Posts Tagged: lbs


19
Aug 08

Context Aware vs Location Based

“I must say that it’s been surprisingly difficult, in various conversations with folks not immersed in the IxD space, to get across the essential distinction between context-aware applications and location-based services (LBS)...Mac Funamizu has actually nailed two separate things here. The first demonstrates precisely what I, at least, mean when I use the words “context aware”: but for some residual core of basic functionality, the device’s capabilities and available interface modalities at any given moment are largely if not entirely determined by the other networked objects around it. If you pair the device with a text, it’s a reader; at the checkstand, it provides a friendly POS interface; aimed at the skyline, it augments reality.”

Link: Worth a thousand words, etc. (speedbird.wordpress.com)


9
Jun 08

Do we need LBS?

Bernhard Schindlholzer wrote that “even though I am confident that there will certainly be significant growth in some areas (i.e. vehicle tracking, in-car traffic information) I doubt that someday everyone will be using Google’s “Search nearby” feature to find the next ATM, restaurant or supermarket…the majority of people still roam in just a few locations and in general they do not move far from home. Vacations and business travel are exceptions – the percentage of time individuals spend in locations they don’t know is very small.”

Link: Do humans really need location-based services? (customer-experience-labs.com, via)


24
Oct 07

Designing for Location-Based Services

“For users, the most important location is where they are now—making the dimension of location perhaps the most important design element to consider when creating new mobile user experiences. Location-based services have been percolating for years, but as Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, and other geospatial technologies become cheaper and more readily available, such services are working their way toward mainstream adoption. Location data has two intrinsic dimensions: absolute location and relative location.”

Link: Where Are You Now? Design for the Location Revolution (uxmatters.com)


23
Sep 07

Yellow Arrow placemarking project

The Yellow Arrow project is a fairly straightforward placemarking-art project. Participants put yellow arrow stickers with special codes on them, send an SMS to describe the place, and then a passer-by can send an SMS query to find out what was written. This project’s interesting, though, because it seems be getting some global momentum.

yellowarrow.gif

Link: Yellow Arrow (yellowarrow.net)


16
Mar 06

Location-aware reminders

“Our study revealed unexpected uses of location-aware reminders. We found that Place-It notes were often used for creating motivational reminders to perform activities that would vary in priority over time. This is similar to using post-it notes in highly visible areas for motivation. The locations for motivational reminders were often set at frequently visited places, such as home. We also found that a majority of the uses for Place-Its involved communicating with people through a variety of media (e.g. email, phone). Communication is typically not tied to specific locations, implying that location is being used as a cue for other kinds of situational context.”

Place-Its: A Study of Location-Based Reminders on Mobile Phones (700k PDF, intel-research.net)