Jamaica Plain is a diverse, beautiful neighborhood rich with culture, cuisine, and natural green spaces. While the neighborhood is known and beloved by many in Boston, it does not experience the visiting numbers of more popular destinations in the city like Newbury Street, Fenway, or the North End.

Through field interviews with local business owners, we put our ear to the ground to engage with and understand how the community sees their town and how they believe it could experience growth. By talking to these businesses, we realized that it wasn't a lack of great stores or friendly people that kept tourists away, nor a lack of public transportation or easy access to the area. What we found was that people simply did not know about the wonderful areas like Centre St and Hyde Square and the businesses they have to offer.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

One of our first findings after interviewing was that there are destinations that already draw lots of people throughout the year. We dubbed these the "big attractors" of the area and sought to understand how we could capitalize on them to retain and redirect people who are already traveling to the area to explore a bit further than what they already came to see.

Another critical finding we had was that after talking with the first business, we were quickly led to talk to more businesses that we were unaware of during our initial research. There was an obvious snowballing effect between businesses that showed that not only was there a myriad of businesses in JP, but they were keen on supporting and directing customers to each other like a symbiotic network.

Through a combination of large totems provided by JCDecaux, we could strategically capture the attention of big attraction visitors to inform and direct them towards shopping areas nearby to their location. Totems would also be placed at T stops to attract visitors who are taking the train.

Once visitors are drawn into target areas, local businesses will have in-store signage in the form of magnet boards that offer recommendations at the store owner's discretion. These magnet boards serve as a way to facilitate the "What else is nearby?" conversation or search that a visitor might wonder about while also giving the business owner a chance to promote places they desire.

Scannable QR codes on the totems and magnet boards offer app integration with Quest Boston, an ai-driven tourism app designed to give personalized recommendations based on user behavior and preferences. QR scans also offer free, trackable data to the app by telling them which totems or store magnets are getting the most scans.