Usability Design for Location Based Mobile Services in Wireless Metropolitan Networks
©2006
Bachelorarbeit
121 Seiten
Zusammenfassung
Inhaltsangabe:Abstract:
The market of mobile technologies is growing at an enormous rate worldwide. With the latest developments in technology, new services are being invented which were not even possible some years ago. As new devices, applications and services emerge, also the number of mobile users is increasing in a rapid manner. Mobile broadband networks like UMTS, EDGE or Wireless LAN make it possible to reach a large group of users who gain access with their personal mobile devices, equipped with multimedia and data capabilities.
Due to this development, new interesting possibilities arise for many areas. One of these areas is the tourism sector, which is being referred to in this thesis. The so-called m-tourism (mobile tourism) is an emerging field with an enormous marketing potential, as described in Chapter 2. Recent hardware inventions and developments are greatly pushing the market share. Companies are offering tailored products filling the needs of their customers. Personalization of services becomes a popular trend in this sector.
But what do users think about such a mobile tourism service? Do they feel the service has added benefits, compared to traditional media and Web-based services? Are those products really user friendly? What would be the crucial applications and qualities that make the big difference? A range of usability issues concerning mobile services is being discussed in the science community; are there already viable, good solutions?
With the recent hype of so-called location based services, the consumer keeps calling for more usable products, featuring more intuitive interfaces. Others may fear being overwhelmed with features. Especially for the senior users, a relatively big target group for most mobile applications, these products often remain a mystery.
Usability has been and should always remain a key element for quality software and successful applications. In this thesis, several applications are described, some of their user interfaces are analyzed and major flaws discovered. Furthermore, a corresponding prototype user interface is introduced with a specific analysis of each development step, taken from the book The Usability Engineering Lifecycle by Deborah J. Mayhew. Once prototypical realisations are available, users can validate the implemented approaches and evaluate concepts and realization details from their point of view. Such first user experiences are a valuable guidance for further […]
The market of mobile technologies is growing at an enormous rate worldwide. With the latest developments in technology, new services are being invented which were not even possible some years ago. As new devices, applications and services emerge, also the number of mobile users is increasing in a rapid manner. Mobile broadband networks like UMTS, EDGE or Wireless LAN make it possible to reach a large group of users who gain access with their personal mobile devices, equipped with multimedia and data capabilities.
Due to this development, new interesting possibilities arise for many areas. One of these areas is the tourism sector, which is being referred to in this thesis. The so-called m-tourism (mobile tourism) is an emerging field with an enormous marketing potential, as described in Chapter 2. Recent hardware inventions and developments are greatly pushing the market share. Companies are offering tailored products filling the needs of their customers. Personalization of services becomes a popular trend in this sector.
But what do users think about such a mobile tourism service? Do they feel the service has added benefits, compared to traditional media and Web-based services? Are those products really user friendly? What would be the crucial applications and qualities that make the big difference? A range of usability issues concerning mobile services is being discussed in the science community; are there already viable, good solutions?
With the recent hype of so-called location based services, the consumer keeps calling for more usable products, featuring more intuitive interfaces. Others may fear being overwhelmed with features. Especially for the senior users, a relatively big target group for most mobile applications, these products often remain a mystery.
Usability has been and should always remain a key element for quality software and successful applications. In this thesis, several applications are described, some of their user interfaces are analyzed and major flaws discovered. Furthermore, a corresponding prototype user interface is introduced with a specific analysis of each development step, taken from the book The Usability Engineering Lifecycle by Deborah J. Mayhew. Once prototypical realisations are available, users can validate the implemented approaches and evaluate concepts and realization details from their point of view. Such first user experiences are a valuable guidance for further […]
Leseprobe
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Etienne Samii
Usability Design for Location Based Mobile Services
in Wireless Metropolitan Networks
ISBN: 978-3-8366-0663-9
Druck Diplomica® Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2008
Zugl. Fachhochschule Aachen, Aachen, Deutschland, Bachelorarbeit, 2006
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1
PREFACE
1. INTRODUCTION...5
2. CURRENT KNOWLEDGE...8
2.1 Overview ...8
2.2 Location Based Services ...8
2.2.1 A Definition ... 8
2.2.2. Projects Overview ...11
2.2.3 Market Trends and Studies ...21
2.3. About Usability ...28
2.3.1. A Definition ...28
2.3.2. The User Interface...35
2.3.3. Good and bad Examples...44
2.3.4. Usability Engineering ...48
3. ANALYSIS...55
3.1 Requirements Analysis ...55
3.1.1 User Categories ...55
3.1.2 Contextual Task Analysis...60
3.1.3 Platform Capabilities and Constraints ...62
3.1.4 General Design Principles ...64
3.1.5 Usability Goals ...69
4. DESIGNING THE PROTOTYPE ...71
4.1 User Interface Design...71
5. EVALUATION ...79
5.1 Usability Testing...79
5.2 Feedback integration ...81
6. DEVELOPMENT ...84
6.1 Extensions ...85
6.2 Metropolitan Wireless LAN Networks ...87
7. CONCLUDING REMARKS ...90
8. OUTLOOK ...91
REFERENCES
TABLE OF FIGURES
APPENDICES
Appendix
A
Appendix
B
Appendix
C
3
PREFACE
Today, mobility has become the key component of modern live,
strongly driven by mobile connectivity over satellite communication,
wireless networks, interactivity and mobile user devices.
This huge networking potential offers the ground for numerous
applications in almost every societal domain. Due to the novelty of
most of these products and services, many of the current applications
are yet experimental and exploratory in nature, and subject to
permanent evaluation and improvement.
The broad range of the field calls for explicit design guidelines,
providing the highest simplicity and ease of use to the future
customer.
As a sustained level of user satisfaction is critical for the outcome of
new services and products, this study will evaluate existing
applications, provide detailed information about usability and user
interfaces. The prototype application is a demonstrative example of
designing acceptable interactive mobile services.
Aachen, August 2006
Etienne Samii
5
The major changes coming will be in the way people communicate
with each other. ... [The] information highway will be as far-reaching
as electricity ... everyone will be touched by it.
- Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (1995, p. xi)
1. INTRODUCTION
The market of mobile technologies is growing at an enormous rate
worldwide. With the latest developments in technology, new services
are being invented which were not even possible some years ago.
As new devices, applications and services emerge, also the number of
mobile users is increasing in a rapid manner.
Mobile broadband networks like UMTS, EDGE or Wireless LAN make it
possible to reach a large group of users who gain access with their
personal mobile devices, equipped with multimedia and data
capabilities.
Due to this development, new interesting possibilities arise for many
areas. One of these areas is the tourism sector, which is being
referred to in this thesis.
The so-called m-tourism (mobile tourism) is an emerging field with an
enormous marketing potential, as described in chapter 2.
Recent hardware inventions and developments are greatly pushing
the market share. Companies are offering tailored products filling the
needs of their customers. Personalization of services becomes a
popular trend in this sector.
6
But what do users think about such a mobile tourism service? Do
they feel the service has added benefits, compared to traditional
media and Web-based services? Are those products really user
friendly? What would be the crucial applications and qualities that
`make the big difference'?
A range of usability issues concerning mobile services is being
discussed in the science community; are there already viable, good
solutions?
With the recent hype of so-called location based services, the
consumer keeps calling for more usable products, featuring more
intuitive interfaces.
Others may fear being overwhelmed with features.
Especially for the senior users, a relatively big target group for most
mobile applications, these products often remain a mystery.
Usability has been and should always remain a key element for
quality software and successful applications.
In this thesis, several applications are described, some of their user
interfaces are analyzed and major flaws discovered.
Furthermore, a corresponding prototype user interface is introduced
with a specific analysis of each development step, taken from the
book "The Usability Engineering Lifecycle" by Deborah J. Mayhew.
Once prototypical realisations are available, users can validate the
implemented approaches and evaluate concepts and realization
details from their point of view. Such first user experiences are a
valuable guidance for further improvements and design decisions.
7
This thesis is structured as follows:
Chapter 2 gives an overview over location based mobile services,
some market research and descriptions of several recent projects.
After that the terms of usability and user interface design are further
illustrated, concluding with a comparison of example visual elements.
Chapter 3 is the analysis chapter, in which the designing guidelines
by Mayhew are introduced and applied to a sample application.
It is divided in user profiles, hardware and platform restrictions and a
special chapter about sociability design.
In Chapter 4, the design and development phase of the tourist guide
prototype is explained and some features are described.
The last chapter is about evaluation of the prototype, giving details
about the surveys, how the trials have been performed and reports
the outcome of the user validation.
Chapter 6 describes technical details of the application as well as
possible extensions and features which can be realized.
Finally, some major conclusions are drawn and an outlook of future
developments is given.
8
2. CURRENT KNOWLEDGE
2.1 Overview
This chapter contains a collection of recent technological
developments in the field of location based mobile services, especially
those aimed at tourism and travel.
To get started, a definition of location based services and an
introduction to a selection of latest software and hardware products
are given in an overview.
Some additional case studies and research results are provided for
more information about the current development in this sector.
Further details about the different products and their evaluation are
given in the Analysis chapter.
Continuing with some background theory, the terms usability, user
interface and usability engineering are introduced in chapter 2.3.
2.2 Location Based Services
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their
common sense.
- Gertrude Stein (Sumrall, 1992, p.13)
2.2.1 A Definition
To understand the term of ,,location based service", one has to
differentiate between two notion: context awareness and location
awareness.
9
Context awareness is a term from computer science that is used for
devices that have information about the circumstances under which
they operate and can react accordingly.
Information that describe the situation and the condition of an entity
display its context. Such an entity could be any object, like a device,
a place or a person. A service is called context aware if it can gather
and process some pieces of these information.
Context aware devices may also try to make assumptions about the
user's current situation.
For example: A context aware mobile phone may know that it is
currently in the meeting room, and that the user has sat down. The
phone may conclude that the user is currently in a meeting and
switches automatically to silent mode.
Location awareness is a general term used for something that can
show that it is aware of your current location. An example is GPS
navigation.
If a service is location aware, it knows at least the current position,
the time and the user of a device. Services which use these pieces of
information can be called "location based services".
In this way, location based services can be defined as a subgroup of
context aware services.
A further example about cellphones from Wikipedia:
Location-based services (LBS) are offered by some cell phone
networks as a way to send custom advertising and other information
to cell-phone subscribers based on their current location. The cell-
phone service provider gets the location from a GPS chip built into
the phone, or by using radiolocation and trilateration based on the
signal-strength of the closest cell-phone towers (for phones without
GPS features).
10
One example of a service might be to allow the subscriber to find the
nearest business of a certain type, such as an Italian restaurant. The
ability of the restaurant to send an invitation to bypassers has also
been mentioned, even though this might be regarded as unsolicited
commercial email or spamming. These services were launched in the
late 1990s, and (as of 2004) the development in this area seems to
be driven more by technical ability than by user need.
Another example can be especially useful when dialing an emergency
telephone number, such as enhanced 9-1-1 in North America, so that
the operator can dispatch emergency police or firefighting services to
the correct location.
Why location awareness?
LBS are becoming more important today, and the reasons are quite
obvious. As the number and spreading of mobile phones, pocket PCs
or wearable devices is growing, it is now possible to access all kinds
of information, regardless of which topic, almost anytime and
anywhere. But with that development a new problem arises: The
more information one gets, the more difficult it becomes to filter out
only the matching parts which one might be looking for in a particular
situation.
This situation is often dependent on the surrounding environment, or
respectively: the current location.
Now to come back to the above example: If someone is looking for
an Italian restaurant, he is probably not very interested in a list of
restaurants of the whole city, but in the closest one to his current
position.
11
The second need would then be a route to find the quickest way to
the place, and eventually a contact address or telephone number to
make a reservation before arrival.
In general, one can explain that applications and services for mobile
devices are of greater importance as soon as they become location
aware, and therefore are able to deliver flexible, personalized results
for every situation they might be needed in.
2.2.2. Projects Overview
Introduction
Recently, many new projects for mobile applications have appeared,
especially in the border region of Germany, Netherlands and Belgium.
Numerous start-up companies are currently developing or already
offering their services to potential testers, customers or tourist
agencies.
Many cities and regional sites have already spotted the high potential
of mobile tourism. Some are eagerly working on conceptual models
and marketing campaigns utilizing recent mobile technologies.
The roll-out of mobile broadband access using networks as UMTS or
Wireless LAN is beginning to reach large groups of potential users
with the increased uptake of mobile devices such as PDAs and
smartphones. This availability brings interesting possibilities for many
areas like tourism. When this is combined with mobile technologies
one refers to `m-tourism'.
A couple of reasons can be given for focusing on the so called m-
tourism (mobile tourism):
12
o
When people are travelling, the navigation problem arises
almost immediately. Mobile technologies can help people
in finding their way through unknown environments.
o
Being in an unfamiliar environment imposes information
needs that cannot always be anticipated upon. Mobile
devices, equipped with multimedia and data capabilities,
can help people to get the information they need almost
immediately, wherever they are.
o
A mobile device is carried 24 hours a day by many
people, so it is always at hand to communicate as well as
to access relevant information.
o
Seen from a commercial perspective, tourists are in
general a very attractive target group.
o
Personalisation is often considered as an added value.
With mobile technologies, services can be tailored to the
individual tourist. For example if a person is mainly
interested in arts, this could be taken into account when
selecting and displaying relevant information to that
person.
Below, some of these projects are described. Some of them are using
features that served as an inspiration to the mobile application
prototype which has been developed for this thesis. See the design
chapter for details of the outcome.
13
iCity Research Community
Also called the `living lab', the project is aimed at the city of Hasselt
in Belgium, providing the inhabitants with mobile services.
Currently, about 2000 people are actively participating in beta-testing
the newly invented applications throughout their `wireless city'.
The latest devices serving the needs of m-tourism, m-business, m-
government and so on are sponsored by a consortium of amongst
others HP and Microsoft, both being part of the research network
which supports the development of these services.
As can be seen on the current website
1
, the list of features and
possible applications is growing steadily, by the help of the so-called
`alphas'. These are students, scientists, programmers or other
voluntary people who are creative and eager to develop new
interactive services that could be offered in their city.
IM@GINE IT
The abbreviation stands for: Intelligent Mobility Agents, Advanced
Positioning and Mapping Technologies INtEgration Interoperable
MulTimodal.
IM@GINE IT targets the facilitation of seamless travel in Europe. The
problem is that existing infomobility services are often only local,
incomplete and offered by varying user interfaces and service
delivery platforms. This project aims to develop a one and single
access point, through which the end user can obtain location-based,
intermodal transport information, mapping and routing, navigation
and other related services everywhere in Europe, anytime, taking into
account personal preferences of the user.
1
http://www.i-city.be/projects/showcase/
14
Key features of IM@GINE IT include:
· Provides the service through many different mobile
devices (smartphone, pocket pc, PDA, in-car computer)
· Multi-agent system that recognizes and even learns user
preferences and guides
· Ambient intelligence, an intelligent user localisation
technique (combining GPS, Cell ID and WiFi localisation
techniques)
· A common data management module for interfacing a
wide range of contents
· The independency from transport mode (car, bus, train,
ship, airplane)
· An integrated route guidance approach (combining in-
vehicle, pedestrian, and within-building route guidance
modules)
· Centralised provision of integrated and dynamic services
and the open interface to many existing systems
The project was completed in 2005. More information can be found at
the project's website
2
.
2
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/esafety/doc/rtd_projects/facts_sheets/imagine_it.pdf
15
WALKONWEB
Interactive Roadmap for Long Distance Rambling, cross-media
content for leisure and entertainment
Hiking or rambling is becoming more and more popular as a
leisure activity across Europe. Hiking gear has modernised, gained
flexibility and lost weight. GPS devices for ramblers are gaining
popularity. Since three and a half decades, the European Ramplers
Association has been active in the integration of national long-
distance hiking trails into a European-wide network of trans-frontier
footpaths. WalkOnWeb wants to integrate existing information about
European long distance walking paths, by defining a new business
model based on electronic publishing of this information and by
developing the necessary applications for the online and mobile
consultation and maintenance of hiking trail info.
An interactive geographical card will enable users to search hiking
paths and to navigate through them. Tourist information about
hotels, restaurants or shops is also integrated.
The main goals of the project are:
· To associate hiking tracks with related information from
multiple sources (e.g. geographical data, tourist
information, path descriptions)
· To create a system that allows easily editing, maintenance
and integration of information in a collaborative manner
(different people can be the joint author of a path)
· To define a business model the online publishing and
consulting of hiking information.
The interactive guide consist of two parts: a `hiking planner' and the
`mobile hiking assistant'. These applications have a number of
functions:
16
· Search for hiking paths in the area by means of
characteristics as distance, duration, differences in height,
historical points of interest and geographical location
· Enable to walk through paths that are visible on a
geographical card
· To export detailed information (e.g. to mobile, PDA,
document)
The assistant can help the hiker to navigate by giving detailed
information about the current location and the subsequent path.
This is possible in a user friendly system in which networks of
different people can exchange information.
A comprehensive overview of current solutions is available on the
project site
3
.
MOBVIS
Vision Technologies and Intelligent Maps for Mobile Attentive
Interfaces in Urban Scenarios
The MOBVIS project identifies the key issue for the realisation of
smart mobile vision services to be the application of context to solve
otherwise intractable vision tasks. In order to achieve this challenging
goal, MOBVIS claims that three components,
· multi-modal context awareness,
· vision based object recognition, and
· intelligent map technology,
should be combined for the first time into a completely innovative
system - the attentive interface.
3
http://www.walkonweb.org
17
In multi-modal interface design, "Attentive User Interfaces" are an
emerging paradigm with the emphasis to generate interface control
directing attention in human and machine. MOBVIS conceptually and
functionally extends this framework to "Attentive Interfaces" that
involve machine attention mechanisms, i.e., to selectively index into
information spaces dependent on a given user relevant context.
The attentive interface would be the only possible way to cut down
the numerous system's hypotheses on the real world, by first
aggregating context information, then applying context to make
mobile vision based object awareness feasible, and incremental
updating of map based geo-information to provide a knowledge base
for future context exploitation.
Figure 1: MobVis device in use
The project goal is research to identify and investigate on key
challenges for the development of mobile vision interfaces, and
providing a demonstrator interface that is attentive to objects of
interest in urban scenarios, such as, buildings, infrastructure, faces,
cars, and informative icons and text. The detected objects will
together define contextual situations, they cue to expected places,
objects, information and events, and they feed into an augmented
18
digital map representation, as a basis for enriched smart services in
personal assistance for the mobile and automotive industry.
EXPLORE
Gaming and guiding system for Museum and Exhibition Environments
Figure 2: The Explore environment
The objective of this project is to develop a location-sensitive,
interactive, guiding, infotainment, and entertaining system for
museum environments. Also new media will be used to provide
information to the visitors. Visitors can experience virtual tours, get
information, and play games (trivia).
The positioning is based on Bluetooth technology and the terminal
device used is the visitors own mobile phone. This system is scalable
to various sizes of museums and exhibitions and it can be built on
various data management platforms.
The project was completed by the end of 2005. A presentation with
more information on Explore can be downloaded on the website
4
.
4
http://museumsnett.no/icommpr/html-files/papers/scholliers.pdf
19
CRUMPET
Crumpet aims at the Creation of User-friendly Mobile Services
personalized for Tourism relying particularly on agent technology.
With crumpet, the user can request information about tourist
attractions, restaurants and tours. The system provides pro-active
tips when the user gets near a sight that might be of interest,
supports interactive maps, showing the position of the user as well as
points of interest. The user's preferences are used to adapt the
presentation of contents. A large part of the project was focused on
trialling and evaluating the concept, also in means of usability.
Figure 3: the Crumpet system window
The system offers a simple user interface and handling of services.
The main functionality is:
· Recommendation of services, e.g. tourist attractions (based
on personal interests and the vicinity to the current location)
· Interactive maps (overview maps of the area, highlighting
the current position of the user; maps highlighting sites of
interest and tours; maps can be panned and zoomed)
· Information about tourist attractions (short text, more
detailed information, maps, directions and pictures).
20
· Proactive tips, giving an unobtrusive tip when the user gets
near a site that might interest him or her.
The complete research article about the project is available online
5
.
LOVEUS
Location aware visually enhanced ubiquitous service, Sightseeing with
your personal mobile guide
The aim of the LoVEUS (Location aware Visually Enhanced Ubiquitous
Services) project is to provide European citizens with ubiquitous
services for personalised, tourism-oriented multimedia information
related to the location and orientation within cultural sites or urban
settings, occasionally enriched with relevant advertisements.
LoVEUS Objectives:
· To design, implement and evaluate a system that allows a
completely new service for the European citizen to become
available, namely the provision of location and orientation
sensitive multimedia information delivery (with strong focus
on information visualization) to the user's new generation
mobile terminal device.
· To develop a user friendly, ubiquitous mobile next
generation terminal that integrates the mobile phone,
Portable Digital Assistant (PDA) and wearable computer
technologies and features into one, enhanced by the
presence of a Global Positioning System (GPS) and a digital
compass.
5
http://i3mainz.fh-mainz.de/publicat/enter2003/Schmidt-Beltz-Zipfetal_LBS_mobile-
tourist.pdf
21
· To provide, through this basic infrastructure, a new
paradigm for promoting tourism, cultural heritage as well as
commercial services, exploiting and expanding the ideas of
location aware services.
The project will present the accomplishments in the form of an
application system that will be demonstrated with a number of
location aware Value Added Services based on `next generation'
sensitive maps. These VASs include streamed multimedia services for
Cultural heritage, personalised advertisement, visually enhanced
navigation and guidance.
2.2.3 Market Trends and Studies
Some interesting studies and polls have appeared on weblogs,
communities and in the official media, showing acceptance, usage
statistics and opinions throughout the world of mobile services and
devices.
Current Mobile Services Usage in Germany
6
According to a study of the German television network ARD/ZDF,
about 60 percent of the German population are online. That would be
38,6 Million adults over the age of 14. Whereas 50 percent of them
are connected via broadband flatrates, in contrast to last year (2005:
18 %).
Also mobile media are becoming more popular. The interest in using
mobile devices like laptops, PDAs or mobile phones for online services
6
Source: ZDF online, http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/26/0,3672,26,00.html
22
has grown rapidly. 34 percent of the "online generation" already have
the possibility of using mobile media. The request for mobile TV or
streaming media has also increased: 44 percent of the users would
like to subscribe to such services.
These structural changes would cause the multimedia markets to
merge, according to the CEO of the ZDF media commission.
Technological evolution, broadband TV, customization, time
independency and mobility will lead to a change in both customer
and provider habits.
Not only the "young trendsetters, who like to download music clips to
their telephones" are in focus of media providers. The request is
being extended to high-quality content, made available to all
platforms, whether they are mobile or stationery.
Conclusions
As the above study shows, mobility has come to or will shortly
become a large popularity with most diverse demand for content.
With further development of technology, the requirements for mobile
gadgets, networks and the applications itself are changing.
But with the ongoing miniaturization of devices in the past, the most
important aspect of `usability' has suffered, having caused many
people to reject them.
So the challenge of recent developers is not only going to create
attractive content and useful applications, but to achieve a high
quality of usability design. This term will be further described in
chapter 2.3.
23
MORE STUDIES
Poor Usability implicated in Rejection of Mobile Internet
7
Recently a research was conducted by Hostway in Great Britain,
surveying 1484 consumers owning up-to-date mobile phones.
Three quarters (73%) of people with access to the Internet through
their mobile phone are not taking advantage of it. Amongst the
reasons for not using mobile Internet were being frustrated by slow-
loading pages (38%), problems with navigating websites from a
phone or PDA (27%) and some websites being completely unavailable
on mobile phones (25%).
'At the moment, most websites just aren't flexible enough to be
accessed on mobile phones,' said Neil Barton, director, Hostway. 'The
research illustrates that even if people do wait for sites to load, quite
often it's impossible to actually get at the content itself because of
the way that sites are built.'
The survey's findings also suggest that if these problems could be
remedied, people would be more enthusiastic about using Internet on
the move. 90% of the survey said that they would use mobile
Internet if they could be sure that pages would load faster and they
wouldn't incur high costs from their mobile operator.
Most people said that if they could access services quickly, cheaply
and be assured that they would display correctly, they would want to
access their email on the move (71%) with around half saying that
they would also access news and sport (47%) from their mobile, and
accessing maps (49%).
7
Source: UsabilityNews,
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3357.asp
24
'Although many people have Internet-ready phones or PDAs that can
access the Internet, they are not inclined to do so because of the
problems with displaying or navigating the content,' continued
Barton. 'Any kind of regulation or technology which encourages
companies to develop mobile-friendly websites, and guarantees a
better mobile experience is certainly a good thing.'
Conclusions
To summarize this article, one can state that it is neither the case
that people are unwilling or uninterested to use new mobile services,
nor are they unable to pay for. As a matter of fact, there are three
main problems to mention as a cause for this effect.
The first problem lies within the applications itself, which are not yet
optimized for mobile devices like Pocket PCs or smartphones with
their rather tiny displays and low resolution.
Secondly, the navigation and overall accessibility is impaired, whether
it is caused by software constraints (different internet browsers with
lack of site compatibility, platform restrictions like JavaME or X-HTML)
or hardware input issues (touchscreen, softkeys, on-screen or a real
keyboard).
And third, the availability of transfer networks delivering adequate
bandwidth (GPRS, UMTS, WLAN, GSM) is a further restriction for
mobile applications, concerning speed, reliability and cost-
effectiveness.
In other words, a great application will only be fun to use if the
network is adequately fast and responsive.
25
User Experience dictates Shift in Take Up of GPS Devices
8
The mobile GPS navigation market has doubled in Europe. New GPS
navigation device market research from Canalys shows that sustained
growth has taken shipments in the latest quarter above even the
boom level seen in the last quarter of 2005.
With this growth has come a shift from handheld products to what
are known as 'transferables' (dedicated portable navigation devices
with integrated GPS). Early solutions for handhelds relied on product
bundles with external GPS receivers connected by cable or Bluetooth,
which could sometimes be quite difficult to set up, and cumbersome
to fit in the vehicle. 'These have understandably withered away in the
face of the much better user experience offered by integrated GPS
devices, but solutions using external receivers are still growing in the
mobile phone space,' says the report.
Of the 2.5M devices sold in the latest quarter, only 10% were
handhelds, a further 3% were wireless handhelds, while a massive
87% were transferables. This compares with the start of 2005, when
handhelds were almost half the market.
'Consumers have flocked to transferables in droves,' says Chris
Jones, Canalys director and principal analyst. 'Q2 can be a quiet
quarter for many consumer electronics product categories, but the
navigation market, particularly in Europe, benefits from lots of
customers buying devices in time for their summer vacations.'
But he pointed out that there is room for further shifts in product
design.
8
Source: UsabilityNews, http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3340.asp
26
'Most of the mobile operators still aren't awake to the huge potential
of mobile navigation, and it comes a long way down on their priority
list, after higher-risk plays like mobile TV. It shouldn't. It is perhaps
the purest form of location-based service, and has huge potential as
a way of changing customer perception of what a phone is for, thus
building a foundation for the delivery of other information services
through the handset.'
Meanwhile, new feature-packed models are coming in at the top end,
bringing, for example, widescreen displays, real-time traffic and
weather information, and additional capabilities that encroach further
into the in-car entertainment space, such as playback of music,
photos, video and TV.
Conclusions
Besides the boom in mobile navigation systems, the trend is going
towards more compact, integrated devices such as smartphones or
dedicated navigation systems.
Apparently the consumer wants an `all-inclusive' gadget which is
rather small and good looking, without having to deal with
complicated additional hardware. Some of these still available today
are cabled and wireless GPS receivers, additional plug-in cards for
storage or WLAN functionality and a telephone connection for mobile
phones.
Those `all-inclusive' devices are yet available at affordable prices,
dragging the old-fashioned ones out of the market.
Most automobile vendors even offer integrated solutions for new cars,
providing a seamless and attractive solution for media playback,
navigation, traffic information, telephone and internet access.
Some of these in-car concepts are further described in chapter 3.
Details
- Seiten
- Erscheinungsform
- Originalausgabe
- Jahr
- 2006
- ISBN (eBook)
- 9783836606639
- DOI
- 10.3239/9783836606639
- Dateigröße
- 3.6 MB
- Sprache
- Englisch
- Institution / Hochschule
- Fachhochschule Aachen – Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik, Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik, Studiengang: Communication & Mulitmedia Design
- Erscheinungsdatum
- 2007 (November)
- Note
- 2,0
- Schlagworte
- mobile computing benutzeroberfläche ergonomie usability user interface wireless
