Abstract
The application of mobile computing is currently altering patterns of our behavior to a greater degree than perhaps any other invention. In combination with the introduction of power-efficient wireless communication technologies, such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), designers are today increasingly empowered to shape the way we interact with our physical surroundings and thus build entirely new experiences. However, our evaluations of BLE and its abilities to facilitate mobile location-based experiences in public environments revealed a number of potential problems. Most notably, the position and orientation of the user in combination with various environmental factors, such as crowds of people traversing the space, were found to cause major fluctuations of the received BLE signal strength. These issues are rendering a seamless functioning of any location-based application practically impossible. Instead of achieving seamlessness by eliminating these technical issues, we thus choose to advocate the use of a seamful approach, that is, to reveal and exploit these problems and turn them into a part of the actual experience. In order to demonstrate the viability of this approach, we designed, implemented, and evaluated the Ghost Detector—an educational location-based museum game for children. By presenting a qualitative evaluation of this game and by motivating our design decisions, this article provides insight into some of the challenges and possible solutions connected to the process of developing location-based BLE-enabled experiences for public cultural spaces.
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
Supplemental movie, appendix, image and software files for, Applying Seamful Design in Location-Based Mobile Museum Applications
- Apple-Insider. 2013. First look: Using iBeacon location awareness at an Apple Store. (December 2013). http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/06/first-look-using-ibeacon-locati on-awareness-at-an-apple-store.Google Scholar
- Stanimir Arnaudov, Tobias Eble, Andreas Gapel, Oliver Gerl, Lieberknecht Sebastian, Peter George Meier, Tsutomu Miyashita, Stephanie Orclic, Volker Scholz, and Tomoya Tachikawa. 2008. An Augmented Reality Museum Guide. DNP Digitalcom Co. Ltd. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Steve Benford, Andy Crabtree, Martin Flintham, Adam Drozd, Rob Anastasi, Mark Paxton, Nick Tandavanitj, Matt Adams, and Ju Row-Farr. 2006. Can you see me now? ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 13, 1 (2006), 100--133. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Steve Benford, Mike Fraser, Gail Reynard, Boriana Koleva, and Adam Drozd. 2002. Staging and evaluating public performances as an approach to CVE research. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Collaborative Virtual Environments. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gregor Broll and Steve Benford. 2005. Seamful design for location-based mobile games. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Entertainment Computing. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Felix Busching, Sebastian Schildt, and Lars Wolf. 2012. DroidCluster: Towards smartphone cluster computing - The streets are paved with potential computer clusters. In 32nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Matthew Chalmers, Ian MacColl, and Marek Bell. 2003. Seamful design: Showing the seams in wearable computing. In Proceedings of Electrical Institution Engineers Eurowearable.Google ScholarCross Ref
- John W. Creswell. 2013. Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design. Sage Publications.Google Scholar
- Fred D. Davis. 1989. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly 13, 3 (1989), 319--340. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Stavros Demetriadis, Evangelos Triantafillou, and Andreas Pombortsis. 2003. A phenomenographic study of students’ attitudes toward the use of multiple media for learning. In Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ramsey Faragher and Rob Harle. 2014. An analysis of the accuracy of Bluetooth low energy for indoor positioning applications. Ub Proceedings of the 27th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation.Google Scholar
- Ramsey M. Faragher and Robert K. Harle. 2015. Towards an efficient, intelligent, opportunistic smartphone indoor positioning system. Navigation 65, 1 (2015), 55--72.Google ScholarCross Ref
- William Gaver, Thomas Moran, Allan MacLean, Lennart Lövstrand, Paul Dourish, Kathleen Carter, and William Buxton. 1992. Realizing a video environment: EuroPARC’s RAVE system. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'92). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Paul Golding. 2011. Connected Services: A Guide to the Internet Technologies Shaping the Future of Mobile Services and Operators. Wiley.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Carles Gomez, Joaquim Oller, and Paradells Josep. 2012. Overview and evaluation of Bluetooth low energy: An emerging lowpower wireless technology. Sensors 12.9 (2012), 11734--11753.Google Scholar
- Gustavo Ramirez González, Mario Munoz Organero, and Kloos Carlos Delgado 2008. Early infrastructure of an internet of things in spaces for learning. In Advanced Learning Technologies.Google Scholar
- Rachel Jacobs, Steve Benford, and Eva Luger. 2015. Behind the scenes at HCI’s turn to the arts. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Vicki Jones and Jun H. Jo. 2004. Ubiquitous learning environment: An adaptive teaching system using ubiquitous technology. In Beyond the Comfort Zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference.Google Scholar
- Sandor Kamath and Joakim Lindh. 2012. Measuring Bluetooth low energy power consumption. Application Note AN092 (2012), 1--23.Google Scholar
- Heng Liu, Tao Mei, Li Houqiang, Jiebo Luo, and Shipeng Li. 2013. Robust and accurate mobile visual localization and its applications. ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications 9 (2013), Article No. 51. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Marshall McLuhan. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. Routledge.Google Scholar
- Antii Oulasvirta. 2004. SeamfulSystems: What are they and how can we design them? In TeliaSonera Haninge Seamfulness Workshop.Google Scholar
- Eleonora Rosati. 2013. What happens after digitization? Exploitation of cultural content and licensing models. Mobile Collections (2013).Google Scholar
- James She, Jon Crowcroft, Hao Fu, and Flora Li. 2014. Convergence of interactive displays with smart mobile devices for effective advertising: A survey. ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications 10 (2014), Article No. 17. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Greg Sterling. 2014. Magnetic positioning? The arrival of indoor GPS. Opus Research Report (2014).Google Scholar
- Kirsty Styles. 2013. 7 in 10 people in the UK now own a smartphone. (2013). http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/7-10-people-uk-now-ownsmartphone/#TqVM MUtyozRhvMjp.99.Google Scholar
- Timothy Teo. 2008. A path analysis of pre-service teachers’ attitudes to computer use: Applying and extending the technology acceptance model in an educational context. Interactive Learning Environments 18.1 (2008), 65--79.Google Scholar
- Thomas Tullis and William Albert. 2008. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics (Interactive Technologies). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jaroslav Vancat and Daniel Riha. 2012. The Development of Visual Literacy in Art Education. Inter-Disciplinary Press.Google Scholar
- Marynel Vázquez, Aaron Steinfeld, Scott E. Hudson, and Jodi Forlizzi. 2014. Spatial and other social engagement cues in a child-robot interaction: Effects of a sidekick. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Leonard Wein. 2014. Visual recognition in museum guide apps: Do visitors want it? In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mark Weiser. 1991. The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American 265.3 (1991), 94--104.Google Scholar
- Mark Weiser. 1993. The world is not a desktop. Interactions 1.1 (1993), 7--8. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Alex West. 2013. Smartphone, the key for Bluetooth low energy technology. (2013). http://www.bluetooth.com/Pages/Smartphones.aspx.Google Scholar
- Keiichi Yamazaki, Yamazaki Akiko, Okada Mai, Kuno Yoshinori, Kobayashi Yoshinori, Hoshi Yosuke, Pitsch Karola, Luff Paul, vom Lehn Dirk, and Heath Christian. 2009. Revealing Gauguin: Engaging visitors in robot guide’s explanation in an art museum. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Yifang Yin, Beomjoo Seo, and R. Zimmerman. 2015. Content vs. context: Visual and geographic information use in video landmark retrieval. ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications 11.3 (2015), 39. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Applying Seamful Design in Location-Based Mobile Museum Applications
Recommendations
Situated Tangible Gamification of Heritage for Supporting Collaborative Learning of Young Museum Visitors
Museums offer an ideal environment for informal cultural learning on heritage artifacts, where visitors get engaged in learning due to an intrinsic motivation. Sharing the museum space among visitors allows for collective learning experiences and ...
Designing Seamless Mobile Augmented Reality Location Based Game Interfaces
MoMM '13: Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing & MultimediaThe majority of mobile devices nowadays harness location and orientation-sensing capabilities, permitting for sensor based Mixed Reality (MR) gaming experiences such as Augmented Reality (AR) games. Nonetheless, only few entertainment implementations of ...
Using deliberate ambiguity of the information economy in the design of a mobile location based games
MindTrek '11: Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media EnvironmentsThis paper presents a research project to extend the concept of 'Seamful Design' within mobile location based games, which currently seeks to reveal the ambiguity of the system or infrastructure to a player, by introducing additional and deliberate ...
Comments