Information im Kontext

Description

Teams of 3 to 5 students conduct small research projects in the field of personalized nomadic information services. Proposals for projects will be announced by the internship supervisors about one month before the kick-off meeting. The projects include

• Requirement analysis, Use-Cases and user-scenarios
• User-interface design
• Identification of personalization needs
• Implementation of adapting the system behavior
• Usability evaluation

Each group will have to elaborate scenarios and use-cases for their topic and provide a clear work plan including time schedule. After clarification, each group will specify the system, its components and behavior. The specification is the basis of the implementation phase. At the end of the development, each group will create an evaluation plan and conduct the evaluation of the running prototype.

At the end of the lab, each group will present the results of the project work accompanied by a demonstration of the application / system developed. A written report has to be provided by each group on their development.

Appointments and Locations

Regular Appointments:
Fr 10:00 - 12:00, Room C5-120, Fraunhofer FIT, Sankt Augustin
Start of the next internship: October 30, 2009

Topic 1: Mobile Beer Blog

Very often it happens that you step out of a restaurant and you immediately want to let an interested community know, how good or bad this restaurant was. “This restaurant serves excellent beer” or “Here the steak is really bad” or simply giving five stars indicate how visitors of a restaurant experienced the destination. This project is about enabling such restaurant visitors to indicate their impression of the respective restaurant using their mobile phone. Furthermore, people who are new to a town looking for a place where they serve good beer could use the application on their mobile phone to conduct a personalised search.

The challenge here is to really motivate people to use this application on their mobile phone. Most likely, they want to rate a certain destination by one single click, or they will never use the application. On the other hand, their feedback needs to be as valuable as possible, in order to provide the best-possible and meaningful hits for people searching for good restaurants. Maybe a fast tagging or the acquisition of a user’s profile are options for the realisation. For the realisation of the project you can use a Google G1 mobile with Android as the OS, the iPhone, or a Windows-driven mobile phone.

Goal of the project
The project addresses several questions:

•  What are the users’ needs?
• How can a restaurant be rated easily with a mobile phone (e.g. by only one action)?
• How can rated destinations be displayed on a mobile phone?
• How can users customize their rating using a stationary PC after they did the quick rating?

Expected Outcome
After surveying the users’ needs and reviewing different approaches on the net and in the literature, a prototypical application is running on a mobile phone. The application is tested, documented and user evaluated.

Topic 2: Mobile Photo Reminder

The scenario for the “Mobile Photo Reminder” could be the following: Sarah is in a hurry and walks by a toy shop. Because of the lack of time, she is not able to buy things from the shop. Instead she quickly takes a photo with her iPhone and runs to catch the train. In the train she edits the recently taken photo and associates a text reminder with the picture on her phone: “Buy present for my little brother”. Some days later she walks by this toy shop together with a friend and suddenly her iPhone vibrates and the display says “Buy present for my little brother”. Today Sarah has the time to walk into the shop.

The challenge in this project is to develop a mobile reminder that is convenient to use for the users. In addition, the application must be appealing for the users, in order to let this application become an essential part of the user’s lifes. For the realization of the project you can use a Google G1 mobile with Android as the OS, the iPhone, or any Windows-driven mobile phone.

Goal of the project
The project addresses several questions:

• What are the users’ needs?
• Do additional use cases for the mobile application exist?
• What configuration requests do the users have?
• Do the users want additional functionality such as guiding to a specific reminder coordinate?
• Is an additional desktop application necessary?

Expected outcome
After surveying the users’ needs and reviewing different approaches on the net and in the literature, a prototypical application is running on a mobile phone. The application is tested, documented and user evaluated.

Topic 3: Surface Computing on a Table

Touch interface has been used for various devices from mobile devices to huge multi touch walls. This raise questions for desktop computing. Can a multi-touch table be used as effective as our desktop computer?

Since, Jeff Han introduced FTIR technology, building multi-touch table have been quite easy. Therefore, in this lab we would like you to build a prototype of a multi-touch table using a projector and FTIR / DIY technology and evaluate this table against conventional input devices such as mouse and keyboard for daily activities such as writing emails, web browsing or organizing pictures. (Min. team size: 3 Students)

Links:
- http://www.instructables.com/id/Interactive-Multitouch-Display/
- http://wiki.nuigroup.com/hardware

Goal of the project
The project addresses several questions:

• Design and build a multi-touch table using FTIR / DIY technology.
• Evaluate how users interact with it when they perform daily work activities such as writing e-mail, and web browsing.
• Capture the advantages and disadvantages of a multi-touch interaction compare to our desktop computer.

Expected outcome
A prototypical multi-touch table and elaborate the user evaluation of multi touch interaction for such activities.

Topic 4: Context-adaptive ringtones

Mobile phones ringtones do not fit into every context. For example, in the cinema or at the fishing site it is expected to mute your phone. At work, you should perhaps switch your Slipknot ringtone to something more discreet. :-)

Android, Google’s new OS for mobile phones, has the advantage to give access to the main functions of a phone like telephoning, SMS and also the ringtones. Taking advantage of this, the ringtone and its muting status can be adapted to the particular context automatically. 

Goal of the project
The project addresses several questions:

• Which sensors of a mobile phone can be used to identify the context which is relevant for ringtones?
• How can this sensor data be enriched (e.g. are there web services to identify the context of a GPS position)?
• What can be done, if sensor data is only partially available (GPS in cinema)?
• How can users customize the context detection?
• What are the users’ needs?

Expected outcome
After surveying users’ needs and possibilities to enrich sensor data with context, a prototypical application is running under Google Android. The application is tested, documented and user evaluated.

Topic 5: BalanceBoard Interaction

As ubiquitous computing has become more and more present in recent years, the question of how to interact with the increasing number of computing devices has gained importance. You just have two hands free to use for human-computer-interaction and sometimes you wish to have a third one. Additionally some forms of the traditional way of HCI are not very intuitive. Nintendo has caused a sensation with the new interaction forms for its gaming console Wii. The Wiimote controller and the new BalanceBoard are also widely used for other purposes in computer science as they are relatively cheap and signals can be computed by a PC via Bluetooth. The BalanceBoard has some advantages in comparison to the traditional HCI. You can use it hands free, and it is suitable for continuous movements. Different shifts of weight provide a 3D degree of freedom.

Goal of the project

• A survey of existing interaction forms with the BalanceBoard provides an overview of the possibilities of the device
• In a poll users needs for interaction forms are gathered
• As several projects are already going in equal directions we want to establish a new interaction form. Maybe there is an advantage to use the Board to control a function of a mobile phone

Expected outcome
The survey of existing projects with the BalanceBoard and the results from the poll lead to the invention of a new interaction form for a certain application or scenario. The application is implemented prototypically, tested, documented and user evaluated.

Topic 6: Scotland Yard online

Scotland Yard is a classical tabletop game where a group of detectives chases Mr. X. Mr. X gets caught when he is at the same time at the same location as one of the detectives. Both can use a set of means of transportation and Mr. X has the limited ability to get invisible for a short time.

Make this game a multiplayer browser game, so that the participants can play the game while staying in different locations. Do not focus too much on what is technically possible. Let your users decide how the game should behave. Make sure that the game is funnier or more interesting to the user than the tabletop is.

Goal of the project

• Port the rules of the tabletop game to the browser. Make it self-consistent, robust and interesting. Keep the main rules of the tabletop and improve it with the abilities of a browser game
• Make the users lead the application, involve them in planning, requirements analysis and evaluation as well as during the implementation phase
• Check the possibilities APIs provide and find own solutions for the other requirements
• Options:
• Use map APIs like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or Bing Maps
• Use for builing web application frameworks like Google Web Toolkit (preferred), Ruby etc.

Expected outcome
A prototypical implementation of a multiplayer browser game of the tabletop game Scotland Yard where the main game principles are enhanced by possibilities of an online game. The application is tested, documented and user evaluated.