ENHANCING USERS’ EXPERIENCE WITH SMART MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

The aim of this thesis is to investigate mobile guides for use with smartphones. Mobile guides have been successfully used to provide information, personalisation and navigation for the user. The researcher also wanted to ascertain how and in what ways mobile guides can enhance users' experience. This research involved designing and developing web based applications to run on smartphones. Four studies were conducted, two of which involved testing of the particular application. The applications tested were a museum mobile guide application and a university mobile guide mapping application. Initial testing examined the prototype work for the ‘Chronology of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah’ application. The results were used to assess the potential of using similar mobile guides in Brunei Darussalam’s museums. The second study involved testing of the ‘Kent LiveMap’ application for use at the University of Kent. Students at the university tested this mapping application, which uses crowdsourcing of information to provide live data. The results were promising and indicate that users' experience was enhanced when using the application. Overall results from testing and using the two applications that were developed as part of this thesis show that mobile guides have the potential to be implemented in Brunei Darussalam’s museums and on campus at the University of Kent. However, modifications to both applications are required to fulfil their potential and take them beyond the prototype stage in order to be fully functioning and commercially viable

The imperial war museum’s social interpretation project

This report represents the output from research undertaken by University of Salford and MTM London as part of the joint Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture, operated by Nesta, Arts Council England and the AHRC. University of Salford and MTM London received funding from the programme to act as researchers on the Social Interpretation (SI) project, which was led by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) and their technical partners, The Centre for Digital Humanities, University College London, Knowledge Integration, and Gooii. The project was carried out between October 2011 and October 2012

Tourism and the smartphone app: capabilities, emerging practice and scope in the travel domain.

Based on its advanced computing capabilities and ubiquity, the smartphone has rapidly been adopted as a tourism travel tool.With a growing number of users and a wide varietyof applications emerging, the smartphone is fundamentally altering our current use and understanding of the transport network and tourism travel. Based on a review of smartphone apps, this article evaluates the current functionalities used in the domestic tourism travel domain and highlights where the next major developments lie. Then, at a more conceptual level, the article analyses how the smartphone mediates tourism travel and the role it might play in more collaborative and dynamic travel decisions to facilitate sustainable travel. Some emerging research challenges are discussed

Top ten technologies for academic libraries

This report details ten technologies of use in academic libraries

A Reference Model For Mobile Product Information Systems

This paper analyses the state of the art in research and practice on mobile product information systems. Based on literature review and multiple case study research, we design a reference model that is suitable for researchers and practitioners as a first reference point and recommendation for the construction and analysis of mobile product information systems

Privacy concerns in quick response code mobile promotion: The role of social anxiety and situational involvement

Drawing upon utility maximization theory, this study examines the conse-quences of quick response (QR) code mobile promotion in terms of information privacy concerns, defensive responses (intention to protect, fabricate, or withhold), and loyalty. Two contextual variables, social anxiety and situational involvement, are hypothesized as moderators. The main survey employs the scenario method with 667 general consumers in Japan. The results indicate that most of the main effects are supported for both modera-tors. There are strong interaction effects of social anxiety and situational involvement in intention to protect and intention to fabricate personal information. Our study suggests that QR code promotion is a practical and useful tool for loyalty, and its use may significantly depend on its context, whether physical or psychological.This research was funded by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Inno-vation (National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation ECO2011-30105)