Abstract
The actual usefulness, adoption and success of a mobile information system much depends on the appropriate design of the available functionalities and of the interaction interface. A thorough elicitation of functional requirements carried out during the system design phase is certainly essential, though it is often difficult to identify and analyze in advance all possible use-scenarios. This paper describes an evaluation method to discover additional functional requirements and usability problems through the context-based analysis of session logs. The method has been applied to evaluate a mobile tourism support system in ecological conditions to understand non-biased, free usage. The results provide evidence to the impact of contextual conditions over users’ interaction behaviour and informational needs. Some general design guidelines have been derived for functionalities and forms of adaptivity to be integrated in mobile services for the tourism sector.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baltrunas, L., Ludwig, B., Peer, S. & Ricci, F. (2012) Context Relevance Assessment and Exploitation in Mobile Recommender Systems. In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (2012) 16: 507-526
Baus, J., Cheverst, K. & Kray, C. (2005) A Survey of Map-based Mobile Guides. In L. Meng, A. Zipf, and T.Reichenbacher (eds.): Map-based mobile services: Theories, Methods and Implementations, Springer, 2005, pp. 193–209.
Burigat, S. & Chittaro, L. (2008) Interactive Visual Analysis of Geographic Data on Mobile Devices based on Dynamic Queries. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 2008, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 99-122
Clarke, I. and Flaherty, T. (2003). Mobile Portals: The Development of M-Commerce Gateways. In Mobile Commerce: Technology, Theory, and Applications, (Eds, Mennecke, B. E. and Strader, T. J.) Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, pp. 185-201.
Clifton, B. (2010). Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. Second Edition. Wiley Publishing.
Dey, A.K. (2001) Understanding and using context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 5(1), pp. 4-7.
Dourish, P. (2004) What we talk about when we talk about context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(1), pp. 19-30
Grün, C., Pröll, B., Werthner, H., Retschitzegger, W., and Schwinger,W. (2008) Assisting Tourists on the Move – An valuation of Mobile Tourist Guides. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Mobile Business
Jones, S., Jones, M., and Deo, S. (2004). Using keyphrases as search result surrogates on small screen devices. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(1):55–68
Kriegel, H.P., Kröger, P., Sander, J. and Zimek, A. (2011) Density-based clustering. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Volume 1, Issue 3, pp. 231–240, May/June 2011
Ilango, M.R. & Mohan, V. (2010) A Survey of Grid Based Clustering Algorithms.
International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology Vol. 2(8), 2010, pp. 3441-3446
Liu, B. (2007). Web Data Mining. Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg
Madathil, K.C. & Greenstein, J.S. (2011) Synchronous Remote Usability Testing - A New Approach Facilitated By Virtual Worlds, Proceedings of CHI 2011, May 7–12, 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Marcussen, C.H. (2002) SMS, WAP, m-commerce - opportunities for travel and tourism services, Presented at the 22nd”Electronics in Tourism” Congress, ITB Berlin, 17-20 March 2002
Nelson, E.T. & Stavrou, A. (2011) Advantages and Disadvantages of Remote Asynchronous Usability Testing Using Amazon Mechanical Turk. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting 2011
Not, E. & Venturini, A. (2011) The Unexploited Benefits of Travel Planning Functionalities: a Case Study of Automatic Qualitative Market Analysis, In e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Special Section: ENTER 2011
Pitman, A., Zanker, M., Fuchs, M. & Lexhagen, M.. (2010). Web Usage Mining in Tourism – A Query Term Analysis and Clustering Approach. In Gretzel, U., Law, R. & Fuchs, M. (Eds.) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2010. Springer Wien New York, p. 393-403
Rasinger, J., Fuchs, M., Höpken, W. and Grün. C. (2007). Exploring Information Services for Mobile Tourist Guides: Results from an Expert Survey, In Tourism Mobility & Technology, Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA), Nice:4-1
Ricci, F. (2011) Mobile Recommender Systems, International Journal of Information Technology and Tourism, 12(3):205-231
Tullis, T. & Albert, W. (2008) Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing and Presenting Usability Metrics, Morgan Kaufmann
Acknowledgments
This research has been supported by the Trip@dvice Mobile project, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy) under the work programme for industrial research, l.p. 1999/6.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Not, E., Venturini, A. (2013). Discovering Functional Requirements and Usability Problems for a Mobile Tourism Guide through Context-Based Log Analysis. In: Cantoni, L., Xiang, Z. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2013. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36309-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36309-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36308-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36309-2
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)