Analysing existing products: Mangiare bene a Milano

  Product #3: “Mangiare bene a Milano”, eating well in Milan

picture taken by me of my own travel guide

The general appearance of the travel guide is discrete. It has good size and layout but the inside could be better. Something really good about this books is that it is definitely extremely practical. It is organized as a long list of restaurants. At the top there is the name and right underneath there is all the information that is needed such as address, location and phone number. There is also a brief description and a grade about the restaurant overall. Unluckily no pictures are included and that is something I am really trying to focus on that point when creating my own travel guide; however a little map for every restaurant is located underneath the description. Something this guide really made me think about is whether I want to make a list of restaurant or organize them in some other way. I don't really know yet but I will have to think abut different options and consider the best one. 

I would say in conclusion this is quite a good book however I can't consider it a travel guide because it only covers the topic of restaurant and not Milan as a bigger concept. 

DIFFERENT ASPECTS: 
Aesthetics: This travel guide looks pretty great to me. It has a really simple cover which is perfect for the people who it is aiming to, it is also extremely smooth and nice to hold. It has a style on its own and as I said it looks attractive. It is a paper back cover but that is good enough so that it doesn’t weight too much. It also has nice pockets in the inside so that you can put notes in it. The inside on the other hand is not as good. There is not a single picture and there ar so many maps to show where every restaurant is which are not even clear. It is well organized but the fond is standard and not attractive at all. 
Cost: The price of this product is approximately 100 kr. I would say it is worth it because there is a lot of content in it and tons of things. I really think that this is a good price, on the other hand I was expecting it to be more expensive.
User/Audience: I guess this is definitely something aimed for adults. It is nothing more than a list of restaurants you could go to and because there are no picture it wouldn't look attractive to teenagers. Also, teenagers don’t usually decided where the family is going to eat, and if they happen to go out with their friends they would rarely go to a proper restaurant. 
Function: It is a product that can definitely be used because it is well structured.  The list of the restaurant is clear and wide. They are split in categories depending what kind of food they serve and which client they usually get. There is quite a bit of text and it is really descriptive however it is needed. 
Size/Content: There are 378 pages in this book. It might seem like too much but it’s not something that you need to read. It’s really light and the pages are not that thick so it’s not too thick itself. There is not a single pictures which is really bad according to me but might be ok for the adults who would buy this travel guide. 

ANALYSIS OF THE SOURCE: 
Origin: I can't really say this is primary source because it is all based on the description of the restaurant including address, phone number and other information which I guess was all taken from the website or from the actual restaurant. However, also opinions are included and were written by journalists at "corriere della sera" one of the two main Italian newspapers which is also the publisher of the book.
Purpose: the poitn fo this books is to share with people, mainly Milanese people, a bunch of good restaurants. This book is quite a big promoting tool especially for smaller unknown restaurant that are still worth to eat at. Because it is written by more than one person and also collects opinion some of them are not really positive but that makes me think they are kind of true. 
Value: as I already mentioned this book collects several different opinion which are both positive and negative. That makes me think that they are true and as a consequence this is quite a reliable book. However, obviously opinion and taste of the food served by each one of this restaurants can change person by person so the person who wrote the review might have liked the food and enjoyed the atmosphere but I might don't like it as much. 
Limitations: what I said about the value count also as a limitation because you need to go to the restaurant yourself to develop an opinion. Another limitation that could make this travel guide much better is the lack of picture, it would have been much more interesting. 

RELEVANCE TO MY PROJECT: 

Even though I would like to base my travel guide completely on my own experience I will have to add some particular restaurants and this is a really good book to take them from as it is quite a reliable source as I stated before. Also this product made me think about what I would like to include in my travel guide. The point is that I would really like to make something that would be good for more than just a category of people so I will split my guide in different section and create different paths in Milan based of the interests of the standard person each section is aimed for. For instance, section 1 for people who like sport, section 2 for people who like nature, section 3 for people who like shopping etc,
In this way I will manage to satisfy more than only one range of people with my product.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Corriere della sera. Mangiare bene a Milano. vivimilano, 2008. Print 

*note: this book was sold together with a newspaper (Corriere della sera) and it's not possible to buy it.