Options
2009
Master Thesis
Titel
Mobile interaction in ubiquitous computing environments
Titel Supplements
Exploration of an interaction mechanism based on map views
Abstract
The concept behind ubiquitous computing is to surround ourselves with computers and application software which are carefully tuned to offer us unobtrusive assistance as we navigate through our work and everyday lives. In ubiquitous computing environments, lots of computers, maybe some objects based on computer technologies and their services are available through the whole world. It is now readily available with advanced technology enabling us to augment these physical objects with electronics and thereby making them as "smart objects" in ubiquitous computing environments. How to discover these smart objects and make use of their services are recent practices in industry and academia. As a matter of fact, smart objects and their services discovery research domain have matured over the years. The combination of internet and technologies like augmented reality, near field communications, real time localization, sensor networking etc, is bringing smart objects and discovering their services into commercial use. Especially the rapid growth in mobile technology, mobile is gradually becoming an important and normal intermedium between users and ubiquitous computing environments. Some successful prototypes and applications for discovering smart objects in ubiquitous computing environments have already demonstrated and deployed. However, the lack of commonality, comparison and characteristic among these design and approaches of these projects is hindering the exciting future of the interaction with smart objects in ubiquitous computing environments. Now my thesis main idea is focus on developing an interaction mechanism on mobile devices which is based on map views. With the map view of the real environment expression, users will discover and interact with smart objects in this environment. The exact content of this thesis is to deal with the exploration of an interaction mechanism based on map view for the eHouse application. The design idea of eHouse application is elicited from the scenario and concept between the Hydra (Networked Embedded System Middleware for Heterogeneous Physical Devices in a Distributed Architecture) and Intermedia (Interactive Media with Personal Networked Devices) projects, which is belong to the development at Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, Schloss Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin, Germany. These two projects address some problems and allow the requirement of ubiquitous scenarios, smart objects and services. The approach of the implementation is the entire user interface design process which we use apple iPhone as our experiment device. This is an iterative design circle which we will follow the DIA (Design-Implement-Analyze) stepwise refinement of the design and continuous evaluation. Moreover, in the phase of design, UCD (User Centered Design) and UCE (User Centered Evaluation) are design philosophies and process which will also be followed through the whole exploration task. In order to get better extraction and extrapolation of the mechanism for the interaction with smart objects in ubiquitous computing environments, the comparison between map views and list view will be implemented in the final user test and described in the evaluation part of this thesis paper. The final user test will covered on some different ages and background knowledges user groups. Their feedback will be listed the comparison between these two kinds of interaction mechanisms in same ubiquitous computing environments. With the result of the analysis of the feedback, the proper interaction mechanism and some future steps will be discussed at the end.
ThesisNote
Aachen, TH, Master Thesis, 2009
Verlagsort
Aachen