Guided Tour Specifics

A "guided" tour is available in any topical tour, as long as content is chosen wisely. For instance, a Value Edition tour can easily be made into what appears to be a guided tour by the user of consistent "guide" content. This is really a matter of providing content to the user as shown through only the guide's perspective. In same cases this is useful--in others, it is frustrating and hampering.

A guide-layered tour is a slightly different concept, and is available in our Unified Model or through custom development.

The Guide-Layer Concept

In order to make guides pieces that can be as reusable and cost-effective as possible, we have abstracted them them the other content within a tour. Guides present "first person opinion" or "first party perspective" on a topic or concept. This implies that there might be some "third party consensus" or fact that relates to the topic beyond the person's opinion. Based on this premise, we have allowed guides to "run the tour" but only as a layer of abstraction on top of other more universally accepted content (like program and service content, or facility information).

For instance, a guide might be able to comment about a certain building, or topic within that building, but their opinion doesn't impact what the building looks like, or what goes on in the building. The guide may have information on what he or she individually do within the building, however. By abstracting these opinions, we are able to present the commentary from multiple guides about the same topic, program, or structure without having to re-record the commentary. In other words, the commentary can be re-purposed where it is contextually applicable because it has been separated from fact.

This method accomplishes several useful results:

• Your staff doesn't need to worry about cascading update problems, like guides graduating, or for some other reason being undesirable.
• Topical Content can be modified without affecting a guide's message.
• Adding more guide commentary is easier, as no specific items depend on it.
• The user can choose many perspectives, but not sacrifice access to the core content.

Making Use of "Person Objects"

The guide layer is only one implementation of a "Person Object" -- that is, a series of data that are related to a person. Diaries/blogs, portfolios/research (collections), events, and guides are all related to the abstracted concept of the involvement of a person.

Identifying distinct players or roles of student, faculty, staff, or alumni allows a web user to identify themselves more closely with the institution as a result of their "proxy experience" through the person. Just like in "the real world," people see the world through their own eyes, and then other people can verify the data through their own experiences. In the world of tours, we represent this reality by viewing a person's experience as separate information from the facts of multi-party consensus.