Mobrex: visualizing users' mobile browsing behaviors.

This paper deals with the Mobile Browsing Explorer (Mobrex) to give analysts a set of interactive visualizations that highlight various aspects of how users browse an information space. Here, we describe the tool and demonstrate its support of a user study of three browsing techniques for mobile maps. Although we mainly focus here on PDAs and mobile map browsing, Mobrex can easily support analysts studying user interaction with other information spaces and other devices, including mobile phones and desktop computers.     

On the effectiveness of Overview+Detail visualization on mobile devices

Overview+Detail visualization is one of the major approaches to the display of large information spaces on a computer screen. Widely used in desktop applications, its feasibility on mobile devices has been scarcely investigated. This paper first provides a detailed analysis of the literature on Overview+Detail visualization, discussing and comparing the results of desktop and mobile studies to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the approach. The analysis reveals open issues worthy of additional investigation and can provide useful indications to interface designers. Then, the paper presents an experiment that studies unexplored aspects of the design space for mobile interfaces based on the Overview+Detail approach, investigating the effect of letting users manipulate the overview to navigate maps and the effect of highlighting possible objects of interest in the overview to support search tasks. Results of the experiment suggest that both direct manipulation of the overview and highlighting objects of interest in the overview have a positive effect on user performance in terms of the time to complete search tasks on mobile devices, but do not provide specific advantages in terms of recall of the spatial configuration of targets.     

Mobile Web Browsing with Aural Flows: An Exploratory Study

Existing web applications force users focus their visual attention on mobile devices while browsing content and services while on the go. To support eyes-free, mobile experiences, designers can minimize interaction with a device by leveraging the auditory channel. Whereas acoustic interfaces have proven to be effective in reducing visual attention, a perplexing challenge is designing aural information architectures for the web. To address this problem, techniques to remodel existing information architectures as linear, aural flows were introduced and evaluated. Mobile web browsing with aural flows is exemplified in ANFORA News, a semiaural mobile site designed to browse large collections of news stories. An exploratory study involving frequent news readers (n?=?20) investigated the usability and navigation experience with ANFORA News in a mobile setting. Initial evidence suggests that aural flows are a promising paradigm to support eyes-free mobile navigation while on the go, but users still require assistance and additional learning to fully master the aural mechanics of the flows while on the go. Future work will improve on the mechanisms to customize content and control the aural navigation.     

Dynamic Insets for Context‐Aware Graph Navigation

Maintaining both overview and detail while navigating in graphs, such as road networks, airline route maps, or social networks, is difficult, especially when targets of interest are located far apart. We present a navigation technique called Dynamic Insets that provides context awareness for graph navigation. Dynamic insets utilize the topological structure of the network to draw a visual inset for off‐screen nodes that shows a portion of the surrounding area for links leaving the edge of the screen. We implement dynamic insets for general graph navigation as well as geographical maps. We also present results from a set of user studies that show that our technique is more efficient than most of the existing techniques for graph navigation in different networks.     

An assisting,constrained 3D navigation technique for multiscale virtual 3D city models

Virtual 3D city models serve as integration platforms for complex geospatial and georeferenced information and as medium for effective communication of spatial information. In order to explore these information spaces, navigation techniques for controlling the virtual camera are required to facilitate wayfinding and movement. However, navigation is not a trivial task and many available navigation techniques do not support users effectively and efficiently with their respective skills and tasks. In this article, we present an assisting, constrained navigation technique for multiscale virtual 3D city models that is based on three basic principles: users point to navigate, users are lead by suggestions, and the exploitation of semantic, multiscale, hierarchical structurings of city models. The technique particularly supports users with low navigation and virtual camera control skills but is also valuable for experienced users. It supports exploration, search, inspection, and presentation tasks, is easy to learn and use, supports orientation, is efficient, and yields effective view properties. In particular, the technique is suitable for interactive kiosks and mobile devices with a touch display and low computing resources and for use in mobile situations where users only have restricted resources for operating the application. We demonstrate the validity of the proposed navigation technique by presenting an implementation and evaluation results. The implementation is based on service-oriented architectures, standards, and image-based representations and allows exploring massive virtual 3D city models particularly on mobile devices with limited computing resources. Results of a user study comparing the proposed navigation technique with standard techniques suggest that the proposed technique provides the targeted properties, and that it is more advantageous to novice than to expert users.     

M2S maps: supporting real-world navigation with mobile VR

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly integrated into our society. In addition to entertaining people with applications like pervasive games, mobile devices can also help to address cognitive challenges people face in the real world. This paper, by drawing on research findings from cognitive psychology and geography, explores a design to use mobile VR to help people overcome one cognitive barrier in navigation, which is to establish the correspondence between 2D spatial information found in maps and 3D entities they perceive from the real world. The design offers users multi-format, multi-scale, and semantic (M²S) maps, ranging from 2D maps to 3D immersive environments, and helps users to connect 2D maps to the real world through 3D environments which are equipped with semantic representation and animation techniques. Consequently, users can apply various kinds of spatial knowledge, 2D or 3D, in understanding the real world as well as assisting in navigation. This research enhances the design repertoire of mobile VR, and suggests a way to integrate virtual environments into people’s real-world life by examining the cognitive implications of 3D models on users’ activities.     

A personal Web page tailoring toolkit for mobile devices

It is common to browse web pages via mobile devices. However, most of the web pages were designed for desktop computers equipped with big screens. When browsing on mobile devices, a user has to scroll up and down to find the information they want because of the limited screen size. Some commercial products reformat web pages. However, the result pages still contain irrelevant information. We propose a system to personalize users’ mobile web pages. A user can determine which blocks in a web page should be retained. The sequence of these blocks can also be altered according to individual preferences.     

Indoor Positioning and Navigation with Camera Phones

This low-cost indoor navigation system runs on off-the-shelf camera phones. More than 2,000 users at four different large-scale events have already used it. The system uses built-in cameras to determine user location in real time by detecting unobtrusive fiduciary markers. The required infrastructure is limited to paper markers and static digital maps, and common devices are used, facilitating quick deployment in new environments. The authors have studied the application quantitatively in a controlled environment and qualitatively during deployment at four large international events. According to test users, marker-based navigation is easier to use than conventional mobile digital maps. Moreover, the users' location awareness in navigation tasks improved. Experiences drawn from questionnaires, usage log data, and user interviews further highlight the benefits of this approach.     

Comparing Zooming Methods in Mobile Devices: Effectiveness,Efficiency, and User Satisfaction in Touch and Nontouch Smartphones

Mobile devices have small screens that require the user to constantly resize the web content in order to read the text. This study sets out to (a) check whether current mobile devices are able to zoom or increase the font size of text on websites and (b) check the most efficient, effective, and satisfying usability method for the user to do so. A preparation stage with mobile devices and an experiment with real users were designed and carried out. Results suggested that current mobile devices are able to resize text in web pages. User testing returned that there is no difference in the ability to perform the task or in errors or time to complete it between text-resizing methods. However, users preferred increasing/decreasing font size links method in nontouch devices. In the light of results, it is recommended that links are provided to resize the text in web contents and that they are made readily available.     

User-centric adaptation of Web information for small screens

A global increase in PDA and cell phone ownership and a rise in the use of wireless services lead mobile browsing to become an important means of Internet access. However, mobile devices have a small screen, which limits the usability of mobile browsing. This paper presents a novel method that automatically adapts a desktop presentation to a mobile presentation, proceeding in two steps: detecting boundaries among different information blocks (i.e., page segmentation) and then generating a user preferred adaptive layout. Distinct from other approaches, our approach analyzes both the DOM structure and the visual layout to detect closely related contents. In the process of page segmentation, our approach first divides a Web page into several common areas (such as top, bottom, and main content), and then further identifies different topics in the main content based on the visual and structural analysis. The page segmentation produces a block tree, which represents the information organization underlying a Web page. Based on the block tree, an adaptive layout, which places closely related information in proximity and minimizes scrolling, is automatically generated. All current approaches support only one fixed style (e.g., a narrow-page style) to render an adaptive layout for a diverse range of users, Websites, and devices. This “one size fits all” strategy could not offer universal usability. Our approach supports a user to flexibly specify the style of an adaptive layout according to his/her personal preferences. The theoretical foundation of such a user-centric adaptive layout is a feature space, which specifies an adaptive layout from different aspects, such as the location and presentation of navigation options. A user can visually manipulate those features to create a personalized style in a graphical user interface, and then an adaptive layout consistent with the personalized style is automatically generated. The user study based on a prototype shows the usability and efficiency of mobile browsing are significantly improved.     

移动设备上基于内容的多媒体检索技术研究

随着互联网上多媒体资源的急剧增加以及移动设备功能的不断完善,如何在海量多媒体资源中快速检索出所需要的资料显得至关重要。传统的基于关键词描述的多媒体检索技术因其描述能力有限等原因已不能满足用户对于多媒体语义内容的检索要求,而且这些技术直接应用到性能相当有限的移动设备上也是不可行的。移动设备用户对精确而快速地检索多媒体资源的需求越来越强烈。本文详细介绍了在移动设备上进行基于内容的多媒体检索技术的研究成果。相比现有技术,这些研究成果无论准确度还是速度都有很大提升。     

Collaborative Interaction for Videos on Mobile Devices Based on Sketch Gestures

With the rapid progress of the network and mobile techniques, mobile devices such as mobile phones and portable devices, have become one of the most important parts in common life.Efficient techniques for watching, navigating and sharing videos on mobile devices collaboratively are appealing in mobile environment.In this paper, we propose a novel approach supporting efficiently collaborative operations on videos with sketch gestures.Furthermore, effective collaborative annotation and navigation operations are given to interact with videos on mobile devices for facilitating users’ communication based on mobile devices’ characteristics.Gesture operation and collaborative interaction architecture are given and improved during the interactive process.Finally, a user study is conducted showing that the effectivity and collaborative accessibility of video exploration is improved.     

Pedestrian navigation using the sense of touch

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled user device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human–computer interaction has been visual, data, or images on a screen. Haptic feedback can be an important modality in Mobile Location-Based Services like – knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. In this paper we describe a methodology for the implementation of haptics in four distinct prototypes for pedestrian navigation. Prototypes are classified based on the user’s navigation guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Here haptics is used to convey location, orientation, and distance information to users using pedestrian navigation applications. Initial user trials have elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a “heads up” approach to mobile navigation. We also tested the spatial ability of the user to navigate using haptics and landmark images based navigation. This was followed by a test of memory recall about the area. Users were able to successfully navigate from a given origin to a Destination Point without the use of a visual interface like a map. Results show the users of haptic feedback for navigation prepared better maps (better memory recall) of the region as compared to the users of landmark images based navigation.     

Adapting web pages using graph partitioning algorithms for user-centric multi-device web browsing

In the era of ubiquitous computing, applications are emerging to benefit from using devices of different users and different capabilities together. This paper focuses on user-centric web browsing using multiple devices, where content of a web page is partitioned, adapted and allocated to devices in the vicinity. We contribute two novel web page partitioning algorithms. They differ from existing approaches by allowing for both, automatic and semi-automatic partitioning. On the one hand, this provides good automatic, web page independent results by utilizing sophisticated structural pre- and postprocessing of the web page. On the other hand, these results can be improved by considering additional semantic information provided through user-generated web page annotations. We further present a performance evaluation of our algorithms. Moreover, we contribute the results of a user study. These clearly show that (1) our algorithms provide good automatic results and (2) the application of user-centric, annotation-based semantic information leads to a significantly higher user satisfaction.     

Do size and structure matter to mobile users? An empirical study of the effects of screen size, information structure, and task complexity on user activities with standard web phones

The small screens of mobile Internet devices, combined with the increasing complexity of mobile tasks, create a serious obstacle to usability in the mobile Internet. One way to circumvent the obstacle is to organize an information structure with efficient depth/breadth trade-offs. A controlled lab experiment was conducted to investigate how screen size and information structure affect user behaviours and perceptions. The moderating effects of task complexity on the relationship between screen size/information structure and user navigation/perceptions were also investigated. Study results indicate that both information structure and screen size significantly affect the navigation behaviour and perceptions of mobile Internet users. Task complexity was also found to heighten the influence of information structure on user behaviour and perceptions. The paper ends with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications, among them a key implication for mobile Internet businesses: for corporate intranet systems as well as m-commerce transaction systems, the horizontal depth of information structures should be adapted to task complexity and anticipated screen size.     

Navigation methods of special needs users in multimedia systems

In today’s information society, computer users frequently need to seek for information on home pages as well as to select among software functions. A well-designed interface is essential in order to find everything necessary and meet the requirements of both the average user and users with special needs. Proper placement of objects on the screen is important to decrease perception time. One of the well-known researchers of web ergonomics, Jakob Nielsen (2006) established in an eye-tracking experiment that users scan displayed homepages in an F shape. In the present project the task was to find similar shapes in a number of playful visual search games. Several multimedia tasks were developed for this investigation. Our experiments included normal users and users with intellectual disabilities. We tested whether the characteristic searching routes and navigation methods differed between normal users and those with intellectual disabilities. The results of this investigation can inform the design and position of graphical user interface elements.     

Implementing adaptive mobile GI services based on ontologies: Examples from pedestrian navigation support

As we are facing the dawn of ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) by emerging mobile devices and distributed applications, personalization is leaving the desktop domain, because adaptation and context-awareness play a major role in UbiComp in order to realize the user friendliness postulated for UbiComp applications. Adaptation is a relatively new concept for GI services. Therefore we introduce the related research areas. The two most important factors for adaptation are (a) context as the representation of the current situation and (b) the user itself. In particular how to dynamically derive information on the users’ properties is a research area applying learning strategies introduced shortly. We see these two concepts not isolated but propose an integrated situation model including several types of context as well as user parameters. After this introduction we present several approaches to realizing adaptive mobile GI services in the domain of pedestrian navigation and tourist information – representing first steps towards UbiGIS (www.ubigis.org). These include context and user-aware proactive tips, personalized tour planning and adaptive maps. Implementations and new concepts for extensions of these are presented. The paper closes by an outlook on open research issues related to adaptive GI services.     

MONERS: A news recommender for the mobile web

Mobile web news services, which served by mobile service operators collecting news articles from diverse news contents providers, provide articles sorted by category or on the basis of attributes, such as the time at which they were posted. The mobile web should provide easy access to the categories or news contents preferred by users because user interface of wireless devices, particularly cell phones is limited for browsing between contents.This paper presents a mobile web news recommendation system (MONERS) that incorporates news article attributes and user preferences with regard to categories and news articles. User preference of news articles are estimated by aggregating news article importance and recency, user preference change, and user segment’s preference on news categories and articles. Performance of MONERS was tested in an actual mobile web environment; news organized by category had more page hits, while recommended news had a higher overall article read ratio.     

From the private into the public: privacy-respecting mobile interaction techniques for sharing data on surfaces

Interactive horizontal surfaces provide large semi-public or public displays for colocated collaboration. In many cases, users want to show, discuss, and copy personal information or media, which are typically stored on their mobile phones, on such a surface. This paper presents three novel direct interaction techniques (Select&Place2Share, Select&Touch2Share, and Shield&Share) that allow users to select in private which information they want to share on the surface. All techniques are based on physical contact between mobile phone and surface. Users touch the surface with their phone or place it on the surface to determine the location for information or media to be shared. We compared these three techniques with the most frequently reported approach that immediately shows all media files on the table after placing the phone on a shared surface. The results of our user study show that such privacy-preserving techniques are considered as crucial in this context and highlight in particular the advantages of Select&Place2Share and Select&Touch2Share in terms of user preferences, task load, and task completion time.     

Web usage and content mining to extract knowledge for modelling the users of the Bidasoa Turismo website and to adapt it

The tourism industry has experienced a shift from offline to online travellers and this has made the use of intelligent systems in the tourism sector crucial. These information systems should provide tourism consumers and service providers with the most relevant information, more decision support, greater mobility and the most enjoyable travel experiences. As a consequence, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) not only have to respond by adopting new technologies, but also by interpreting and using the knowledge created by the use of these techniques. This work presents the design of a general and non-invasive web mining system, built using the minimum information stored in a web server (the content of the website and the information from the log files stored in Common Log Format (CLF)) and its application to the Bidasoa Turismo (BTw) website. The proposed system combines web usage and content mining techniques with the three following main objectives: generating user navigation profiles to be used for link prediction; enriching the profiles with semantic information to diversify them, which provides the DMO with a tool to introduce links that will match the users taste; and moreover, obtaining global and language-dependent user interest profiles, which provides the DMO staff with important information for future web designs, and allows them to design future marketing campaigns for specific targets. The system performed successfully, obtaining profiles which fit in more than 60% of cases with the real user navigation sequences and in more than 90% of cases with the user interests. Moreover the automatically extracted semantic structure of the website and the interest profiles were validated by the BTw DMO staff, who found the knowledge provided to be very useful for the future.