Markus Bylund

GeoNotes: Social and Navigational Aspects of Location-Based Information Systems

Location-based information systems allow the user to access information in relation to the users position in geographical space. This paper outlines navigational and social aspects of such systems. It is argued that location-based systems must allow users to participate as content providers in order to achieve a social and dynamic information space. Moreover, as these systems allow commercial and private users to annotate space with information on a mass-scale, information filtering techniques will become essential in order to prevent information overload and user disturbance. We present a number of content-based and social filtering techniques to support this. We discuss implications for implementation and we describe a system (GeoNotes), which takes some of these aspects into account.

Mind the body!: designing a mobile stress management application encouraging personal reflection

We have designed a stress management biofeedback mobile service for everyday use, aiding users to reflect on both positive and negative patterns in their behavior. To do so, we embarked on a complex multidisciplinary design journey, learning that: detrimental stress results from complex processes related to e.g. the subjective experience of being able to cope (or not) and can therefore not be measured and diagnosed solely as a bodily state. We learnt that it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to make a robust analysis of stress symptoms based on biosensors worn outside the laboratory environment they were designed for. We learnt that rather than trying to diagnose stress, it is better to mirror short-term stress reactions back to them, inviting their own interpretations and reflections. Finally, we identified several experiential qualities that such an interface should entail: ambiguity and openness to interpretation, interactive history of prior states, fluency and aliveness.

Testing and demonstrating context-aware services with Quake III Arena

Testing and demonstrating context aware services can be extremely difficult Context-aware services inherently need information such as the position oftheir users, but it is complicated to gather and supply services with information of that kind. Obviously, one needs to do this when the services are up and running, but it may help to simulate the context information while the services are under development or for demonstration purposes. Even though the simulated context information is not real, the services and the routines that gather and receive the context information can be. This enables systems to be developed with less regard for constraints that stem from using actual sensor technology while also keeping the core functionality of services separate and ready for real-world deployment. One can image two types of simulation tools: those that simulate a set of values as a part of a test suite, and those that allow interactive testing of services in semirealistic circumstances. We have chosen the latter approach because it has the added advantage of allowing us to demonstrate services. QuakeSim is a tool that interactively simulates context information in real time. It simulates the real 3D world and different kinds of context information. With QuakeSim, it is possible to test and demonstrate context-aware services without requiring users or objects to actually be located in and move around in the real world.

The Ubiquitous Interactor — Device Independent Access to Mobile Services

The Ubiquitous Interactor (UBI) addresses the problems of design and development arising around services that need to be accessed from many different devices. In UBI, the same service can present different user interfaces on different devices by separating user-service interaction from presentation. The interaction is kept the same for all devices, and different presentation information is provided for different devices. This way, tailored user interfaces for many different devices can be created without multiplying development and maintenance work. In this paper we describe the system design of UBI, the system implementation, and two services implemented for the system: a calendar service and a stockbroker service.

Ubiquitous service access through adapted user interfaces on multiple devices

The Ubiquitous Interactor (UBI) addresses the problems of design and development that arise from services that need to be accessed from many different devices. In the UBI, a service can present itself with different user interfaces on different devices. This is done by a separation of the user–service interaction and presentation. The interaction is kept the same for all devices, and different presentation information is provided for different devices. This way, tailored user interfaces for many different devices can be created without multiplying the development and maintenance work. In this paper, we describe the design of the UBI, the system implementation, and two services implemented for the system: a calendar service and a stockbroker service.

Using Quake III Arena to simulate sensors and actuators when evaluating and testing mobile services

We describe QuakeSim, a system that uses Quake III Arena to evaluate, test, and demonstrate context aware services. Context, such as users position or activity, is simulated in Quake and provided to real-world services as real data. The simulation is made more realistic by modeling real physical environments and calibrating the models to correspond to reality. QuakeSim allows simulated and actual context information to be used interchangeably in real services.

Towards seamless mobility with personal servers

Observes that the future of mobile communication networks lies not only in how successful people are in deploying technologies (2.5G or 3G with a high degree of coverage and roaming between operators), but also in how well people can create a functioning environment and usage situation for end‐users in which they can get a homogeneous and continuous usage experience, despite the very heterogeneous world in which they, after all, will live. Concepts are advanced that support this observation (network independence, UI/device flexibility, and user experience continuity), and a possible solution is proposed that would take people in that direction (the personal server).

Mobile access to real-time information—the case of autonomous stock brokering

When services providing real-time information are accessible from mobile devices, functionality is often restricted and no adaptation of the user interface to the mobile device is attempted. Mobile access to real-time information requires designs for multi-device access and automated facilities for the adaptation of user interfaces. We present TapBroker, a push update service that provides mobile and stationary access to information on autonomous agents trading stocks. TapBroker is developed for the Ubiquitous Interactor system and is accessible from Java Swing user interfaces and Web user interfaces on desktop computers, and from a Java Awt user interface on mobile phones. New user interfaces can easily be added without changes in the service logic.

Knowing Your Population: Privacy-Sensitive Mining of Massive Data

Location and mobility patterns of individuals are important to environmental planning, societal resilience, public health, and a host of commercial applications. Mining telecommunication traffic and transactions data for such purposes is controversial, in particular raising issues of privacy. However, our hypothesis is that privacy-sensitive uses are possible and often beneficial enough to warrant considerable research and development efforts. Our work contends that peoples’ behavior can yield patterns of both significant commercial, and research, value. For such purposes, methods and algorithms for mining telecommunication data to extract commonly used routes and locations, articulated through time-geographical constructs, are described in a case study within the area of transportation planning and analysis. From the outset, these were designed to balance the privacy of subscribers and the added value of mobility patterns derived from their mobile communication traffic and transactions data. Our work directly contrasts the current, commonly held notion that value can only be added to services by directly monitoring the behavior of individuals, such as in current attempts at location-based services. We position our work within relevant legal frameworks for privacy and data protection, and show that our methods comply with such requirements and also follow best-practices.

Privacy for a Networked World: bridging theory and design

As our lives are more commonly mediated by IT, an interactional perspective of privacy [7] is increasingly applicable to the study of how people find and construct privacy in socio-technical interactions. This perspective has received increasing attention within the HCI research community in recent years. While the interactional perspective has proven effective as a starting point for theoretical and empirical studies of privacy in relation to everyday use of IT, there remain important open questions regarding how to translate results based on this perspective into design practice. Addressing these questions requires a greater sensitivity to when interactional privacy is applicable, a better understanding of suitable research methods, and more effective means for communicating results to the research and practitioner communities.