How can digital action research stop Hajj stampedes? The story of developing mobile visuals for multicultural communication

Mohamad, MRA

Abstract

Our research aims to introduce a Digital Participatory Action Research (DPAR) as a tool to help save lives in Hajj. We reflect three stages of iteration on how to produce Mobile-based Visual Signs (MVS) as artefacts to communicate messages of information for millions of pilgrims coming from thousands of different cultures. To prototype these MVS the “CorelDraw Suite X4” and the “Adobe Photoshop 0.7 ME” have been used interactively with groups of pilgrims, tour guides and government officers. Using both of PAR and technology helped engaging pilgrims and locals during the design stage as well as in evaluating MVS as messages for communication in Hajj. In this paper, we show how these MVS reflect different cultural meanings, which we harmonized in a commonly accepted form. Along different sections of this paper, we deepen blue the reface to reflect “multiple iterations”, “the participatory unit of analysis’’, and “grounded analysis of cultural meaning”.
Crowd control is a growing problem in the tourism industry that is flourishing in many western and eastern countries. The “pilgrimage” or “Hajj” to Makkah, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), offers the biggest tourism revenues in the world. Regrettably, thousands of lives have been lost due to extreme cultural and language diversity that result in miscommunication, stampedes, and deaths. As crowd control is an international problem our research developed several techniques within DPAR, used prototyping technologies and visual dialogue analysis, giving the opportunity for wider application in similar tourism and pilgrimage places suffering from similar problems.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 6, 2019
• Deposit Date: Feb 26, 2019
• Journal: Systemic Practice and Action Research
• Print ISSN: 1094-429X
• Electronic ISSN: 1573-9295
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/journal/11213
• Additional Information: Funders : Saudi Cultural Bureau in London;Saudi Ministry of Hajj; Projects : Developing Mobile Visuals for Hajj Management