Mobile Usability: An Experiment to Check Whether Current Mobile Devices are Ready to Support Frames and iFrames

Frames have traditionally been identified as a usability issue in websites for computers. Literature points out that they may also be a problem for mobile websites but no studies have been carried out to prove it. Since mobile devices have changed a lot in recent years, it is necessary to check whether frames are still a problem for those devices. In this paper we have performed an experiment with twenty-two mobile devices, to test whether the content can be showed in their browsers, as well as their behavior with different configuration of frames and iframes and whether behavior of bookmarks and the back button is correct or not. The results show that frames and iframes should be avoided in mobile devices because they can cause many problems, which are explained in detail in this paper

Maintenance of street lighting systems using mobile phones

There is no doubt that street lighting systems have an important role in cities promoting comfort, as well as enhancing safety and security. These kinds of systems require maintenance in order to guarantee operation and reduce energy consumption. To help with certain maintenance tasks, a new smartphone application has been developed. The aim of this tool is to set up street lighting energy efficiency level at the same time that the illuminance level is evaluated. The benefit of this tool is that maintenance staff can assess energy efficiency on an easy and quick way, achieving a result report. In addition, a new Bluetooth device was created to perform the measurements, being necessary to perform a brief study about its accuracy compared with a mobile phone ambient light sensor and an external sensor

Estimation of Energy Consumption in Street Lighting using Mobile Devices

The growing energy consumption is not sustainable in the long run. Taking into account that street lighting is one of the highest energy consumers in cities, this paper aims to develop a methodology to estimate the energy consumption of these installations with as few input variables as possible. In addition, the paper presents a mobile application developed to help lighting managers not only on the energy consumption evaluation, but suggesting the possible improvements on current systems which can save energy in case that they are implemented

Development of a Social Gamified Platform for e-Learning

The way in which nowadays education is evolving, makes it possible to associate it with MOOCs courses and gamification techniques to improve learning outcomes of students. To this end, this paper shows the development of an educational e-learning platform built upon the Elgg social framework, where a set of gamification elements were added: Points, achievements, leaderboards and rewards. For the future, effectiveness validations will be carried out with students as well as further developments with other types of gamification elements