored to gastronomic tourism that focuses on food rather than the venue. Our application adopts crowdsourcing principles, namely it relies on users to contribute content. Game elements are employed to motivate users in uploading accurate and qualitative food recommendations and sharing their food experiences in a social media-like fashion. The prototype implementation and the evaluation process provided us with valuable insights for the development of alike applications. Our findings are useful to application designers so as to effectively support gastronomic experiences and can be worthwhile for anyone planning to invest on gastronomic tourism or build a crowdsourcing platform.