Haptic Transit: Tactile feedback to notify public transport users

To attract people to use public transport, efficient transit information systems providing accurate, real-time, easy-tounderstand information must be provided to users. In this paper we introduce HapticTransit, a tactile feedback based alert/notification model of a system, which provides spatial information to the public transport user. The model uses real-time bus location with other spatial information to provide feedback about the user as their journey is in progress. The system allows users make better use of „in-bus‟ time. It allows the user be involved with other activities and not be anxious about the arrival at their destination bus stop. Our survey shows a majority of users have missed a bus stop/station whilst undertaking a transit journey in an unfamiliar location. The information provided by our system can be of great advantage to certain user groups. The vibration alarm is used to provide tactile feedback. Visual feedback, in the form of colour coded buttons and textual description, is also provided. This model forms the basis for further research for developing information systems for public transport users with special needs – deaf, visually impaired and those with poor spatial abilities

Integrating Haptic Feedback into Mobile Location Based Services

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human-computer interaction has been visual - text and images on the screen. Haptic feedback can be an important additional method especially in Mobile Location Based Services such as knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. A knowledge discovery system called the Haptic GeoWand is a low interaction system that allows users to query geo-tagged data around them by using a point-and-scan technique with their mobile device. Haptic Pedestrian is a navigation system for walkers. Four prototypes have been developed classified according to the user’s guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Haptic Transit is a notification system that provides spatial information to the users of public transport. In all these systems, haptic feedback is used to convey information about location, orientation, density and distance by use of the vibration alarm with varying frequencies and patterns to help understand the physical environment. Trials elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a “heads up” approach to mobile navigation. Results from a memory recall test show that the users of haptic feedback for navigation had better memory recall of the region traversed than the users of landmark images. Haptics integrated into a multi-modal navigation system provides more usable, less distracting but more effective interaction than conventional systems. Enhancements to the current work could include integration of contextual information, detailed large-scale user trials and the exploration of using haptics within confined indoor spaces

Using mobile personalisation to enhance the user experience at large sporting events

At large sporting events (LSEs), e.g. football matches and athletics events, the user experience has been shown to be highly variable (Nilsson, 2004; Nilsson et al. 2004). Reported problems include a lack of social interaction with fellow spectators, and insufficient relevant information on the events or the sporting action taking place (Nilsson, 2004; Nilsson et al. 2004; Esbjornsson et al. 2006; Jacucci et al. 2005). A possible solution is personalisation, making the mobile application adapt to the user, ensuring that only relevant information is retrieved and presented in a way that is suitable. This thesis is devoted to studying the user experience related to mobile personalization at LSEs. It aims to investigate how personalized mobile applications at LSEs can render the user experience more active and engaging in a contextually, socially and culturally relevant way. The thesis reviews different theoretical approaches to help to understand the concepts of interest e.g. personalization and user experience (Chapter 2). Research methods are also discussed including the challenge of adapting user-centred methods into the Chinese culture (Chapter 3). This thesis investigates the user experience of mobile personalization at LSEs by following the circle of user-centred research: It starts to consider user requirements and user experience at LSEs and derives the usage patterns that personalized mobile applications could usefully support (Chapter 4). Then it explores the relevant contextual factors at LSEs which could be used to prescribe the behaviour of a personalizable mobile application (Chapter 5). Next, it describes the user-centred process used to design personalizable interfaces for mobile applications used at LSEs. Four key elements of design are considered: content, conceptual, interaction and presentation design (Chapter 6). The final outputs of the design process were two personalized mobile prototypes for Chinese users at LSEs. These included versions based on either (1) user-initiated or (2) system-initiated personalisation. Finally it investigates the impact on user experience of mobile personalization at LSEs in two empirical studies (a field experiment and a lab-based experiment) with these prototypes (Chapters 7 and 8). Mobile personalization is shown to result in an enriched user experience across a range of activities that a spectator would undertake at a large sporting event. The thesis discusses primarily the effective design of mobile personalization, the design implications at LSEs, user experience design, and research methods for Chinese users (Chapter 9). In conclusion (Chapter 10), specific contributions and avenues for future work are highlighted.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Cartographic user interface design models for mobile Location-Based Services applications

Mobile Location-Based Services (mLBS) offer a unique combination of digital content, portability, interactivity, location-awareness and real-time information delivery, providing increased convenience and support for everyday geospatial decision-making tasks, compared to more traditional printed maps and digital cartographic products. In spite of their benefits, however, limitations inherent within mLBS technology (e.g. small screens), along with the dynamic and changeable contexts in which they are used, impact on their effectiveness for communicating geospatial information to end users and, in turn, their overall acceptance. Identifying usefulness (i.e. utility and usability) as a key factor influencing the acceptance of mLBS products, this thesis details the investigation of techniques and a methodology for designing mLBS applications that communicate geospatial information in a useful manner to non-expert, general public users. The research presented here focuses on the usefulness of the entire cartographic user interface (UI) for mLBS applications – i.e. those components that are specifically concerned with the access and representation of, and interaction with, geospatial information – differentiating it from related mLBS research and application design. Particular emphasis was placed on the usefulness of the interplay between various geospatial components of the cartographic UI, in support of a broad range of everyday geospatial tasks for non-expert users. Contributing to this, a wide array of alternative techniques for representing, presenting and interacting with geospatial information were explored. To achieve its aims, the study adopted a qualitative User-Centred Design (UCD) methodology, involving an early focus on users and their tasks, empirical measurement of usage, and iterative design and evaluation, which together ensured that all design efforts were firmly grounded in the needs and characteristics of the end users. Necessarily focused on a specific application area (tourism) and an associated user group (travellers), the UCD process employed by the research was more comprehensive than had previously been undertaken within the cartographic discipline. The primary results of the research comprise a set of cartographic UI design models for communicating geospatial information in a useful manner to the non-expert users of a tourism-related mLBS application. These incorporate a range of alternative cartographic representation, presentation and interaction techniques considered useful by representative users, with egocentric maps arguably holding the greatest importance. The wider benefits of the design models are expected to be twofold: firstly, they offer a structural foundation to researchers and developers seeking to produce useful cartographic UIs for tourism-related mLBS applications; and secondly, they provide guidance regarding specific cartographic representation, presentation and interaction techniques that offer utility and usability in particular contexts. In addition, a number of secondary research outputs offer other benefits to the scientific and commercial mLBS communities. These include the UCD research methodology – which presents a proven guide for ensuring usefulness during the design of mLBS applications in general – and a set of general recommendations for designing useful mLBS applications – which offer assistance for specific design activities while contributing empirical results to the future development of mLBS application design guidelines