Everyday simplicity - The Implications of Everyday Tasks For Ubiquitous Computing Applications by Florian Resatsch

EVERYDAY SIMPLICITY

The Implications of Everyday Tasks For Ubiquitous Computing Applications

AMCIS 2007

Denver, Colorado, USA

Florian Resatsch

Structure

Current Ubiquitous Computing Studies

Why Everyday Tasks & Everyday Simplicity?

Design Principles of Everyday Tasks

Case Study Easymeeting and Evaluation

Conclusions

Structure

Conclusions

Research & Case Studies in Ubiquitous Computing

We quickly started with Near Field Communication (NFC) as a main enabler for Ubiquitous Computing

The mobile phone can be perfectly used as a „ browser “ for RFID and real life data on it

Mobile phones are everyday items

New Nokia phones integrate NFC capabilities

Similar to high frequency RFID tags, NFC works on a 13.56 MHz frequency

Our case studys mostly use RFID or derivates for consumer applications

(Example phone: Nokia 6131)

Case Study 1 – Mobile Prosumer

Display of relevant product information on the mobile phone.

Modular and personalised information service at the point of sale

Real-time monitoring of consumer behaviour

Feedback channel producer and Retailer (CRM)

Case Study – The Mobile Sales Assistant (MSA)

NFC/EPCIS Prototype

Supports sales assistants at the point of sale

May also be for use to customers

Artifact difficult to built because of ONS/EPCIS

“ Let me check....” “ Do you have these jeans in size 28?”

Case Study – News on the go

Contactless Competence Center

Project Location User Tag Handelsblatt Content Handelsblatt Info Tag NFC enabled mobile Phone HTTP request with tag UID Handelsblatt content API/RSS TOUCH

Case Study - Currently running in Frankfurt Germany

NFC Ticketing Service (Public Transport System)

First large scale NFC user test in Europe ( > 300 Participants)

Methodology: Monthly online survey (duration: 3 months)

Questionnaire / Evaluation on 7 topics

Research Setup Learnings from several smaller case studies Mapping of hypotheses on large case studies -> Evaluation according learnings - Pilot studies Mobile Prosumer RMV Retail ÖPNV Integrated Ubicomp System Public Space Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 Case 5… easymeeting

Structure

Conclusions

What are everyday tasks and why are they important?

Everyday activities are conceptually simple

Routine operations performed on a daily basis – eating, meeting with friends

Structure of everyday activities minimizes planning and mental computation

An everyday task is rather boring , so we want to get it over with as quickly as possible (Examples: Buying tickets for public transport, payment at supermarket)

An everyday task must therefore have either few choices at any point

Everyday tasks are an important area for Ubiquitous Computing (Support people)

(Sources: Maeda 2007, Norman 2005, Norman 1988) Imagesource: forum.stanford.edu/.../photos/ng_robotplate.jpg Robot learns to grasp everyday chores

Example: Decision Trees as Starting Point (Ice cream) (Norman 1999) a1 a2 a3 a4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 b Shallow decision tree Narrow decision tree First decision Further choices 1 2 a exit exit exit exit exit

Structure

Why Everyday Tasks?

Conclusions

Ubicomp - Design Set 1

Norman states classic design principles that make everyday design understandable (Norman, 1988).

Visibility: The user can immediately tell the state of the device and the alternatives for action.

Conceptual model: Consistency in the presentation of operations and a coherent system image.

Mappings: The relationship between system state and what is visible, between controls and their effects, and between actions and actual results must be clear and easy to determine.

Feedback: Full and continuous feedback about every action.

Ubicomp – Design Set 2

Dey states three features of a context-aware application (Dey, 2001) :

Presentation of information and services

automatic execution of a service

tagging of context to information to support later retrieval

www3.sympatico.ca/spacesbyrohan/context.html

Ubicomp – Design Set 3

Marc Langheinrich stated four principles for use in Ubicompp environments (Langheinrich, 2002):

Notice: A Ubicompp environment needs mechanisms to declare collection practices, but also efficient ways to communicate these to the user.

Choice and consent: In order to give users a true choice, we need to provide a selection mechanism so that users can indicate which services they prefer.

Proximity and locality: The system should support mechanisms to encode and use locality information for collected data that can enforce access restrictions.

Access and recourse: The system needs to provide a way for users to access their personal information in a simple way through standardized interfaces. Users should be informed about the usage of their data once it is stored […].

Combined to Ubicomp Design – Criteria Sets

Structure

Why Everyday Tasks?

Conclusions

Paper Case Study -> „easymeeting“?

Easymeeting is a NFC prototype and case study that was conducted in 2006/2007

Simple NFC meeting room management

Emphasis on unobtrusive use of technology since meetings have a personal and social character

Purpose of the case study was to show the feasibility of developing everyday task Ubicomp applications and…

to research if certain design criteria can be incorporated and evaluate the system

Prototype and location in meeting room (Organization 1)

The paper prototype

Example: Refill coffee Touch & receive Coffee

IT architecture overview Nokia 6131 NFC Discover tag Perform action according stored ID SMS2EMail Gateway Convert incoming SMS to email and forward to predefined adress Microsoft Exchange Server Receive e-Mail on Server and process rule E-Mail Client Webbrowser Receive e-Mail or SMS on local client and webbrowser (ticketing) Initiate real world process User interaction Technical process User interaction Mobile phone

Evaluation *(Venkatesh 2004) n=37 with n1=22 (O1) and n2=15 (O2) Sample number Random Sample type Two organizations with 25 employees (O1) up to 300 employees (O2) Universe Quantitative: Interval 5-item-scale (Mostly UTAUT* Items) Qualitative: Questionnaire survey Measuring method December 19 th 2006 to February 6 th 2007 Period Personal interview with questionnaire Method of data collection Quantitative/qualitative survey Research framework

Evaluation – Highlights (Quantitative)

Only 2.7% considered themselves to be very knowledgeable about RFID/NFC , while the majority of 24.3% knew nothing about RFID/NFC and 21.6% only very little.

On performance expectancy, 32.4% found easymeeting very useful for their work (strongly agree).

Attitude toward the technology was also positive, with 35.1% strongly agreed to the statement “I like more applications such as easymeeting ”

Facilitating conditions: Although most of the participants rated their knowledge of RFID/NFC on a scale from 1 = none at all to 3 = neutral, 78% felt capable of using the application (see next slide). This shows that knowledge on RFID/NFC is unnecessary for the usage of an Ubicomp application but also implies that the used design criteria enforced simplicity.

Evaluation

Evaluation – Highlights (Quantitative)

Ten participants had problems with the OK button on the mobile phone and others struggled with the internal Nokia screensaver .

The prototype was attached to the wall in O1. Some said it would be better to place the tags on the table instead of the wall, because it is less obtrusive. Placing it on the table avoids unnecessary walking around during meetings.

The built-in haptic feedback of the phone was considered helpful in determining visibility and feedback .

Interestingly in O2 the main argument against future usage, were the previously introduced Blackberry handsets without NFC

The main problem for most users was the location of the reader and antenna within the phone.

Structure

Why Everyday Tasks?

Conclusions

Conclusions

It is very easy to set up a cheap, simple, grassroots Ubicomp information system with currently available standard components.

We believe that such simple applications show a clear benefit to the user and lead to further adoption of Ubicomp.

The system has had no implications for the privacy concerns of end-users (Business Setting -> good opportunity)

The design criteria obviously supported the development of the application. But: Future research needs to evaluate more specific and structured design principles in order to improve convenience of Ubicomp applications and the correlation of one design criteria to another.