Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN: 978-1-4666-8583-3
eISBN: 978-1-4666-8584-0
This book is published in the IGI Global book series Advances in Wireless Technologies and Telecommunication (AWTT) (ISSN: 2327-3305; eISSN: 2327-3313)
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher.
For electronic access to this publication, please contact: eresources@igi-global.com.
Advances in Wireless Technologies and Telecommunication (AWTT) Book Series
Xiaoge Xu
The University of Nottingham Ningbo China
ISSN: 2327-3305
EISSN: 2327-3313
Mission
The wireless computing industry is constantly evolving, redesigning the ways in which individuals share information. Wireless technology and telecommunication remain one of the most important technologies in business organizations. The utilization of these technologies has enhanced business efficiency by enabling dynamic resources in all aspects of society.
The Advances in Wireless Technologies and Telecommunication Book Series aims to provide researchers and academic communities with quality research on the concepts and developments in the wireless technology fields. Developers, engineers, students, research strategists, and IT managers will find this series useful to gain insight into next generation wireless technologies and telecommunication.
Coverage
• Network Management
• Cellular Networks
• Broadcasting
• Telecommunications
• Grid Communications
• Mobile Technology
• Virtual Network Operations
• Mobile Communications
• Mobile Web Services
• Wireless Broadband
IGI Global is currently accepting manuscripts for publication within this series. To submit a proposal for a volume in this series, please contact our Acquisition Editors at Acquisitions@igi-global.com or visit: http://www.igi-global.com/publish/.
For a list of additional titles in this series, please visit: www.igi-global.com
Technological Breakthroughs in Modern Wireless Sensor Applications
Hamid Sharif (University of Nebraska – Lincoln, USA) and Yousef S. Kavian (Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2015 • 417pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466682511) • US $200.00 (our price)
Handbook of Research on Software-Defined and Cognitive Radio Technologies for Dynamic Spectrum Management
Naima Kaabouch (University of North Dakota, USA) and Wen-Chen Hu (University of North Dakota, USA)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2015 • 927pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466665712) • US $505.00 (our price)
Interdisciplinary Mobile Media and Communications Social, Political, and Economic Implications
Xiaoge Xu (The University of Nottingham Ningbo China, China)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2014 • 409pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466661660) • US $205.00 (our price)
Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks Applications, Architectures, and Challenges
Mubashir Husain Rehmani (Department of Electrical Engineering, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Pakistan) and Yasir Faheem (Department of Computer Science, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Pakistan)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2014 • 313pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466662124) • US $235.00 (our price)
Game Theory Applications in Network Design
Sungwook Kim (Sogang University, South Korea)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2014 • 500pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466660502) • US $225.00 (our price)
Convergence of Broadband, Broadcast, and Cellular Network Technologies
Ramona Trestian (Middlesex University, UK) and Gabriel-Miro Muntean (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2014 • 333pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466659780) • US $235.00 (our price)
Handbook of Research on Progressive Trends in Wireless Communications and Networking
M.A. Matin (Institut Teknologi Brunei, Brunei Darussalam)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2014 • 592pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466651708) • US $380.00 (our price)
Broadband Wireless Access Networks for 4G Theory, Application, and Experimentation
Raul Aquino Santos (University of Colima, Mexico) Victor Rangel Licea (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico) and Arthur Edwards-Block (University of Colima, Mexico)
Information Science Reference • copyright 2014 • 452pp • H/C (ISBN: 9781466648883) • US $235.00 (our price)
701 E. Chocolate Ave., Hershey, PA 17033
Order online at www.igi-global.com or call 717-533-8845 x100
To place a standing order for titles released in this series, contact: cust@igi-global.com Mon-Fri 8:00 am - 5:00 pm (est) or fax 24 hours a day 717-533-8661
On Mobility and Interaction Landscapes: Identifying Three Strands of Developments for Mobile Interaction Design Research ................................................................................................................... 1
Mikael Wiberg, Umeå University, Sweden
Chapter 2
Modern Standards for VoiceXML in Pervasive Multimodal Applications .......................................... 22
Dirk Schnelle-Walka, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Stefan Radomski, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Max Mühlhäuser, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Chapter 3
MagiThings: Gestural Interaction with Mobile Devices Based on Using Embedded Compass (Magnetic Field) Sensor 49
Mehran Roshandel, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany
Amin Haji-Abolhassani, McGill University, Canada
Hamed Ketabdar, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany
Chapter 4
Category-Based Interfaces for Mobile Search 75
Tomi Heimonen, University of Tampere, Finland
Chapter 5
Playing with Traffic: An Emerging Methodology for Developing Gamified Mobility Applications 105
Martin Kracheel, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Rod McCall, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Vincent Koenig, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Chapter 6
Rethinking Education for Sustainability: A Mobile Learning Approach.
Leonardo Giusti, MIT, USA
Alessandro Pollini, BSD Design, Italy
Federico Casalegno, MIT, USA
Chapter 7
Section 2
Evaluation of Mobile Devices
Usability Heuristics for Mobile Phone Applications: A Literature Review .......................................
Thaísa C. Lacerda, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
Juliane V. Nunes, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
Chapter 8
The Phone as a Tool for Combining Online and Offline Social Activity: A Study of Early Mobile Social Media Use
Stina Nylander, SICS Swedish ICT, Sweden
Chapter 9
Emerging Issues in Mobile Data Capture Methods across Multiple Domains: Learning from the User Experience ..................................................................................................................................
Jo Cranwell, The University of Nottingham, UK
Xu Sun, The University of Nottingham Ningbo, China
David Golightly, The University of Nottingham, UK
Genovefa Kefalidou, The University of Nottingham, UK
Benjamin Bedwell, The University of Nottingham, UK
Sarah Sharples, The University of Nottingham, UK
Chapter 10
Perceived Impacts as User Experience Components in Mobile News Making with Smartphones ....
Heli Väätäjä, Tampere University of Technology, Finland
Chapter 11
Investigating Serendipitous Smartphone Interaction with Public Displays ........................................
Matthias Baldauf, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Peter Fröhlich, Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), Austria & FTW Telecommunications Research Center, Austria
Chapter 12
Large-Scale Research via App Stores: Challenges and Opportunities at the Example of a NFC Game Adoption Study
Matthias Kranz, Universität Passau, Germany
Andreas Möller, Metaio GmbH, Germany
Florian Michahelles, Siemens, USA
123
143
158
176
218
239
269
Detailed Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgment
Introduction
Section 1 Design and Use of Mobile Devices
The first section of this book collates a series of chapters focusing on design and use of mobile devices. Starting with a reflection on the future research agenda for mobile design, the chapters in this section consider specific aspects of design for mobile user interaction before moving on to focus on example domains of design and use, including mobile learning.
Chapter 1
On Mobility and Interaction Landscapes: Identifying Three Strands of Developments for Mobile Interaction Design Research 1
Mikael Wiberg, Umeå University, Sweden
In this chapter we address how the landscape of mobile HCI is changing. With a point of departure taken in how mobile interaction design is nowadays not only about interface design for digital devices, but about the design of wide-ranging interaction landscapes we explore how mobile HCI are now heavily interwoven in complex arrangements of computational devices, platforms and services. In exploring these current developments, this chapter identifies three contemporary strands of developments related to 1) the formation of new interaction landscapes, 2) the long tail of interaction, and 3) digital materialities. With a point of departure taken in these three strands, this chapter presents a research agenda for moving forward followed by a discussion on the implications of this agenda for mobile HCI research.
Chapter 2
Modern Standards for VoiceXML in Pervasive Multimodal Applications 22
Dirk Schnelle-Walka, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Stefan Radomski, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Max Mühlhäuser, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
In this chapter, we will consider the language support of VoiceXML 2.1 to express flexible dialogs in pervasive environments. Missing information about the environment and the inability to react to external events lead to rigid and verbose dialogs. But building upon the recently defined W3C MMI architecture
we present an approach where dialog authors can adapt their dialogs’ behavior with regard to the users’ surroundings and incorporate available information and devices from the pervasive environment. Adding these features extends the expressiveness of VoiceXML 2.1, and allows for an integration into a multimodal and mobile interaction as anticipated in the, as of now, dormant VoiceXML 3.0 standard.
Chapter 3
MagiThings: Gestural Interaction with Mobile Devices Based on Using Embedded Compass (Magnetic Field) Sensor 49
Mehran Roshandel, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany
Amin Haji-Abolhassani, McGill University, Canada
Hamed Ketabdar, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany
This paper proposes a new approach for the “around-device interaction” based on magnetic field interaction. The new approach, called “MagiThings”, takes the advantage of digital compass embedded in the new generation of mobile devices. The user movements of a properly shaped magnet around the device deform the original magnetic field. The magnet is taken or worn around the fingers. The changes made in the magnetic field pattern around the device constitute a new way of interacting with the device. The mobile device samples momentary status of the field. The field changes, caused by hand gesture, are used as a basis for sending interaction commands to the device. The proposed methodology has been successfully tested for a variety of applications such as interaction with the user interface of a mobile device, character (digit) entry, user authentication, gaming and touch-less mobile music synthesis.
Chapter 4
Category-Based Interfaces for Mobile Search
Tomi Heimonen, University of Tampere, Finland
75
One of the challenges with designing effective mobile search interfaces is how to present and explore the search results. Category-based result organization and presentation techniques have been suggested in literature as a complement to the traditional ranked result list. In the mobile context categories can facilitate information access by providing an overview of the result set, by reducing the need for keyword entry and by providing means to filter the results. This chapter includes a review of recent research on category-based interfaces for mobile search. The chapter also addresses the challenges of evaluating mobile search in situ and presents a longitudinal user study that investigated how a mobile clustering interface is used to search the Web. Results from the study show that category-based interaction can be situationally useful, for example when users have problems describing their information need or wish to retrieve a subset of results. In summary, the chapter proposes future research directions for categorybased mobile search interfaces.
Chapter 5
Playing with Traffic: An Emerging Methodology for Developing Gamified Mobility Applications .
105
Martin Kracheel, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Rod McCall, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Vincent Koenig, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
This chapter explores a novel methodology used to develop gamified mobility applications for a heavily congested European city. The methodology consists of three elements: a metaphorical traffic game, a complex and comprehensive mobility logging approach and two focus groups. The daily commute is
explained as part of a real life traffic game that changes user behaviour. The methodology allows for the identification of travel activity patterns and attitudes that in turn can be used to develop gamified mobility applications. The chapter provides concrete game elements and design considerations that can be used to improve the traffic experience in Luxembourg.
Chapter 6
Rethinking Education for Sustainability: A Mobile Learning Approach. 123
Leonardo Giusti, MIT, USA
Alessandro Pollini, BSD Design, Italy
Federico Casalegno, MIT, USA
This chapter presents a pedagogical model and a technological platform consisting of web and mobile technologies designed to support a mix of formal and informal, indoor and outdoor learning experiences. In particular, the platform is a reconfigurable system that can be adapted to support different kinds of learning formats. Two case studies will be presented to describe how the proposed pedagogical model and the technological platform can be adapted to address different contexts and learning objectives. The first case study – H2Flow – has been carried out in an high-school in Trento (north Italy) as an extension of the school curricula; the second one – Youth Mapping – has been deployed in underserved areas in Rio De Janeiro as part of a community-driven initiative led by UNICEF. In the conclusion, we discuss educational challenges and design opportunities concerning the use of mobile technologies in the context of education on sustainable development.
Section 2
Evaluation of Mobile Devices
The second section of this book collates a series of chapters focusing on evaluation of the usability of, and user experience associated with, mobile technologies. It commences with a review of usability heuristics for evaluation of mobile phone usability and an historical reflection on early mobile social media use before focusing on user experience, investigation into serendipitous use of smartphones to interact with public displays and finally the use of app stores to support large scale research studies in the field of mobile human-computer interaction.
Chapter 7
Usability Heuristics for Mobile Phone Applications: A Literature Review ....................................... 143
Thaísa C. Lacerda, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
Juliane V. Nunes, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil
In this chapter, we discuss the importance of evaluating the usability of mobile applications using tools and technics that consider their specific characteristics. One common way to evaluate usability is using heuristics. However, since many assumptions regarding usability of computer applications are not true for mobile applications, a question arises: does there exist usability heuristics specific for this type of device? To answer this question, we conducted a systematic literature review. We mapped the encountered sets of heuristics to Nielsen’s ten heuristics and identified additional ones specifically proposed for this kind of device. Our review indicates that research with respect to usability heuristics for mobile phones are still sparse. Nevertheless, this chapter provides an overview on the state of the art that can guide the design and evaluation of interfaces for mobile applications as well as provide a starting point for the
evolution of such customized heuristics.
Chapter 8
The Phone as a Tool for Combining Online and Offline Social Activity: A Study of Early Mobile Social Media Use 158
Stina Nylander, SICS Swedish ICT, Sweden
This chapter presents a study of an online community for Swedish teenagers, an early social media. Their mobile use is analyzed and its relationship to current social media is discussed. Analysis of two months of log data and 100 surveys on teenagers’ phone use showed that the phone use mostly took place during times of the day when teenagers have social time and was not influenced by the availability of a computer. The phone made the community access more private compared to the computer, but teens did share the use when they want to. The cell phone bridged the online and offline social communities and allows teens to participate in both at the same time. The online community was not only a place for social activity online, it was also a social activity offline that is carried out face-to-face with friends.
Chapter 9
Emerging Issues in Mobile Data Capture Methods across Multiple Domains: Learning from the User Experience 176
Jo Cranwell, The University of Nottingham, UK
Xu Sun, The University of Nottingham Ningbo, China
David Golightly, The University of Nottingham, UK
Genovefa Kefalidou, The University of Nottingham, UK
Benjamin Bedwell, The University of Nottingham, UK
Sarah Sharples, The University of Nottingham, UK
Mobile device-based data capture studies have potential as contextual data collection methods to address the limitations of the traditional paper-based diary method. The ever-evolving computing power of mobile phones broadens the potential applications of such methods in novel and interesting ways. While there have been a number of studies that demonstrate the power of the mobile device-based diary approach, there is less known about participants’ experience of such studies. This chapter presents five case studies to bring together user experiences of participating in mobile data capture studies and evaluates how this can be fed into the future study design.
Chapter 10
Perceived Impacts as User Experience Components in Mobile News Making with Smartphones 218
Heli Väätäjä, Tampere University of Technology, Finland
This chapter discusses users’ perceptions of system impacts as one of the user experience components. Findings from twelve case studies on mobile news making with smartphones are summarized, focusing on the perceived impacts of system use and system characteristics that can contribute to user’s perception of system quality. The findings indicate that the perceived impacts of system, i.e., the benefits and
costs, for the mobile user, activity, outcome (news and news content), and journalism are important for understanding user experience and therefore the overall evaluative judgments of the system.
Chapter 11
Investigating Serendipitous Smartphone Interaction with Public Displays
Matthias Baldauf, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Peter Fröhlich, Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), Austria & FTW Telecommunications Research Center, Austria
239
Today’s smartphones provide the technical means to serve as interfaces for public displays in various ways. Even though recent research has identified several approaches for mobile-display interaction, inter-technique comparisons of respective methods are scarce. In this chapter, the authors present an experimental user study on four currently relevant mobile-display interaction techniques (‘Touchpad’, ‘Pointer’, ‘Mini Video’, and ‘Smart Lens’). The results indicate that mobile-display interactions based on a traditional touchpad metaphor are time-consuming but highly accurate in standard target acquisition tasks. The direct interaction techniques Mini Video and Smart Lens had comparably good completion times, and especially Mini Video appeared to be best suited for complex visual manipulation tasks like drawing. Smartphone-based pointing turned out to be generally inferior to the other alternatives. Finally, the authors introduce state-of-the-art browser-based remote controls as one promising way towards more serendipitous mobile interactions and outline future research directions.
Chapter 12
Large-Scale Research via App Stores: Challenges and Opportunities at the Example of a NFC Game Adoption Study 269
Matthias Kranz, Universität Passau, Germany
Andreas Möller, Metaio GmbH, Germany
Florian Michahelles, Siemens, USA
Large-scale research has gained momentum in the context of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (Mobile HCI), as many aspects of mobile app usage can only be evaluated in the real world. In this chapter, we present findings on the challenges of research in the large via app stores, in conjunction with selected data collection methods (logging, self-reporting) we identified and have proven as useful in our research. As a case study, we investigated the adoption of NFC technology, based on a gamification approach. We therefore describe the development of the game NFC Heroes involving two release cycles. We conclude with lessons learned and provide recommendations for conducting research in the large for mobile applications.
Compilation of References
Preface
2012 and 2013 saw the International Journal of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (IJMHC) celebrate its fourth and fifth years in print, respectively. As it continues to grow in strength and reputation, we continue to see articles coming together to form exciting issues of the journal that not only represent innovation and high quality research, but that also challenge us to strive to push, if not demolish, boundaries around our thinking of research within the field of mobile human-computer interaction (HCI).
This Advances book is a compendium of chapters that represent extended and enhanced articles from the fourth and fifth volumes of the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI). The mission of the IJMHCI, and by extension this book, is to provide an international forum for researchers, educators, and practitioners to advance knowledge and practice in all facets of design and evaluation of human interaction with mobile technologies; to encourage readers to think out of the box to ensure that novel, effective user interface design and evaluation strategies continue to emerge and, in turn, the true potential of mobile technology is realized whilst being sensitive to the societal impact such technologies may have. The IJMHCI brings together a comprehensive collection of research articles from international experts on the design, evaluation, and use of innovative handheld, mobile, and wearable technologies; it also considers issues associated with the social and/or organizational impacts of such technologies. Emerging theories, methods, and interaction designs are included and are complemented with case studies which demonstrate the practical application of these new ideas. The aim of the journal, and hence this book, is to increase exposure to, and heighten awareness of, the complexity of current and future issues concerning mobile human-computer interaction. Since its inception, IJMHCI articles have presented (and will undoubtedly and indeed hopefully continue to present) alternative points of view for some of the field’s hotly debated topics. Such variance is not only stimulating but also essential in terms of encouraging readers to think to the future and embrace the challenge of new paradigms both for interaction design and evaluation.
Mobile technology has been, and is likely to continue to be, one of the major growth areas in computing, especially if the concept of ‘mobile’ is broadened to include not just technology that is used whilst the user in physically in motion (e.g., smartphones) but also technology embedded within the environment within which a user is interacting (and which may, itself, be in motion – e.g., car). The variety, not just of technologies, but also of contexts of use, application domains, and users makes designing the user interface for mobile applications a very complex undertaking. Mobile human-computer interaction must remain cognizant of a variety of complex contextual factors affecting both users and technology and this demands (and is supported by evolving technological means) increasingly sophisticated user interfaces and means by which to evaluate their efficacy and acceptability. This Advances book provides students, researchers, educators, and practitioners with a compendium of research on some of the key issues and
advances surrounding the design, use and evaluation of mobile user interfaces. Compiling the expertise of 31 leading experts from 12 countries, this exemplary reference tool will make an indispensable addition to every library collection. The complementary combination of historical reflection, practical content, and theoretical and reflective discussion will enable readers to draw parallels with their own work, thereby either applying or furthering the documented research efforts within their own projects. The goal of this book is to improve our appreciation of current and future challenges associated with the design and evaluation of user interfaces to mobile technologies. The compilation of chapters cover issues ranging from reflections on the need for an updated research agenda in the field of mobile HCI through different modalities of interaction to different perspectives on evaluation of mobile applications. Although many chapters touch on a number of issues critical to user interface development, use and evaluation for mobile technologies, the chapters have been loosely organized according to whether their primary focus lies in the design and use of mobile technologies or the evaluation of such systems. The book provides many references to existing literature and research efforts in the field of mobile humancomputer interaction, and includes a comprehensive index to support quick and convenient look up of topics and concepts. This book is an ideal reference for both veteran and novice educators, researchers, students, and practitioners in the field of mobile human-computer interaction who require access to current information in this exciting field of research and practice.
INTRODUCTION
Jesper Kjeldskov is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Aalborg University, Denmark and a leading expert in the field of interaction design for and user experience with mobile and ubiquitous technologies. Having published some provocative articles on the evaluation of mobile technologies in which he challenged readers to rethink preconceptions about evaluation of such technologies, I invited Jesper to write an introduction chapter to this book, in which I hoped he would again suitably challenge our thinking. He certainly has done this in his very personal introduction chapter in which he starts by looking back over the methodological evolution in mobile HCI to date. Following such reflection, Jesper challenges us to look forward, to a new era of emerging perspectives on the design, use, and evaluation of mobile and handheld devices. He asserts that mobile computing has evolved from a strongly engineering discipline to an equally strong design-based discipline. He argues that mobile interaction design is increasingly important for the continuing development of the mobile computing paradigm, and thus urges us “to ensure that our overall approaches to designing and thinking about mobile systems and devices are up for the challenges that lie ahead”. Driving three practical suggestions for future mobile HCI thinking, Jesper asserts that, although we now have an established grasp on user interaction with individual systems, we do not yet fully understand mobile human-computer interaction within the bigger picture of everyday life, and as such our use of mobile technologies within the ecology of gadgets that surround us. Jesper challenges us to move beyond (a) our current “focus on usability and usability evaluations”, (b) “non-wild field studies”, and (c) “snap-shot studies of use”, elaborating on the practical ways in which we might achieve such a redirection for the benefit and betterment of mobile HCI. Jesper concludes by acknowledging the value of this book towards moving the field forward in line with these challenges.
DESIGN AND USE OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES
The IJMHCI would not be possible without the invaluable input of its advisory board members and, in recognition of the contribution of its advisors, as well as to intellectually challenge its readers, the IJMHCI publishes a series of invited articles representing reflective commentaries by members of this team. Chapter 1, entitled “On Mobility & Interaction Landscapes: Identifying Three Strands of Developments for Mobile Interaction Design Research” is an enhanced version of just such an invited article by Mikael Wiberg. In this, Mikael reflects on changes of focus within the field of Mobile HCI. He argues that, with ongoing developments in the field of mobile HCI the field itself is changing, leading to a need for a call for new research agendas capable of addressing the ongoing developments in the area. He notes that mobile interaction design is no longer merely about designing the user interface for small, digital technologies, but is today as much about the design of “complete interaction landscapes” of which the mobile device forms a part, echoing some of the thinking in Jesper’s introduction. His chapter sets out to illustrate cases which highlight the need for an updated research agenda for Mobile HCI; specifically, Mikael argues for three new strands of development in relation to formation of new interaction landscapes, “the long tail of interaction”, and “digital materialities” and discusses the implications of this agenda for Mobile HCI research. In this, Mikael is certainly challenging us to think to the future of our field!
The proliferation of pervasive devices combined with their ever increasing capabilities continues to support calls for possibilities and approaches for effective speech processing and convenient and effective speech and multimodal interfaces to mobile technologies. In “Modern Standards for VoiceXML in Pervasive Multimodal Applications”, Dirk Schnelle-Walka, Stefan Radomski, and Max Mühlhäuser argue that VoiceXML 2.1 is limited in terms of its capacity to express flexible dialogs within pervasive environments. They claim that rigid and long winded dialogs are the result of a lack of environmental information and an incapacity to react to external events. To address this, the authors outline an approach whereby dialog designers can adapt the behavior of dialogs relative to users’ surroundings and can incorporate available devices and information from their pervasive environment. They suggest that the result is a more expressive VoiceXML 2.1 which supports integration into mobile and multimodal interaction (as anticipated in the currently dormant VoiceXML 3.0 standard).
Chapter 3, entitled “MagiThings: Gestural Interaction with Mobile Devices Based on Using Embedded Compass (Magnetic Field) Sensor” is by Mehran Roshandel, Amin Haji-Abolhassani, and Hamed Ketabdar. In this, the authors extol the virtues of around device interaction (ADI), proposing a new approach for such interaction (called MagiThings) which utilizes the digital compass (magnetometer) embedded in most new smartphone/mobile technology. Users of MagiThings hold or wear a properly shaped magnet which they use to gesture input in the space around the device; these gestures deform the magnetic field around the phone, with the patterns of deformation being used as the basis for sending interaction commands to the device, thus constituting a novel way of interacting with a device. The authors have successfully evaluated the MagiThings method for interaction with a mobile device user interface, input of digits to a user interface, authentication of users, gaming, and touchless mobile music synthesis, showing that MagiThings can be efficiently employed in different application domains. The authors conclude their chapter with discussion on yet more potential application areas and variants of the MagiThings technology.
Tomi Heimonen, in “Category-Based Interfaces for Mobile Search”, reflects on the fact that effective presentation and exploration of search results are the key challenges associated with the development of mobile search interfaces. Tomi discusses the promise of category-based search result organisation for
mobile information access, noting that (in mobile contexts) categories can reduce the need for keyword entry and support result filtering, thus providing efficient information access. He reviews prior research on category-based interfaces for mobile search activities, emphasising the need to evaluate categorybased interfaces to fully understand their benefits in realistic search scenarios. In this vein, he presents the results of a longitudinal investigation into participants’ search behaviours when using a clustering mobile search interface (Mobile Findex) in naturalistic mobile web searches. Combining insight from the review of prior art and the results of the user study, Tomi discusses the pros and cons of categorybased mobile search and proposes future research directions for improving category support in user interfaces for mobile search.
In “Playing with Traffic: An Emerging Methodology for Developing Gamified Mobility Applications”, Martin Kracheel, Rod McCall, and Vincent Koenig use a novel method to develop gamified mobility applications for Luxembourg, a heavily congested European city. Their method comprises a game which explains the daily commute with the intent of changing user behaviour, a digital travel diary study, and focus groups. The authors note that their method supports identification of patterns in and attitudes towards travel activity which thereafter feed into a gamified mobility application. This chapter highlights that gaming is not something that can simply be layered on top of an important issue: to use gaming or gamification effectively is non-trivial and the authors show us how to achieve successful gamification for behaviour change using a real world case study.
Chapter 6, the last of the chapters on design and use of mobile technologies, was written by Leonardo Giusti, Alessandro Pollini, and Federico Casalegno and is entitled “Rethinking Education for Sustainability: A Mobile Learning Approach”. This chapter considers education for sustainable development (ESD) which is increasingly considered an important and relevant topic for mobile learning activities. Focusing on experiential education to address the complex challenge of ESD, the authors highlight the design challenges associated with design of effective mobile learning and introduce a pedagogical model and technological platform which has been developed to support a mix of indoor and outdoor, formal and informal learning experiences. By virtue of being reconfigurable, the authors claim that their platform can be adapted to support different learning formats. In this chapter, the authors present two case studies with different contexts and associated learning objectives in order to illustrate the flexibility of use of the model and platform. As part of a UNICEF-led initiative, the first case study – the Youth Mapping project – was deployed in underprivileged communities of Rio De Janeiro to (a) empower youth with digital mapping technology for reporting environmental and structural hazards, and (b) to help educate the community about urban environmental sustainability. H2Flow is the second of the two case studies, and was embedded as an extension of an existing curricula in a high school in Trento (Italy) in an attempt to teach students about issues associated with sustainable water use. The authors conclude their chapter with a discussion on the ongoing challenges and opportunities surrounding the use of mobile technologies for ESD.
EVALUATION OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES
Chapter 7 heads up the section on evaluation of mobile technologies. In this chapter, entitled “Usability Heuristics for Mobile Phones Applications – A Literature Review”, Thaisa Cardoso Lacerda, Juliane Vargas Nunes, and Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim visit the hotly debated topic of mobile device evaluation. The authors note the speed of growth of the mobile application market sector, recognize that
the characteristics of mobile applications mean that usability plays a significant role in the success of such applications, and observe that assumptions about user interactions inherent from desktop systems don’t hold for mobile technologies. As such, they questioned the availability of appropriate usability heuristics for mobile technologies. They systematically reviewed the available literature on heuristics, mapping those they identified to the original set proposed by Nielsen and identifying a set of additional heuristics specific to mobile technologies. They conclude that comparatively little research has been done to develop mobile usability heuristics, with most of the heuristics they encountered being strongly tied to the traditional heuristics originally developed for desktop systems. They argue that such heuristics fail to adequately consider the characteristics unique to mobile device use. They present their survey as an overview of the current state of play as well as a kick-off point for evolution of more appropriate heuristics – that is, heuristics specifically tailored to the complexities of mobile technologies and their use.
In “The Phone as a Tool for Combining Online and Offline Social Activity: A Study of Early Mobile Social Media Use”, Stina Nylander reports on a 2 month study looking at use rhythms and situations of use for mobile phone-based use of Playahead – an established Swedish online community for teenagers. The results highlight the parallelism of teenagers’ online and offline socializing: the findings highlight the fact that mobile phones bridge online and offline social communities, effectively allowing users to engage in both at the same time. The results also highlight the privacy afforded by mobile phone-based access compared to a computer. Interestingly, Stina discovered that not only is the online community a venue for online social activity, but that it also supports offline social activity carried out face-to-face with friends. Based on the findings, Stina identifies a number of design implications for mobile phone use of social networking sites, those being (1) the need to design for a situation of use that is richer and more varied than that which we might traditionally define as the typical mobile use setting, (2) the need to avoid merely providing stripped down subsets of functionality on the phone, and (3) the need to develop effective means to support face-to-face sharing and group interaction when using a given social networking service.
In Chapter 9 – “Emerging Issues in Mobile Data Capture Methods Across Multiple Domains: Learning from the User Experience” by Jo Cranwell, Xu Sun, David Golightly, Genovefa Kefalidou, Benjamin Bedwell, and Sarah Sharples – the authors assert that mobile diary-based studies have the potential to address limitations of traditional paper-based diary studies for capturing contextual usage data, with the potential application of such methods being ever-broadened in novel and interesting ways by the continuous evolution of computing power in mobile devices. They argue that, although studies have been reported to illustrate the power of the mobile device-based diary approach, we (prior to their research) knew little about the participants’ experience of being involved in such studies. This chapter reports on a series of five case studies in which mobile diaries were deployed for data capture; they collate user experiences of participating in such studies and explore how this understanding can be used to inform the design of future studies.
Heli Väätäjä, in “Perceived Impacts as User Experience Components in Mobile News Making with Smartphones”, explores user experience in terms of users’ perceptions of system impacts, claiming that such impacts are rarely considered or discussed in relation to user experience. Focusing on users’ perceptions of the impacts of the system use and system characteristics that have the potential to contribute to users’ perception of system quality, Heli summarizes the findings from a series of twelve case studies on smartphone use for mobile news making. The results suggest that when assessing user experience on the basis of verbal descriptions of system qualities, impacts can “contribute to evaluative judgment, acceptance, and system use”. Heli suggests that better understanding of the costs and benefits associ-
Preface
ated with system use could be used to refine requirements and guide design and to determine the likely acceptability of a system, hence lending support to effective planning and process change management.
Chapter 10 –“Investigating Serendipitous Smartphone Interaction with Public Displays” by Matthias Baldauf and Peter Fröhlich – introduces us to the notion of using a smartphone to interface with public displays in a variety of ways. The authors argue that, although several approaches for such interaction have been identified, inter-technique comparisons are somewhat lacking. The authors outline a lab-based experimental study of four current (but previously un-compared) mobile-display interaction techniques, namely touchpad, pointer, mini video, and smart lens, in which the authors explore the advantages and disadvantages of each technique in relation to different use cases in order to derive concrete design recommendations. Comparing their use across three different task types – targeting, dragging ‘n’ dropping, and drawing – the authors determined that the suitability of the techniques for interfacing to public displays is highly contingent on the task and the specifics of the use case. For instance, they identified that for standard target acquisition, the touchpad-based metaphor proved highly accurate, albeit time consuming. Both mini video and smart lens (the more direct techniques) were found to have comparably good completion times, with the former being especially suited to drawing – i.e., to visual manipulation tasks. In contrast, smartphone-based pointing was found to be inferior to the other three methods. Whilst their lab-based study was effective at illustrating in detail the strengths and weaknesses of the interaction techniques, the authors argue that realizing the use of such input techniques in the field in connection with useful and acceptable interactive services poses several new research challenges, not least the challenge of “providing a low threshold of use in order to attract passers-by and make them actual users”. Towards this goal, the authors introduce state-of-the-art browser-based remote controls as a potential vehicle for supporting serendipitous mobile interactions and outline future directions in this regard.
The final chapter is “Large-Scale Research via App Stores: Challenges and Opportunities at the Example of a NFC Game Adoption Study” by Matthias Kranz, Andreas Möller, and Florian Michahelles. In this, the authors argue that large-scale research has been gaining momentum as it is increasingly recognized in the field of mobile HCI that certain aspects of mobile app use can only be evaluated in the real world. The authors discuss challenges associated with conducting “research in the large” via app stores using data collection methods (logging and self-reporting) that they claim have proven useful. They present a case study on research in the large – focusing on two Android apps (NFC Heros and VMI Mensa) – in which the authors released to and studied the use of their apps in the wild. Reflecting on lessons learned – including deploying and using, maintaining and updating such apps – the authors outline recommendations for the conduct of research in the large for mobile applications such that future research may benefit.
CLOSING COMMENTS
I trust that you will agree that this collection of chapters comprising extended, updated and enhanced versions of 2012 and 2013 IJMHCI articles present a powerful combination of research and innovation, practical guidance, and intellectual stimulation in terms of the research directions and challenges faced by the field of Mobile HCI. Echoes of the challenges laid out by Jesper in the introduction are apparent throughout, demonstrating that mobile HCI is, indeed, a research discipline that is adapting to meet emerging needs. In so doing, I believe that this compendium, like its predecessors, serves as an essential publication for researchers, educators, students, and practitioners alike.
Preface
All that remains now is for me to welcome you to this book which draws together all the research achievements and challenges presented in the 2012 and 2013 volumes of the IJMHCI.
Joanna Lumsden School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, UK
Acknowledgment
I would like to acknowledge the help of all the people who made this book possible. Firstly, I would like to thank all the authors for their contributions. My sincere gratitude goes to the chapter authors who contributed their time and expertise to this book in terms of extending and enhancing their original International Journal of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (IJMHCI) articles into the book chapters you see here. I would also like to say a special thanks to Jesper Kjeldskov for his introduction which does just what I hoped it would do when I invited him to contribute to this publication – it challenges us to consider adopting new perspectives on what we do!
Although not directly involved in the review of these chapters, I would also like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of the IJMHCI reviewing team (associate editors and editorial review board members) whose tireless work in reviewing the original submissions to the IJMHCI led to the quality of publications which have since evolved into the chapters presented here.
Finally, there is one individual without whom I could not have delivered this publication. Dr Victoria Lush is as post-doc research associate who worked meticulously with me to ensure that the chapters met the enhancement criteria, oftentimes copy-editing chapters on behalf of authors to ensure publication standards were upheld. I would like to thank Victoria both personally but also on behalf of the authors.
Joanna Lumsden School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, UK
Introduction
One of the many things making mobile computing such an interesting topic of research and design is that it is characterized by rapidly evolving use and is strongly driven by innovation. New technologies and use domains keep emerging, and those that are successful potentially reach millions of users. In the last three months of 2010 more than 100 million smartphones were sold worldwide, outnumbering, for the first time, the sales of personal computers. Echoing this rapidly evolving nature of the area, the industrial lead position in mobile computing has changed several times within only a decade and is most likely to be passed on again in the future. While Apple an Google might currently be in the lead, it is not long ago that this position was taken by Palm, and by Nokia. This obviously motivates researchers and designers to keep innovating and developing new technology and applications.
The research field of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction has informed the development of new mobile technology and applications for over a decade, but is still a relatively young field of research. It has become an acknowledged part of the established research area of computing with a notable presence in mainstream HCI literature and with its own conferences and journals. But it still doesn’t have a strongly established and unified identity. This is not to say that there is not a lot of good research and design going on within mobile human-computer interaction. There is indeed. It is, however, still somewhat fragmented, and the field might be better characterised as “being composed of a number of roving tribes who occasionally encounter one another, warily engage, and, finding the engagements stimulating, remain open to other encounters” (Erickson, 2006) rather than as an organised and coherent community.
The advantage of this is, of course, a high level of autonomy, but the disadvantage is less than optimal collective accumulation of knowledge, which may reduce our pace forward to that of incremental steps of each individual piece of research, rather than leaps ahead.
Putting together coherent collections of research dealing with emerging perspectives on mobile device design, use and evaluation, like this book, is a step in the right direction toward establishing such a methodological and theoretical base. To contribute to this, in the following I will be looking back at the last one and a half decades of mobile HCI research in order to establish where we have come from, and how far we have come. I will then turn to looking ahead, and suggest some emerging perspectives on where we should be heading.
LOOKING BACK
My perspectives on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction are based on 15 years of research, mainly in academia. In this research I have, like many others, worked with developing new technologies, designing new applications and services and studying mobile technology in use. As an academic I have also tried
Introduction
to elevate our concrete empirical findings to an abstract level of concepts and theory – for example by using the principles of Gestalt, and the semiotic concept of indexicality, to describe and explain human perception and interpretation of context-aware interaction design (see Paay & Kjeldskov, 2008; Kjeldskov & Paay, 2011). As another area of research, I have worked extensively with mobile HCI methodology, particularly focussing on the challenges of evaluation.
In the proceedings of Mobile HCI 1998, Peter Johnson encouraged researchers and practitioners to investigate methods and data collection for evaluating mobile devices. He suggested that “the conventional usability laboratory would not be able to adequately simulate such important aspects as the weather and could not easily provide for the wide range of competing activities and demands on users that might arise in a natural setting” and continued by saying that “data collection methods would be needed that were outside the common range of usability studies” (Johnson, 1998). Despite this, in a large review of mobile HCI research, presented at the Mobile HCI 2003 conference a few years later, we still found no research focusing on mobile evaluation methodology, and that 71% of all evaluations of mobile devices and services were in fact done in the lab (Kjeldskov & Graham, 2003).
The research survey from 2003 inspired a number of comparative studies on field and lab evaluations of mobile systems with the purpose of investigating the value of evaluating usability in the field. In one of these studies, we compared the usability evaluation of a mobile patient record system in a laboratory furnished as a hospital ward to an evaluation at a real hospital (Kjeldskov et al., 2004). To our surprise we found little added value in the field setting, prompting us to ask the somewhat provocative question “is it worth the hassle?” This study raised a heated debate when presented at the Mobile HCI 2004 conference, and sparked a long lasting discussion in the mobile HCI research community of what methods and techniques are appropriate for evaluation. Looking back, asking this question turned out be a good thing for mobile HCI research as raising this discussion appears to have inspired, or provoked, a large number of studies. Ten years later the “Hassle” paper is cited more than 200 times, and it is fair to say that it has had a strong impact on the research field by putting the discussion of empirical methodology in mobile HCI on the agenda. As discussed in the follow-up “was it worth the hassle?” paper from Mobile HCI 2014, our methodological toolbox has evolved substantially over the course of 10 years of empirical evaluations, and we now have considerable knowledge and experience with both lab and field studies for mobile HCI. However, perhaps the right question is not if or why one should evaluate in the lab or in the field, but rather when we should do what, and how we should then do it. These questions remains largely unanswered in a way that does not simply restate existing disciplinary doctrines (Kjeldskov & Skov 2014). These are questions for the broader mobile HCI research community to address through joint efforts.
Looking more broadly at methodology within the research field of mobile HCI, another follow-up research review from Mobile HCI 2012, found that the field of Mobile HCI research as a whole had grown substantially and had become a substantial part of mainstream HCI research over the last decade (Kjeldskov & Paay, 2012). Out of the 246 full and short papers in the proceedings of the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in the year surveyed (2010), almost a fifth concerned human-computer interaction with mobile systems or devices. More interestingly though, it was also apparent that the research field had changed methodologically – from being almost exclusively driven by engineering and applied research, to being primarily empirically driven, involving a high number of field studies, and focusing on evaluating and understanding, as well as engineering. However the review also showed that the mobile HCI research field had become divided into two distinct camps of thought, a use- and a technology-centred one, focusing primarily on people or on systems. The first
aims primarily at understanding mobile user experiences theoretically and conceptually, and the second aims primarily at building new mobile systems and evaluating them in use. Within both approaches users play an important role, but in the first they are the objects of the research, while in the second they are research subjects. This division of course originates in the multi-disciplinary origins of the mobile HCI research field, but maintaining such a divide sadly sustains the unfortunate implicit assumption that people and technology can, or perhaps even should, be studied separately in mobile HCI. In turn, such an assumption can be partially responsible for researchers continuing to investigate the same types of questions and problems as before, across the two camps, rather than collaborating closer on defining and exploring new ones.
According to Rasmussen (2007) such clear-cut distinction tends to cause the potentially fruitful dialectics between the two approaches to disappear. If from either side of the divide one of the two approaches is considered 100% good and the other 100% bad, then one is destined to subsume the other. In contrast, as also discussed by Dahlbom and Mathiassen (1993), dialectic thinking encourages us to develop a synthesis at a higher stage of the opposing interests. However, this is not simply a matter of finding a balance between the two, but about transcending beyond opposing views and shaping a new unity at another level (Nonaka & Toyama 2002). Hence, in order for the field of mobile HCI research to continue informing the creation of better interactive mobile services, systems and devices, a closer integration of the user- and the technology-centred approaches might be needed.
LOOKING AHEAD
So where should we go from here? What are the emerging challenges and perspectives today that we should be investigating next? In my view the enormous uptake of mobile devices, and the role that they have come to play in our lives, means that mobile computing has evolved from being strongly an engineering profession to being, at least, equally strongly a design profession. Hence, interaction design is today of greater importance for the continuing development of mobile computing than ever before, and there is a need to ensure that our overall approaches to designing and thinking about mobile systems and devices are up for the challenges that lie ahead. In order to do this I argue that we may benefit from exploring, more profoundly, designerly ways of thinking and doing (Cross, 2001, 2011), and from widening our scope, more significantly, to look at the contextual user experience of interactive mobile systems and devices, and the larger digital ecosystems they are forming today (Kjeldskov, 2014). In my view, the first emerging challenge for mobile HCI research today is to transcend beyond the dichotomy of people- or technology- oriented research and design. Continuing such a divide, we are at risk of missing the holistic nature of the mobile interaction design challenges currently at hand, now that mobile technologies pervade almost every aspect of our lives. What is instead needed is to “reconceptualize the domain of interest through using a modified unit of analysis” (Rogers et al., 2005) – creating a shift in focus where new and shared problems are framed in a way that force new ways of thinking and doing, while still allowing room for existing knowledge, concepts and theory. The second emerging challenge for mobile HCI research today is to widen our scope beyond the individual mobile system, service, or device, and individual users’ interactions with it. Individual systems and devices have been researched in depth for over a decade, in both artificial and natural settings, and are now understood quite well. What is not yet understood very well is mobile human-computer interaction within the larger context of everyday life, and the use of mobile technology in concert with all the other interactive technologies
Introduction
surrounding us. Hence, we need to look beyond user interaction with individual systems toward human orchestration of systems of systems – or as they have also been labelled, “artefact ecologies” (Bødker & Klokmose, 2011) or “digital ecosystems” (Sørensen et al., 2014; Levin, 2014).
In order to do this, I have previously put forward three concrete suggestions for future thinking in mobile HCI research (Kjeldskov & Skov, 2014):
1. Move beyond focus on usability and usability evaluations;
2. Move beyond non-wild field studies;
3. Move beyond snap-shot studies of use.
Move Beyond Usability and Usability Evaluations
Firstly, I would like us to consider whether focusing on usability and doing usability evaluations are really what we ought to be doing when studying mobile HCI? In line with Rogers et al. (2007) one might propose that continuing to focus on usability simply fails to capture what we really need to understand when studying mobile systems, services, and devices in use. It can also be argued that after 15 years of mobile HCI research and design, we have become pretty good at designing interfaces that people can operate on a mobile device in a mobile context. Where the research challenge 15 years ago was to achieve usability on small displays and with limited means of input, processing power and network speed, for people away from their desk, the research challenge today, and what we need to learn more about, is about designing services, devices and interactions that fit well into people’s complex lives, for work and leisure, and that fit well with the abundance of other technologies that we surround ourselves with. Hence, the key research challenge for mobile HCI is perhaps no longer usability, and hence, usability evaluations are perhaps no longer an appropriate method for evaluation. In this challenge usability is just a basic condition, like bug-free code is. Doing good usability will not get us there in itself, and therefore neither will usability evaluations – regardless if they are done in the lab or in the field. Moving beyond a focus on usability might be a useful prompt for approaching field studies in a different way. Rather than trying to “fix” the issue of limited control in the field by introducing experimentation, such as usability evaluations, why not consider the opposite direction and purposely let go of researcher control? This leads me to the second suggestion for an emerging perspective.
Move Beyond Non-Wild Field Studies
Secondly, I would like us to consider how we do field studies. Over the last decade the level of empirical research in mobile HCI has increased, and a more diversified set of methods has evolved and been put into use (Kjeldskov & Paay, 2012). This is has particularly been the case within the broader methodological category of field studies, which has diversified into at least three noteworthy sub categories of field ethnographies, field experiments, and field surveys. This is good news because it indicated a growing focus on real-world studies and use-in-context. However, there appear to be quite varying understandings of what constitute the field – from sitting in a train or walking around the center of a city, to conducting an evaluation in the immediate area outside a research center building (for a detailed discussion, see Kjeldskov & Skov, 2014). In light of this, one might propose that a field study that does not really take the researcher into an uncontrolled real world situation is perhaps not a good one. The main value of the field is that it is real and perhaps messy, and not an amputated or watered down version of reality. That
Random
documents with unrelated content Scribd suggests to you:
