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Proposal
Our project aims to be an application that promotes awareness about local history and culture to both tourists and locals. The main function of the app would be to allow users to look up information of the history and culture of the country they have selected. Those information can be historical events such as battles or ceremonial events. There is also a function where if the user is near a location where those events happened, they would get a notification that would direct them to that information.
Given enough time, we would like to implement extra features such as AR interactions through the device mentioned to make it more interactive and not just another wiki clone. We believe that what we are trying to make will change how other people view their own history and culture and express more interest in learning and preserving them.
Although mobile learning technologies are widely regarded as holding great potential for applications in education and tourism given the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones, studies have found that these new and innovative learning systems are often discontinued after a short time (Al-Emran, Mezhuyev, & Kamaludin, 2018).
There are several important implications to consider from the research in the exploration of this design space. For example, research by Fatima, J., Ghandforoush, P., Khan, M., & Mascio, R. (2018) found that the trait of innovativeness is an important predictor in the adoption of mobile learning technology. Their findings indicate that the identification and segmentation of this target market, as early adopters of new forms of mobile learning applications in the tourism industry, was an important precursor for wider adoption.
Further predictors of positive attitude to mobile learning included subjective norm, such as positive word of mouth, and perceived behavioural control, which is consistent with previous studies involving the Theory of Planned Behaviour in mobile learning adoption (Yang, K. 2012; Wu & Zhang, 2014). Perceived usefulness and ease of use have been found to play a critical role in the continued use of m-learning technologies as theorised by the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, F. 1989; Wu, B., & Zhang, C. 2014). Finally, the quality of the information and the social influence of peers were also found to be important factors in mitigating discontinuation of use of new forms of education based technology. System quality was also a significant factor on student’s perceptions of ease of use (Al-Emran, Mezhuyev, & Kamaludin, 2018).
Researching similar applications in the problem space, we found a number of examples of location based mobile technology. For instance, Murshid is a location based app that uses GPS and other context sensitive information to inform tourists . The application provides information like events, weather, currency exchange and language translation for users (Echtibi, A., Zemerly, M., & Berri, J. (2009). CATIS is a similar location based app for tourists that tracks users location, direction of travel, speed and and information preferences. It is currently in development. They make the argument that on small screen devices such as mobile phones, context awareness is important to filter information down to that which the user most needs and wants (Pashtan et al. 2003).
However, we must understand first what context is to reach an understanding of the design opportunities surrounding context awareness. Context awareness describes applications that use information about the physical and social world to assist users with services and information (Pashtan, R. Blattler, A. Heusser, P. Scheuermann, 2003). Dourish (2004) argues that context is relational and dynamic rather than stable. Context emerges from the interactions of people and is therefore inseparable from their activity. Context is about relevance of information, which differs between users.
Based on our research, we theorise that a location based device for tourism that is context aware by exploiting the potential of social media or user interaction, may be perceived as more useful, relevant, produce higher quality information, and expand in use from the social influence of peers, starting with early adopters and innovators. This may lead to higher rates of continuation.
Dourish (2004, p.7) suggests that “the major design opportunity concerns not use of predefined context within a ubiquitous computing system, but rather how can ubiquitous computing support the process by which context is continually manifest, defined, negotiated and shared”. Relating this idea of context arising from interaction rather than stable variables to our problems space, it is hypothesised that tourists from similar cultures and backgrounds may find it useful to share information when they are visiting a new place. For example the device may prioritise certain information posts by users based on their patterns of activity and interaction with similar users.
The context awareness of the device would therefore be dynamic rather than stable and predefined.
The growth of social economics and the communication between Australia and different countries have provided opportunities to tourism companies to expand on what they are doing as well as look for more ways to try and attract more customers. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, taken from their latest Overseas arrival and departures report, it was estimated that the country had roughly 765,000 visitors in June 2018 which has seen a 3.1% increase in people visiting the country compared to the amount of people visiting the country in June 2017 and a 0.2% increase compared to May of 2018. New Zealanders and Chinese visitors are the top visitors of the country compared to visitors from other countries. Tourists that are here for the first time will definitely need a guide of some sort to learn more about the city(historical/present events) to make their trip more memorable. For example, Mr.A is a tourist from China he now stands in front of a named bridge that may be a location where people would gather once a year to celebrate an event, Mr.A would not know any background or stories of said bridge if there were no one to explain it to him, the only thing that he would remember about that bridge might just be its name and as years pass by, he would eventually forget about the bridge as it wasn’t something memorable.
A member of the team interviewed two Chinese who came to Australia years ago as tourists.
The questions asked are shown below
Q1) Which cities you have been to in Australia?
Q2) Which place of that city you was the most memorable? What kind of place was it?
Q3) Have you ever tried to understanding the history of that city?
Q4) Asks about the historical location of the city which the interviewee had visited, to see how much details they can recall.
These were the response that we have received
Interviewee 1
A1) She has been to Australia 2 times. (2004 and 2006)
2004 Melbourne, Sydney; 2006 Brisbane, Gold Coast
A2) Brisbane: Holiday Inn hotel (accommodation); Brisbane Government hall (Institution)
Sydney: Harbour bridge (Landmark), Sydney opera house (Landmark)
A3) Not really
A4) An iron bridge that had a story attached to it that the interviewee would use to get to her hotel
Interviewee 2
A1) She has been to Australia in 2017
Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast
A2) Sydney: Harbour bridge (Landmark), Sydney opera house (Landmark)
A3) Never
A4) The most memorable place to her was Chinatown as she thought the food there were delicious
Interviewee 2 visited Australia in 2017. However, there was not many stories culture that was very memorable to her. However, we found a very interesting detail in that they could recall some small location and activities. For example, interviewee 2 told him that Chinatown has a restaurant and the foods there are delicious. So if we can learn more about how tourists are drawn to delicious food and maybe try to replicate that when promoting the application it would help a lot. Our proposal aims to gain further insight into this problem space and develop a methodology to effectively implement a location based system targeted specifically towards students and tourists. The application may be both social and mobile. Users may add information and photos about an interesting location that they discover and share this information with other users. The potential for learning about urban environments, history, and culture using a location based mobile device is an area ripe for exploration, and one that builds further on the domain research we have conducted in this field.
Week 7 Team Contract, Concept Proposal, and Introduction Presentation due Week 8 Incorporate suggestions and feedback from first presentation into design Start researching potential data sources and events Start initial design Week 9 First class stand up Work on the initial paper prototype Start user testing with paper prototype Lock down data sources Week 10 Incorporate suggestions and feedback from first class stand up into design Rebuild paper prototype Begin building the physical prototype Conduct user testing with final or paper prototype, physical preferred Week 11 Second Class stand up Keep working on physical prototype, incorporating stand up feedback If physical prototype hasn’t been tested with users yet begin this Week 12 Polish physical prototype to the final prototype Week 13 Prototype Showcase
(Lee Chee Hao) My goal for this project would be to learn and maybe help the team more in terms of the back-end part when building the prototype as I am confident in my skills when it comes to designing the system’s interface and making wireframes and low and high fidelity prototypes, our team has expressed interest in trying to implement AR in what we are building so that is something that I am keen to learn more about by the end of the project.
(Mark Bayley) My goal for this project is to learn more about designing a social and mobile device that is responsive to user needs, and possibly a device that has context awareness in a useful and meaningful way of user’s interactions with others. I would also like to develop my skills further in designing software apps using platforms such as Unity3D and Vuforia.
(Binfeng Xu) I want to understand what is social mobile computing in depth. In addition, I want to improve my skills of the group communications. I trust that if a individual knows how to collaborate with others, he/she will be very close with success. meanwhile , I want to improve my programming skill on the real project building.
(Murray Goebel) In this project I hope to learn more and improve my skills in gathering information and requirements from future users. In particular I would like to conduct better interviews than I have in the past. From a technical perspective I am excited to do more group projects using GitHub, I have limited experience in using it in a team scenario and I hope to use it effectively in a way that works well for both the team and myself.
(Richard Pan) My goal for this project is to learn designing and developing a mobile based device as most projects I did before were based on web. My strength is front-end developing and prototype making but I have relatively weak stills on back-end side, thus, I will improve the skills in the development of the project. Also, there are a couple of things new for me in the project, such as real time geolocation and AR technique and I would like to learn these.
Strengths
Within the team there is a variety of experience and talent that can be used to make the project a success. Having a very international team allows for the melding of the different experiences and backgrounds to assist in creating an optimal solution meeting the required needs. Team Preservation has members with a variety of technical skills who can all give creative input. Mobile app development and 3D design are 2 important skills that will come into use. In addition to these skills a number of the members are experienced in user research, including conducting interviews and questionnaires. All of the team has an open mind and will be able to work well with critical and effective discussion. Since the focus will be on Brisbane, the Queensland State Archives and Brisbane City Council Libraries will be excellent resources containing a wide variety of resources in different mediums.
Challenges
The size of the team could present a challenge as the project progresses into the prototyping phase. A team of this size requires constant communication and updates to keep everyone on the same page throughout the projects prototyping phase. In general a communication breakdown will have the biggest negative impact on the team by having people doing either redundant work, or not working to achieve team goals. In the domain effectively condensing data down to a digestible format will be a major challenge. Having to pull information from multiple sources and distill it to what the project requires will require critical thinking and understanding of each topic to ensure that it isn’t incorrectly represented.
Options
There are a couple of opportunities of our project. Firstly, the target users of the project are both tourists and locals which are huge groups. Our product will be a good choice for these users who desire to learn the historical locations and culture. Also, the product can always be up-to-date as active users can upload photos they take and new event descriptions for the location or building. Project workload will be a primary for our prototype development. At the end of semester, there are often many assignments of courses meet the deadline, so team members may not fully involved in the prototype development. Therefore, we are going to develop a viable MVP and reach it a week before the final delivery of deadline, so that we can have enough time to conduct testing and implement additional functionality (such as AR in our project).
Responses
The team can get responses from stakeholders. There are several tourism applications have already had some features we are going to develop. However, our product need to focus more on history changes over time and educating rather than going too far on tour guide. Also, the product will have social contact elements, users will be able to upload photos of new event happen in a location which make users can witness and participate history. It will not only improve users awareness of history and culture, but also provide an electronic memoir for them.
Effectiveness
The team believes that we would be able to effectively utilize all the research data that we have gathered and create something with the aim of achieving maximum effectiveness. We will try our best to make it so that the information provided to the user will be as relevant as possible so that the users will not feel frustrated when using our system. We will also consider the fluidity of the system by making it easy for the users to navigate through each screens with ease with no irrelevant/ repeating steps.
References:
Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, ‘Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Australia, Jun 2018’, viewed 4 September 2018, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/568BCE24A5E5CEC5CA257774001ABE30?Opendocument#
Echtibi, A., Zemerly, M., & Berri, J. (2009). Murshid: A mobile tourist companion. Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Context-aware Middleware and Services, 385, 6-11.
González, V., & Vázquez, F. (2012). TuTur: Immersive user experience of tourist visits in virtualized worlds. Proceedings of the 4th Mexican Conference on Human-computer Interaction, 16-19.
Luberg, A., Järv, P., Schoefegger, K., & Tammet, T. (2011). Context-aware and multilingual information extraction for a tourist recommender system. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies, 1-8.
Pashtan, Heusser, & Scheuermann. (2004). Personal service areas for mobile Web applications. Internet Computing, IEEE, 8(6), 34-39.
A. Pashtan, R. Blattler, A. Heusser, P. Scheuermann, “CATIS: A Context-Aware Tourist Information System”, Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Mobile Computing, Rostok, June, pp.1-8, 2003.
G. Chen and D. Kotz, “Context Aggregation and Dissemination in Ubiquitous Computing Systems”, Technical Report TR2002-420, Dept. of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, 2002.