Location-aware Mobile Applications Research Articles

A location-aware app to support the heritage trail experience in Singapore

ABSTRACT We present insights from the design and development process of Singapore Heritage Trails (SGTrails), a location-aware mobile application that supports users’ exploration of sites of heritage and cultural value. Our findings are based on (a) a survey to understand users’ perceptions about the role of technology, (b) a field study to compare a prototype version with a paper guide, and (c) analysis of implementation, initial adoption, and usage to uncover the multilayered meanings of heritage locations. Drawing on Activity Theory, we examine the ecology of actors and tools necessary to facilitate the co-curating and experiencing of sites of cultural heritage.

Contact Logger: Measuring everyday intergroup contact experiences in near-time

Intergroup contact research has traditionally relied on retrospective accounts of intergroup encounters, mainly through survey-based or observational methods. This study introduces and tests the usability of a purpose-built, location-aware mobile application—the Contact Logger. This application enables the recording of interpersonal and intergroup encounters, in public and private spaces (both indoor and outdoor), in their here-and-now contexts. The main advantage of this approach, as compared to traditional methods, lies in its ability to collect repeated and timely (near-time) self-assessments of individuals’ behaviors and experiences. It also allows for geographical location data to be logged. Usability testing was conducted in a real-world environment and took place over the course of seven days, during which participants (N = 12) logged every contact they had with an outgroup member (here, older people). Subsequently, participants completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, reporting on the usability and experience of using the Contact Logger. The results showed that the application is a viable and easy-to-use alternative to traditional methods. The information gathered aided the further development and optimization of the application. The outcomes of this development process are also briefly discussed.

Full On-Device Stay Points Detection in Smartphones for Location-Based Mobile Applications.

The tracking of frequently visited places, also known as stay points, is a critical feature in location-aware mobile applications as a way to adapt the information and services provided to smartphones users according to their moving patterns. Location based applications usually employ the GPS receiver along with Wi-Fi hot-spots and cellular cell tower mechanisms for estimating user location. Typically, fine-grained GPS location data are collected by the smartphone and transferred to dedicated servers for trajectory analysis and stay points detection. Such Mobile Cloud Computing approach has been successfully employed for extending smartphone’s battery lifetime by exchanging computation costs, assuming that on-device stay points detection is prohibitive. In this article, we propose and validate the feasibility of having an alternative event-driven mechanism for stay points detection that is executed fully on-device, and that provides higher energy savings by avoiding communication costs. Our solution is encapsulated in a sensing middleware for Android smartphones, where a stream of GPS location updates is collected in the background, supporting duty cycling schemes, and incrementally analyzed following an event-driven paradigm for stay points detection. To evaluate the performance of the proposed middleware, real world experiments were conducted under different stress levels, validating its power efficiency when compared against a Mobile Cloud Computing oriented solution.

Writing space: Examining the potential of location-based composition

People use location-aware mobile applications to both produce and organize information. As scholars have noted, digital information is increasingly being organized by physical location. This article examines how new forms of location-based writing represent an important development for composition scholars. Increasingly, people use mobile applications to write about locations, and those texts then appear when other people travel to those locations. This form of location-based composition shows the potential of understanding how texts can impact how people experience physical space. To understand these forms of writing, this article develops a theoretical framework for understanding these texts and then historicizes location-based writing by discussing earlier forms of locative media art. The article then examines the location-based texts found in the mobile application Foursquare to show that instructors can use mobile applications to teach students about attaching texts to the physical places they describe. This article ultimately argues that location-based texts represent a new form of text, a form of text that should be taught in the composition classroom.

Information practices and user interfaces: Student use of an iOS application in special education

A framework connecting concepts from user interface design with those from information studies is applied in a study that integrated a location-aware mobile application into two special education classes at different schools; this application had two support modes (one general and one location specific). The five-month study revealed several information practices that emerged from student attempts to overcome barriers within the application and the curriculum. Students engaged in atypical and unintended practices when using the application. These practices appear to be consequences of the user interface and information processing challenges faced by students. Abandoning activities was a strategic choice and was an unanticipated information practice associated with the application’s integration into lessons. From an information processing perspective, it is likely that students reinterpreted information in the location mode as housing application content rather than being location specific and the information practice of taking photos emerged as an expressive use of the device when an instrumental task was absent. Based on these and other emergent practices, we recommend functionality that should be considered when developing or integrating these types of applications into special education settings and we seek to expand the traditional definition of information practice by including human-computer interaction principles.

Implementation of a smartphone sensing system with social networks: a location-aware mobile application

This study designed a web-integrated, cross-platform communications interface based on smartphone technology to overcome many of the difficulties inherent in visiting crowded public spaces, events, or exhibitions. The goal was to provide an alternative to the standard tour itinerary with a location-specific, customized tour guide system that also makes use of social networks to locate friends. The proposed mobile application features are a photo sharing platform, a friend-finder radar system (linked to Facebook), an interactive game, and a location-based services (LBS) mobile advertising filter. The Taipei International Flora Exposition was used as an example of a public space to evaluate the proposed system.

Benefits of Real-Time Transit Information and Impacts of Data Accuracy on Rider Experience

When presented in a practical format, real-time transit information can improve sustainable travel methods by enhancing the transit experience. This paper identifies the positive shift realized by the continued development of the OneBusAway set of real-time transit information tools. In addition, the paper analyzes real-time prediction errors and their effects on the rider experience. In 2012, three years after the development of location-aware mobile applications, a survey of current OneBusAway users was conducted to compare the results with the previous 2009 study. Results show significant positive shifts in satisfaction with transit, perceptions of safety, and ridership frequency as a result of the increased use of real-time arrival information. However, this paper also provides a perspective of the margin of error riders come to expect and the negative effects resulting from inaccuracies with the real-time data. Although riders on average will ride less when they have experienced errors, a robust issue-reporting system as well as the resolution of the error can mitigate the initial negative effects. With this understanding, the paper provides transit agencies and developers with guidance to realize the full potential of real-time information and error-reporting systems.

An Efficient Information Services-Centric Framework for Commuter

One of the major objectives of Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMS) is to reduce traffic congestion in urban environments by improving the efficiency of utilization of existing transport infrastructures. Many creative and efficient technologies have been developed over the years. Although commuters, especially drivers, take a critical part in containing traffic congestion problems, they are playing a passive role in the traffic-management ecosystem. Considerably, this is due to the information asymmetry between ATMS decision makers and commuters; what is missing is a matching mechanism to create a bridge between information providers and information consumers in the mobile environment. The authors’ solution provides an efficient services-centric framework for delivering pertinent information to commuters. Probe vehicles are used to estimate the real-time traffic flow and disseminate this information effectively to users’ mobile devices. A 2-level indexing scheme is designed to effectively index the grid cells which contain the spatial information and a location-aware mobile application and back-end services are also implemented. Processed information is disseminated to users’ mobile devices through wireless means and presented in a user friendly interface. Experimental results show that this system is scalable and responsive.

On Event-Based Middleware for Location-Aware Mobile Applications

As mobile applications become more widespread, programming paradigms and middleware architectures designed to support their development are becoming increasingly important. The event-based programming paradigm is a strong candidate for the development of mobile applications due to its inherent support for the loose coupling between components required by mobile applications. However, existing middleware that supports the event-based programming paradigm is not well suited to supporting location-aware mobile applications in which highly mobile components come together dynamically to collaborate at some location. This paper presents a number of techniques including location-independent announcement and subscription coupled with location-dependent filtering and event delivery that can be used by event-based middleware to support such collaboration. We describe how these techniques have been implemented in STEAM, an event-based middleware with a fully decentralized architecture, which is particularly well suited to deployment in ad hoc network environments. The cost of such location-based event dissemination and the benefits of distributed event filtering are evaluated.

Mobile Identity Management Revisited

Identity management provides PET (privacy enhancing technology) tools for users to control privacy of their personal data. With the support of mobile location determination techniques based on GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc., context-aware and location-aware mobile applications (e.g. restaurant finder, friend finder, indoor and outdoor navigation, etc.) have gained quite big interest in the business and IT world. Considering sensitive static personal information (e.g. name, address, phone number, etc.) and also dynamic personal information (e.g. current location, velocity in car, current status, etc.), mobile identity management is required to help mobile users to safeguard their personal data. In this paper, we evaluate certain required aspects and features (e.g. context-to-context dependence and relation, blurring in levels, trust management with p3p integration, extended privacy preferences, etc.) of mobile identity management systems from the perspective of a push context-aware application, i.e. the Friend Finder application.

Location-aware mobile applications based on directory services

Location-aware applications are becoming increasingly attractive due to the widespread dissemination of wireless networks and the emergence of small and cheap locating technologies. We developed a location information server that simplifies and speeds up the development of these applications by offering a set of generic location retrieval and notification services to the application. The data model and the access protocols of these services are based on the X.500 directory service and the lightweight directory access protocol LDAP since these are becoming the standard attribute-value-pair retrieval mechanisms for Internet and Intranet environments. This approach establishes a smooth migration path from conventional to location-aware applications. The paper presents the location information server concepts, defines its directory data model and access services, and discusses the implementation options of the loca- tion information server.