designing mobile personal informatics applications for urban settings

Tamara Chahine

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Design Lab, University of Sydney

Designing Mobile Personal Informatics Applications for Urban Settings

Martin Tomitsch

Thursday, 30 June 2011

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TodayContext & problems

Mobile application

Deployment study

Key insights

Future work

Design process


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Context


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MotivationUsing public transport in Sydney is a mostly

negative experience.

Population is growing and infrastructure isnʼt keeping up.

Traveller information systems have been shown to enhance the usability of public transport


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Enrich the customer experience of public transport

Make information about train travel more visible

Encourage new forms of social interaction

Goals for design


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TripStats


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Cultural Probes Participatory Design

Prototyping DeploymentThursday, 30 June 2011

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Real-time informationLocation

Travelled distance

Remaining distance

Time spent travelling

Time left

Current Speed


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Visualising trips


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Deployment study


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8 prospective participants, mix of full time workers and students catching the train regularly.

Phase one1 week without the application, paper diaries, questionnaire

Phase two2 weeks with the application, paper diaries, questionnaire, interview


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Key insights


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Recording data

Internal motivation

“I didnʼt see a consequence; it was hard to keep using it”

Physical context

User attention

Technical issues


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Context

Displaying real-time data

Usefulness

Integration with existing data


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Visualising historical data

Users liked learning new things about themselves

Historical data integrated with timetable information to plan travel


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Supporting social interaction

People enjoy comparing themselves to others.

Incorporating social + gaming interactions


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Technical implementationConstant connectivity & GPS

Reliability and accuracy

Multitasking support


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Summary


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Future workHow can the visualisation of aggregated user-

generated data combined with existing information such as timetable data leverage the

reliability of information?

What kind of insights can people gain from sharing and social contrasting of personal data

about travel habits?


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Background


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Urban informatics

“collection, classification, storage, retrieval and dissemination of recorded

knowledge in a city”

[1] Foth, M. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the RealTime City. IGI Global: (2009) Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA.


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Personal informatics

“A class of tools that help people collect personally relevant information for the

purpose of self-reflection and self-monitoring. These tools help people gain self-knowledge about one's behaviors,

habits, and thoughts.”

[1] Personal Informatics: http://personalinformatics.org/


http://personalinformatics.org

http://personalinformatics.org

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http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/smart-machines-on-way-but-still-no-sign-of-tickets-20110531-1feql.html

http://www.smh.com.au/national/off-again-on-again-the-cbd-metro-is-off-again--well-nearly-20100119-mj6k.html






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[2] Field trial of Tiramisu: crowd-sourcing bus arrival times to spur co-design www.tiramisutransit.com/

[1] OneBusAway: Results from Providing Real-Time Arrival Information for Public Transit www.onebusaway.org/

[3] TripView: http://www.grofsoft.com/tripview.php


http://www.tiramisutransit.com/

http://www.tiramisutransit.com/

http://www.onebusaway.org/%5D

http://www.onebusaway.org/%5D

http://www.grofsoft.com/tripview.php

http://www.grofsoft.com/tripview.php

designing mobile personal informatics applications for urban settings

Health & Medicine