The document discusses the development of a mobile application called SETapp that uses near field communication (NFC) to provide awareness support for scientific events. It aims to address common information needs like seeing who will attend an event, accessing schedules and profiles. The application was tested against QR codes and found to be much faster. User evaluations indicated clear preference for NFC over manual activities and high satisfaction with the interface. Future work may involve integrating it with event management systems and exploring uses in workplace and academic settings.

1. Awareness Support in
Scientific Events with
SETapp
Wolfgang Reinhardt, Tim Messerschmidt, Tobias Nelkner
University of Paderborn, Germany
1st Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in Learning Networks at the
2011 European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning

2. Awareness ...
•“is [an] ambiguous and unsatisfactory” term and
“hardly a concise concept by any standard” (Schmidt
2002)
•CSCW research largely focused on groupware in order
to
•broader meaning in networked communities (Reinhardt
and Mletzko 2011)
•trends, experts, network properties, knowledge
awareness, history of connections, longitudinal
evolvement

3. ... in scientific events
Reinhardt et al. (2011b)
• Who’s (gonna be | already) there?
• What’s next?
• Is this the latest version of the schedule?
• Where do I know this guy from?
• What else is he doing?

4. Goal of this research
•explore the usability of NFC in the context of scientific
events
•develop a prototypical Android application
•compare performance of NFC with QR codes
•user evaluation (acceptance, satisfaction)

5. NFC?

6. Near Field Communication
•wireless data exchange
•fast linking of devices (< 0.02s)
•short transmission distance ( < 2cm)
•very high fault tolerance
•NFC tags with up to 1MB storage
•active and passive standard

7. Near Field Communication
Mifare classic tags
1024 bytes
usage
QR code

8. Selected Use Cases
•follow / plan to attend events
•check in to events and talks
•get additional data about posters
•exchange researcher profiles
•send / receive messages
•browse contacts and their publications (Mendeley)
•share publications

9. Testbed
•Google’s reference platform
•first Android phone equipped with
NFC
•runs Android 2.3.4
•provided by Samsung Germany
(thanks again)
Samsung Nexus S •Google App Engine as backend

10. Dependency on
reliable Internet
connection a go od
not
cte l1 1
at #e
i dea

11. Starting the application

12. Home screen

13. Exchanging profiles

14. Messaging

15. Attendance | user profile

16. Share publications

17. NFC vs. QR codes
•QR codes need
optimal conditions Run QR NFC
•good camera 1
2
4,730ms 910ms
5,300ms 1,920ms
•fast auto focus 3 5,400ms 2,320ms
•good light 4 7,800ms 1,620ms
conditions 5 4,710ms 2,260ms
•application has to 6 5,540ms 2,160ms
be started first Mean 5,580ms 1,865ms
NFC 3x faster

18. User interface and NFC
4
•user evaluation with 11 people
3
•perception of NFC: fast or very
answers
2
fast (82%)
•clear preference of NFC over
1
manual activity (82%)
0
manual NFC
•steep learning curve
7
6
•high satisfaction with the UI
5
4
answers
•ActionBar and Dashboard were 3
2
rated best
1
0
very slow very fast

19. Future research
•connection to the ginkgo event management system
•wait for NFC introduction in iOS
•research towards NFC application in workplace
learning and higher education
•scan books and receive recommendations
•personal identifier on mobile, get suiting job offers
from personal advisor

20. wolfgang reinhardt university of paderborn
social media sna
twitter recommendations
awareness
research networks
bibliometrics
artefact-actor-networks
ginkgo
research 2.0
www.isitjustme.de www.ginkgosem.com
@wollepb @wollepb @wolfgang.reinhardt
@wollepb @wollepb @wolfgang.reinhardt
@wollepb @wollepb @wollepb

21. Food for discussion
•Would you use such a tool?
•Reviewers said: is there really an information
overload in the context of scientific events? What do
you think?
•Meeting history is trigger for reflection?

22. Literature
• Reinhardt et al. (2011a): Reinhardt, W., Mletzko, C., Drachsler, H. & Sloep, P.B.:
Awareness Issues in Research Networks. Manuscript in preparation.
• Reinhardt et al. (2011b): Reinhardt, W., Maicher, J., Drachsler, H. & Sloep, P.B.:
Awareness Support in Scientific Event Management with ginkgo. In: Proceedings of the
11th Intl. Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies (i-Know
2011), pp. 40:1-40:8, 2011. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2024288.2024336
• Reinhardt and Mletzko (2011): Awareness in Learning Networks. In W. Reinhardt and
T. D. Ullmann, editors, Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in
Personal Learning Networks, Southampton, UK, July 2011.
• Schmidt (2002): Schmidt, K.: The problem with awareness. Computer Supported
Cooperative Work, 11:285-298, 2002.