Mobile application to provide personalized sightseeing tours

Tourist recommendation systems have been growing over the last few years, mainly because of the use of mobile devices to obtain user context. This work discusses some of the most relevant systems on the field and presents PSiS Mobile, which is a mobile recommendation and planning application designed to support a tourist during his vacations. It provides recommendations about points of interest to visit based on tourist preferences and on user and sight context. Also, it suggests a visit planning which can be dynamically adapted based on current user and sight context. This tool works also like a journey dairy since it records the tourist moves and tasks to help him remember how the trip was like. To conclude, some field experiences will be presented.This work is part-funded by the ERDF European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by the National Funds through the FCT Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within projects PSIS (PTDC/TRA /72152/2006), FCOMP-01- 0124 - FEDER-028980 (PTDC/EEI-SII/1386/2012) and PEst- OE / EEI / UI0752 / 2011

Incorporating Heuristic Evaluation (HE) in the Evaluation of Visual Design of the Eco-Tourism Smartphone App

Heuristic Evaluation (HE) has proven to be important in the development of different computer systems but has not been incorporated in the development of eco-tourism smartphone applications. This results inusability issues that significantly affect user experience (UX) as discussed in literature. This study reports the HE in the design and development of Niranur Agro Farm (NAF) eco-tourism smartphone applications, which could improve UX. Eight experts participated in this study, utilizing the SMART mobile usability heuristic developed for mobile application and the severity rating scale to determine usability issues. The HE findings indicated that 22 usability issues were identified. One issue was rated 4 (catastrophe), four issues were rated 3 (major problem), twelve issues were rated 2 (minor problem) and five issues were rated 1 (cosmetics). Although there are issues rated as 4 and 3, the majority of the issues were considered to be minor (1 and 2 on the scale). Results indicated that it is crucial to incorporate HE into the design and development of the eco-tourism smartphone app to minimize the usability issues faced by users. It further validated that utilizing a specific heuristic for smartphone applications would ensure that all usability issues are correctly categorized and remedied

Privacy-preserving recommendations in context-aware mobile environments

© Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose - This paper aims to address privacy concerns that arise from the use of mobile recommender systems when processing contextual information relating to the user. Mobile recommender systems aim to solve the information overload problem by recommending products or services to users of Web services on mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, at any given point in time and in any possible location. They use recommendation methods, such as collaborative filtering or content-based filtering and use aconsiderable amount of contextual information to provide relevant recommendations. However, because of privacy concerns, users are not willing to provide the required personal information that would allow their views to be recorded and make these systems usable. Design/methodology/approach - This work is focused on user privacy by providing a method for context privacy-preservation and privacy protection at user interface level. Thus, a set of algorithms that are part of the method has been designed with privacy protectionin mind, which isdone byusing realistic dummy parameter creation. Todemonstrate the applicability of the method, arelevant context-aware data set has been used to run performance and usability tests. Findings - The proposed method has been experimentally evaluated using performance and usability evaluation tests and is shown that with a small decrease in terms of performance, user privacy can be protected. Originality/value - This is a novel research paper that proposed a method for protecting the privacy of mobile recommender systems users when context parameters are used

Diversamente uguali: disabilità, turismo e nuove sfide per una comunicazione interlinguistica inclusiva

Gli studi sulla disabilità, intesi come uno specifico ambito di ricerca scientifica, non hanno ancora raggiunto in Italia la popolarità di cui godono in altri Paesi. Tuttavia il tema dell’accessibilità, in tutte le svariate sfaccettature che toccano la comunità sia a livello locale che globale, è entrato a fare parte della vita di tutti noi, a partire dalle questioni logistiche legate alle barriere architettoniche. Si dimentica spesso tuttavia che l’accessibilità passa prima di tutto attraverso il linguaggio, e che esistono barriere nella comunicazione, in particolare nella comunicazione interliguistica oggetto di questo lavoro, che sono meno visibili rispetto a quelle architettoniche, ma altrettanto incapacitanti. Questo contributo illustrerà sinteticamente l’evoluzione della rappresentazione della disabilità e la sua affermazione quale disciplina scientifica nel mondo anglosassone, per poi passare ad analizzarne l’impatto sulla comunicazione interlinguistica in un ambito specifico, quello del turismo. L’esperienza del turismo è connaturata al linguaggio, e ciò si avverte in modo particolare quando si attraversano i confini nazionali. In quel caso, l’incapacità a livello linguistico può essere assimilata ad altre forme di disabilità e tutte insieme possono ostacolare, se non precludere, la comunicazione. Dal momento che l’esperienza turistica e la “disabilità” linguistica ad essa legata fanno parte della vita di gran parte della popolazione del nostro paese, possiamo convenire che siamo tutti diversamente uguali. Da qui l’urgenza di accettare nuove sfide per arrivare ad una comunicazione interlinguistica inclusiva, a partire dal settore turistico

Mobile recommender systems:Identifying the major concepts

© The Author(s) 2018. This article identifies the factors that have an impact on mobile recommender systems. Recommender systems have become a technology that has been widely used by various online applications in situations where there is an information overload problem. Numerous applications such as e-Commerce, video platforms and social networks provide personalised recommendations to their users and this has improved the user experience and vendor revenues. The development of recommender systems has been focused mostly on the proposal of new algorithms that provide more accurate recommendations. However, the use of mobile devices and the rapid growth of the Internet and networking infrastructure have brought the necessity of using mobile recommender systems. The links between web and mobile recommender systems are described along with how the recommendations in mobile environments can be improved. This work is focused on identifying the links between web and mobile recommender systems and to provide solid future directions that aim to lead in a more integrated mobile recommendation domain

Intention To Disclose Personal Information Via Mobile Applications: A Privacy Calculus Perspective

This study aimed to investigate the issue of consumer intention to disclose personal information via mobile applications (apps). Drawing on the literature of privacy calculus theory, this research examined the factors that influence the trade-off decision of receiving perceived benefits and being penalized with perceived risks through the calculus lens. In particular, two paths of the direct effects on perceived benefits and risks that induce the ultimate intention to disclose personal information via mobile apps were proposed and empirically tested. The analysis showed that self-presentation and personalized services positively influence consumers’ perceived benefits, which in turn positively affects the intention to dis- close personal information. Perceived severity and perceived control serve as the direct antecedents of perceived risks that negatively affect the intention of consumers to disclose personal information. Compared with the perceived risks, the perceived benefits more strongly influence the intention to disclose personal information. This study extends the literature on privacy concerns to consumer intention to disclose personal information by theoretically developing and empirically testing four hypotheses in a research model. Results were validated in the mobile context, and implications and discussions were presented

(Dis)Abling Translation and Tourism Studies

This article will investigate the ways in which disability, meant both as a scientific field of enquiry and as a real-life issue our society is called to confront with, affects tourism and translation not only at the level of practice but also at a theoretical and methodological level. By assuming disability as a concern for all in everyday life, this issue takes on an urgency that triggers thought and action as few other social and cultural topics do nowadays.Hence, the article will provide a preliminary-and by no means exhaustive- overview of the historical representation of disability and analyse its impact on both Tourism and Translation Studies. No empirical case study will be presented to explore this impact, as the article aims instead to go beyond specific investigations of the strategies applied to cater for the needs of people with disabilities, which are in fact flourishing in Tourism and Translation Studies. However salutary this development may be considered, there is a need to enlarge the spectrum of enquiry beyond the specificity of case studies, and investigate the complex interplay between practice and theory in the fields of Disability, Tourism and Translation Studies

Análisis de las aplicaciones móviles en el sector turístico

El trabajo está orientado a mostrar una aproximación al estado de la cuestión sobre las aplicaciones móviles, tema que goza de una historiografía reciente aunque muy abundante. Es por eso que se ha considerado hacer un recorrido a lo largo de la historia del turismo y a su consecuente evolución debido a la aparición de las nuevas tecnologías y a su adaptación en el sector. Además, no sólo se habla sobre la innovación tecnología en sí, sino que se analiza el cambio sociológico que ha habido en el turista y la importancia que tiene este tipo de servicio en el marketing turístico y en la economía. Además, ya que se analiza a lo largo de este apartado una selección de aplicaciones móviles españolas, se ha recopilado información procedente de informes que muestran cuál es la realidad de las apps en España y qué factores son los que se recomiendan aplicar a la hora de su creación. Una vez analizados estos conceptos teóricos se pasará a una fase más práctica donde se realiza una selección de 20 aplicaciones turísticas de las que se plasman sus principales características en unas fichas realizadas expresamente para este trabajo. A continuación, se extraerán los datos considerados como inputs y outputs y se determinarán los niveles de eficiencia de las aplicaciones a través de DEA (Análisis Envolvente de Datos). Además, mediante el Benchmarking se localizarán aquellas susceptibles de poder ser imitadas por otras con peores resultados, ya que esta técnica persigue aumentar los niveles de eficiencia y eficacia. Consecuentemente, se extraerán unas conclusiones y un listado de buenas prácticas y factores de éxito. Por último, se hablará sobre el interés de este trabajo, futuras líneas de investigación y futuros proyectos donde se encuentra uno concretamente que está en proceso de desarrollo consistente en una aplicación móvil enfocada a familias dentro de la ciudad de Zaragoza, denominada, en su primera fase: "Happy Aventura"

Design and implementation of prototype tour guide application for mountainous and provincial areas: The case of Paramythia

Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο--Μεταπτυχιακή Εργασία. Διεπιστημονικό-Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών (Δ.Π.Μ.Σ.) “Περιβάλλον και Ανάπτυξη" 2η Κατεύθυνση Σπουδών "Περιβάλλον και Ανάπτυξη των Ορεινών Περιοχών