An innovative mobile electronic tourist guide application

Proceedings of the 5th …, 2006

The use of mobile devices as electronic tourist guides represents a recent trend that brings the concept of 'mobile tourism' into the spotlight. While much of the underlying technology is already available, there are still open challenges with respect to design, usability, portability and implementation aspects. Most existing 'mobile tourism' solutions either represent of-the-shelf applications with rigidly defined content or involve portable devices with networking capabilities that browse tourist mobile portals with the requirement of constant airtime, i.e. continuous wireless network coverage. This paper presents a 'mobile tourism' research prototype which brings together the main assets of the two abovementioned approaches. Namely, it enables the creation of portable tourist applications with rich content that matches user preferences. The users may download these customizable applications either directly to their mobile device or first to a PC and then to a mobile terminal (through infrared or bluetooth). Thereafter, network coverage is not further required as the applications execute in standalone mode and may be updated when the user returns online. Our prototype has been developed on the top of Java 2 Micro Edition which offers an ideal platform for the development of fullfledged, interactive and portable applications tailored to resource-constrained mobile devices.

Tourists invest a great amount of time searching on Internet when planning for a trip. This is mainly because they are always seeking for new experiences, new locations and new attractions to visit. They try to find information that gives them an idea of the experiences they can find in their holiday destination. Smartphones and tablets have become a necessity in this age of wireless communications allowing travelers to get the information they need without time or location restrictions. This article examines different aspects of mobile applications geared to tourism, the way they are used, and the involved technologies.

Design, Implementation, and Emergent Applications, 2012

Mobile guides have been in the spotlight for the past decade or so and are becoming increasingly available in various forms to tourists visiting places. The majority of these guides are to be used via a network connection and some as proprietary standalone mobile applications installed on-device. Some are solely navigational assistants used in large cities for exploratory services and others are used indoors as museum guides. This research chapter studies three main categories of mobile applications, namely, mobile guides, web-to-mobile, and mobile phone navigational assistants, using a detailed set of evaluation criteria to extract design principles that can be used by application designers and developers.

Mathematics

With the tremendous growth in mobile phones, mobile application development is an important emerging arena. Moreover, various applications fail to serve the purpose of getting the attention of the intended users, which is determined by their User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). As a result, developers often find it challenging to meet the users’ expectations. To date, several reviews have been carried out which explored various aspects of design and the experience of mobile applications using UX/UI. However, many of these existing surveys primarily focused on only some of the issues in isolation but did not consider all the major parameters such as visualisation/graphics, context, user behaviour/emotions/control, usability, adaptability/flexibility, language, and feedback. In our pilot survey, we gathered the preferences and perceptions of a heterogeneous group of concerned people and considered all the aforementioned parameters. These preferences would serve as a reference...

Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2011

This paper introduces a multiplatform mobile tourist guide application that incorporates a 'web-to-mobile' model and allows for the dynamic adaptation of personalized tourist web content, transformed into a dynamically generated customized mobile thick client application. Java-based mobile thick clients were chosen among a range of available mobile platform solutions due to the wide market penetration of mobile devices supporting Java and by using a porting mechanism to deal with the problem of device fragmentation. Furthermore, conveyed in this paper are the development experiences of a multiplatform personalized mobile guide application offering services to tourists such as a personal profiling-based recommendation system, a commenting system and location-based services. This paper focuses on the design, implementation and usability case study of a Multi-Platform Tourist Guide system for the Municipal Council of Mytilene, Greece.

2018

This research has intended to identify the importance of the usability factor in the creation of a mobile application. Basically, when it comes to directory information, most of the tourists use a conventional method, such as printed maps, traveling books, online or traveling websites and also travel agents. From my perspective and with support from the field research, language impediments and directory issues have been the most common problems in this research. While Smartphone's and apps are, increasingly, being used nowadays, there are not sufficient studies addressing the usability of smartphone user interfaces or applications that are focused for tourist guides. This paper describes the design and evaluation process of the user interface of a smartphone application designed to be a guide or directory for tourists. Two successive versions of the user interfaces were tested with different groups. The results and findings from two rounds of usability tests led to recommendations regarding an inclusive design and the designing of apps that are useful for tourists and which may be a useful contribution to the broader community when designing interfaces for smartphones. Overall, the users enjoy using the new application that is more user friendly and easier to use and navigate with. The findings can be used as a reference to set certain standards in mobile application design and creation, and also to be used for academic benefits.

2005

Interaction design is a major issue for mobile information systems in terms of not only the choice of input-output channels and presentation of information, but also the application of context-awareness. To support experimentation with these factors, we have developed a platform that supports the rapid prototyping of multi-channel, multi-modal, context-aware applications. The paper presents the main components of the platform and describes how it was used to develop a tourist information system for an international arts festival where interaction was based on a combination of speech input-output and interactive paper.

2021

The development of information technology has a direct impact on the improvement of the mobile phone industry, resulting in increased production and use of smartphones as a medium of information exchange. This development also creates an evolution in the world of mobile services. Android is one of the operating systems on mobile phones that provides an open platform for developers to build applications on various mobile devices. This research aims to build an Android-based mobile application that provides information on tourist attractions in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. in real time and apply location-based services to the application. This TMII travel guide mobile application was created using Android Studio as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Google Maps API, and SQLite and MySql. The programming languages used are java, xml, sql, and php. The research method used is the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) approach with the Rapid Application Development (RAD) model.

Idealogy Journal, 2020

Mobile phones have become full-featured mobile computers, and the usage of this technology were developed promptly. Interest towards the usages of mobile phone as an intervention in developing new application for user were also seem very promising. Much has been discus about the role of mobile application nowadays. Mobile apps that been design and created by the genius content developers, mostly are the applications that try to solve the problem facing by the user out there. Design process that has been conducted earlier in the study has led towards the invention of Thru Eye Apps. The applications are focusing on user interface and usability, and this were a baseline in developing the Thru Eyes Apps. The Thru Eye apps were developed to ease and guide tourist while traveling. With the establishment of this application, user will able to travel easily even though they travelling for the first time. Thus, this research paper discusses the user interface design process of forming Thru E...

The use of wireless networks in mobile tourist applications has brought about many services that have been branded "necessary" in many research projects. Though, latest Eurobarometer findings argue that tourists are reluctant in using such services, arguing that high costs of roaming are the major deterrent factor. This paper presents the design issues and implementation of a context-aware 'mobile tourism' research prototype, which brings together the main assets of the Internet and mobile computing technologies. Namely, by using Internet web technologies it enables the creation of personalized portable tourist applications with rich content that matches user preferences. The users may download these customizable applications to their mobile device. Thereafter, network coverage is only an option as the applications execute in standalone mode.