2009 Research Outline Developing Principles For Outdoor Mobile Cultural Guides

Heloisa Candello University of Brighton [email protected] ; [email protected]

Research outline – Developing principles for outdoor mobile cultural guides The aim of my research is to generate principles for selecting and presenting on-screen information and interactive functionality for users of mobile devices such as PDA’s or mobile phones. The example domain will be that of mobile tour guides for tourists, local people, students and families. Central to the research will be the issue of multimodality, particularly the graphic and interaction design issues involved in viewing video, in combination with other media, on a mobile device in an outdoor context. Three major areas for investigation, apart from general information design issues will be: User modelling - how different types of user perceive, handle and interact with graphic representations and multimedia resources on the screen. Context-awareness – user interaction with information in context-aware systems. User generated content – techniques for enabling user-generated and collaborative content. A number of projects concentrate on guidelines to develop mobile systems. [6] developed a framework to support different application scenarios, such as presenting map-based city routing. [10] display ten heuristics for mobile interactions considering the human and devices limitation arising from the context of use. Likewise [8] created a method to provide mobile system designers with knowledge about elements in the user physical context, so that information which already exists in the user’s environment can be indexed into the mobile interface. Applied to mobile learning settings [5] developed guidelines for designing contents and courses on mobile devices. Similarly, [3] brings a new perspective of designing mobile guides based on museum learning theories and object oriented learning in museum settings. All of these perspectives are of major importance, as is the nature of the information itself. However, there is a lack of studies of how people interact with representations on the mobile screen, in different contexts. Proposed Research Method A preliminary literature review demonstrates that there is a lack of studies on effective information representation on mobile guide interfaces. In order to investigate the effectiveness of various potential design solutions, an experimental prototyping approach will be taken. A cultural and historical mobile guide prototype will be made, as an experimental vehicle. Users with differing goals and interests will be asked to make use of the different versions of prototype system in differing conditions and their behaviour and reactions analysed. In this way we hope to be able to answer the broad research question of how mobile guides should present information and provide interaction for different users. There are therefore two major phases to the study: firstly the design and development of a realistic and effective prototype tourist guide package and secondly an experimental phase in which parameters of the design are manipulated and user reaction gauged. This will involve measures of usability, acceptability and learning. Gathering Requirements to develop the mobile multimedia guide In order to address the objectives of the first phase, a qualitative, inductive and interpretative approach will be taken, in which theoretical ideas about user interaction with mobile information devices will emerge from a range of observational and other design research activities. In other words, as well as delivering the basic requirements for such a system, these activities will generate hypotheses about the different design parameters – font size, page layout, navigation system, stop length, activity type and many more - for which guidelines could be generated. The main goal of the design activities for the prototype is to understand what people expect of cultural and historical tours and identify which aspects are involved during those activities. Participant observation of people taking a guided tour was chosen as the first fieldwork method. This consisted in observing behaviour, interaction with visitors and staff, and talking to people in order to explore their perceptions of the reality of their experience [4]. The fieldwork was carried out during the annual Brighton Fringe Festival which occurs every year, in three different cultural and historical tours in Brighton. The tours were chosen on the basis of their cultural and historical characteristics. At the end of the tours, visitors received a postcard explaining the research and providing the contact information to send by post or give back to the researcher [1]. We received 70% of the cards back. Overall, the majority of the visitors were from Brighton (78%) and accompanied by family. A number of observations were made of guide and visitor behaviour during the tours. The key elements of the tour genre, as expected, were historical and cultural information, together with instructions to look at certain landmarks

and to move to other sites and a summary of the tour was given. Of particular importance for our study is the fact that in addition to giving and audio commentary, guides showed visual information to illustrate what they were explaining, including pictures, maps, screens prints, paintings and design projects. They also included information to be used outside the tour itself, such as recommendations to other activities in the city. Visitors, on the other hand, didn’t carry a lot of devices just cameras; gave recommendations of books, movies and so on for other visitors; also added commentaries to what the guide explained. In all the tours, people asked the time and length of the tour and asked questions to confirm or ask for more information about what the guided showed. After the field work, it will be analysed, the data collected and the research question examined a second time to identify a set of categories and relationships among concepts. Given the limitations of the casual observer method, however, we are currently undertaking a follow up activity, in which a group of volunteer “tourists” are taken part in a short sculpture trail tour in Brighton and subsequently interviewed. Subsequent to this step, details of the target audience will be established (age, educational context, knowledge). After these requirements are defined, sketches of the interfaces and navigation will be developed. Initially, low tech prototypes will be used to detect how the navigation and graphical interface design is working and to solve technical problems that might occur. It is important to mention that first stage will be useful to identify which representations – media with specific message – are suitable for the intended message [9]. Subsequently, the data collected during the field work, interviews and the first usability test will be used to develop the high tech prototype. From this point, the high tech prototype will be used to test specific aspects of the usability of the system at a number of levels, concentrating on information design and media choice issues. The link between users with a variety of goals and their design preferences will be explored, as will the issues of context awareness and user generated content. Information design recommendations will be the result of the data analysis. More generally, the development of graphic interface models for mobile multimedia systems will bring contributions to the area of user interface design in mobile TV. Considerations of how to design interfaces for mobile TV city-guides may help designers to develop other types of interfaces for mobiles. References [1] CANDELLO, H. & PEMBERTON, L. (2008) Modelling Bahaviour in Guided Tours to Support the Design of Digital Mobile City

Guides. MLearn 2008. Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire, UK, University of Wolverhampton. [2] CHEVERST, K., DAVIES, N., MITCHELL, K., FRIDAY, A. & EFSTRATIOU, C. (2000) Developing a context-aware electronic tourist

guide: some issues and experiences. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. The Hague, The Netherlands, ACM. [3] DAMALA, A. (2007) Design principles for mobile museum guides using visitor studies and museum learning theories. IADIS International Conference Mobile Learning 2007. Lisbon, Portugal. [4] DAENGBUPPHA, J., HEMMINGTON, N. & WILKES, K. (2006) Using grounded theory to model visitor experiences at heritage sites: Methodological and practical issues , . Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol.9. [5] GRASSO, A. & ROSELLI, T. (2005) Guidelines for Designing and Developing Contents for Mobile Learning. Proceedings of the

IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education. IEEE Computer Society. [6] GRÜN, C. (2005) Mobile Tourist Guides: Evaluation of the State of the Art and Development of a Light-weight Framework for

Location-based Services. Vienna University of Technology. Linz, Austria, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz. [7] KROSCHE, J., BALDZER, J. & BOLL, S. (2004) MobiDENK-Mobile Multimedia in Monument Conservation. IEEE MultiMedia, 11,

72-77. [8] PAAY, J. & KJELDSKOV, J. (2007) A Gestalt theoretic perspective on the user experience of location-based services.

Proceedings of the 2007 conference of the computer-human interaction special interest group (CHISIG) of Australia on Computer-human interaction: design: activities, artifacts and environments. Adelaide, Australia, ACM. [9] PETERSSON, R. (2002) Information Design: an introduction, The Netherlands, John Benjamins. [10] SAVIO, N. & BRAITERMAN, J. (2007) Design Sketch: The Context of Mobile Interaction. Mobile HCI 2007. Singapore.