UX Design and Enabling Technologies for Cultural Heritage: Innovating Public Services for Sustainable Tourism

The conservation of cultural heritage is a key driver of economic development and tourism attractiveness, particularly in countries such as Italy. However, inadequate management of large tourist flows has intensified challenges for sustainable governance and increased the risk of overtourism. High visitor concentrations can strain public services, urban infrastructure, and social structures, sometimes creating friction with local communities. Tourism policies lacking a strategic balance risk undermining place identity and the long-term sustainability of local ecosystems, including cultural heritage preservation. The digital transition and rapid proliferation of innovative technologies present both opportunities and risks for enhancing the accessibility, interpretation, and management of cultural heritage. Despite their potential, current research often emphasizes technological implementation without fully considering the context in which solutions are deployed. Consequently, interventions may seem innovative but fail to achieve their intended outcomes, sometimes leading to abandonment or adding complexity to existing services and infrastructures. Greater attention should therefore be given to interaction and experience design, stakeholder engagement, and systemic design approaches, ensuring that solutions are integrated into their context through co-participation and deeper understanding. Such approaches are likely to be more sustainable long-term and beneficial for all ecosystem actors, including often-marginalized groups such as local communities. This research proposal aims to investigate how Service Design, applied within the public sector, can support the sustainable management of cultural heritage by integrating enabling technologies into human-centered services. The study adopts a systemic and interdisciplinary approach that considers not only technological implementation but also the relationships and perspectives of multiple stakeholders, including cultural institutions, policymakers, tourists, and local communities. Through a systemic analysis of the dynamics among these actors, the research seeks to identify key risks and challenges affecting the conservation and promotion of cultural heritage and sustainable tourism; analyze international best and worst practices; map emerging technologies applicable to this context; and develop design-driven strategies to enhance the visitor experience while simultaneously preserving cultural and social value. The methodologies integrate, but are not limited to, desk research, stakeholder engagement, and comparative case study analysis, alongside technology scouting and experimental Service Design activities. Co-design and design thinking approaches will be employed to develop and test prototypes within pilot sites, enabling iterative assessments through stakeholder feedback. The expected outcomes seeks to advance scientific knowledge on the topic, by developing a structured database of enabling technologies and case studies, the identification of critical gaps in current public services related to cultural heritage and tourism, and the development of guidelines, best practices, and replicable toolkits for public cultural institutions, supported by real-world experimentation. By linking Service Design with digital innovation, the research aims to contribute to the sustainability of the tourism-related ecosystem by delivering sustainable, accessible, and inclusive experiences, while supporting public institutions in service development through predictive models of the impact of such implementations, by anticipating and preventing challenges related to tourist flow management and enhancing the long-term cultural resilience of ecosystems.