Location Based Services - A Literature Review

2011

Mateja Vidakovid

NHTV UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES

Location Based Services: A Literature Review

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Graduation Report 24. May 2011

Location Based Services:

A literature review.

Mateja Vidakovic

Student at the NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, International Media

and Entertainment Management. Specialized in Production.

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ABSTRACT/MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

With the constant evolution of technology, involving smartphones and location tracking technologies,

Location Based Services have been garnering attention in the research community, due to their predicted

growth potential and the opportunities for development of various other technologies, as well as lifestyle

improvements. The research conducted on Location Based Services has been in abundance since the

early 2000’s and even prior to that, but only recent research has been able to stay in line with the speed

of evolution of said technologies. Novel ways of utilizing Location Based Services have been suggested,

and there has been further insight into the context and ubiquity of such services in the first place.

This literature review serves as a guide to any Location Based Researcher as it presents a sample of the

state of current Location Based Service research. The review was motivated by the need to provide

groundwork for research in the NHTV University MediaLab, and inform researchers on the results and

research set ups that prior research has already set up and obtained.

In this paper some basic information on Location Based Services, the state of Location Base Service

research and the technologies behind them is given. This will be followed by the core of this thesis, which

is consisted of observations on different aspects of Location Based Service research that were garnered

through reviewing a select number of research papers. Each observation features aggregation of data,

as well as the researchers’ opinion on that specific category of research.

Finally, the conclusion and discussion features suggestions on future research and debate on the findings

and insight gathered by writing this thesis, as well as a personal view.

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT/MANAGEMENT SUMMARY ......................................................................................................... 2

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 6

1. On researching Location Based Services for future application ........................................................... 6

2. On Location Based Services .................................................................................................................. 6

2a. Location Based Services and adoption of Location Based Services ................................................ 6

2b. Technologies behind Location Based Services ................................................................................ 9

2c. Research in Location Based Services ............................................................................................. 10

METHOD ...................................................................................................................................................... 11

Research Questions ................................................................................................................................ 11

Data Collection ........................................................................................................................................ 13

Data Evaluation ....................................................................................................................................... 14

OBSERVATIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 15

Observation 1: Technologies Used ......................................................................................................... 15

1a. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock ..................................................... 17

1b. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location enhanced

messaging service ............................................................................................................................... 18

1c. From Awareness to Repartee: Sharing Location within Social Groups ......................................... 20

1d. Who’s viewed you: the impact of feedback in a mobile location-sharing application ................ 21

1e. Privacy in location-aware computing environments .................................................................... 22

1f. Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share .................. 22

1g. Wayfinding and art viewing by users of a mobile system and a guidebook ................................. 23

1h. Location Based Services: Evaluating user perceptions of location-tracking and location-

awareness services. ............................................................................................................................ 23

1i. A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding Service .... 24

Observation 2: Types of research ........................................................................................................... 25

2a. Wayfinding and art viewing by users of a mobile system and a guidebook ................................. 26

2b. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location enhanced

messaging service. .............................................................................................................................. 26

2c. Who’s viewed you: the impact of feedback in a mobile location-sharing application ................ 27

2d. Privacy in location-aware computing environments .................................................................... 27

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2e. Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share ................. 27

2f. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock ..................................................... 28

2g. From Awareness to Repartee: Sharing Location within Social Groups ......................................... 28



2i. A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding Service .... 29

Observation 3: Set up of research .......................................................................................................... 29

3a. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location enhanced


3b. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock .................................................... 32


3d. From Awareness to Repartee: Sharing Location within Social Groups......................................... 33


3f. Location Based Services : Evaluating user perceptions of location-tracking and location-


3g. Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share ................. 35

3h. Wayfinding and art viewing by users of a mobile system and a guidebook ................................. 36

3i. . A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding Service .. 37

Observation 4: Research results ............................................................................................................. 37

4a. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location enhanced


4b. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock .................................................... 39








4i A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding Service ..... 47

Observation 5: Remarks on future research and the future of said technology .................................... 49

5a.Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location enhanced


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5b. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock ..................................................... 50








5i. A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding Service ... 52

Observation, additional : Location Based Services best practices .......................................................... 53

CONCLUSION & DISCUSSIONS..................................................................................................................... 54

5a. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 54

5b Discussion .......................................................................................................................................... 56

1. Reflections of this project from a personal viewpoint .................................................................... 56

2. Limitations ....................................................................................................................................... 56

5c.Refferences ........................................................................................................................................ 57

APPENDIX .................................................................................................................................................... 61

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INTRODUCTION

1. On researching Location Based Services for future application

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review on Location Based Services (LBS), and

aggregate certain findings and remarks into a cohesive body. The information contained within this

paper can then be used for accurate assessment on the state of LBS research at the moment. Another

benefit of the information in this paper is the possibility of establishing a foothold for predicting future

development and research.

One of the main motivations of this work is to supplement the activity of the NHTV Medialab, and

provide a base for which the Medialab can then go on to ascertain its position in further research.

In this paper, the methodology of this research will be discussed, followed by observations relating to

the review of all the selected literature. A section describing the MediaLab can be found afterwards, as

well as a conclusion with a personal view on all that has transpired and concluded during this literature

review.

2. On Location Based Services

2a. Location Based Services and adoption of Location Based Services

The authors Iris Junglas and Richard Watson have defined Location-based services as “any service that

takes into account the geographic location of an entity” (Junglas & Watson, 2008). By entity, Junglas

meant any object that triggers the location information, be it human or an object. According to Junglas,

all LBS function by exchanging location information between two entities, one relative to other. For

example, a user requesting the location of nearby café (human and object entities) or a person checking

up on the location of his friend (human to human). One of the entities is always the object of the LBS,

the entity about which location information is recorded. (Junglas & Watson, 2008)

Location-based services represent an emerging class of computer systems providing mobile device users

with information and functionality related to their geographical location. (Paay & Kjeldskov, 2007) They

are based on a combination of the inherent location information about specific data, and/or the location

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information supplied by LBS clients, requesting location-specific and otherwise customized services. (Liu

& Wilde, 2011)

Location Based Services, and context-aware mobile computer systems that feature them, have been

garnering attention from both the software industry and various researchers within the computer and

HCI industry for some time now. Chen and Kotz (2000) define context-aware computing as a mobile

computing paradigm in which applications can discover and take advantage of contextual information.

This information would be items like the location of the user, time of day, nearby people and devices,

and user activity.

Google Earth, Google Maps and similar services have seen a steady increase within popular media, and

the emergence of options given to users of LBS lead to other innovations within the LBS industry (Paay &

Kjeldskov, 2007). The ubiquitous nature of mobile devices with GPS-capabilities combined with the

advance of smartphones, and devices with Internet capability in general, has sped up the development

of location sharing applications (Sadeh, 2002).

An example of the Location Based Service Foursquare. It is browser based, displaying location.

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This is a field with a huge potential, especially considering the fact that a minimum of 87% of the U.S.

population owned cellular phones in the year 2009 (CTIA Wireless Association, 2008). Predictions hailed

LBS as the possible dominant technology of the future, and analysts predicted that by 2010 half of all

cell phone users in the US will be using location-based services (Reardon, 2006). Europe’s LBS market

was predicted to rise from $191 million (Junglas & Watson, 2008) to $622 million (CTIA Wireless

Association, 2008) and the U.S. market from $150 million to $3.1 billion (Mccarthy, 2008).

However, although these location-sharing applications have become more available and present,

widespread adoption has been curiously lacking (Corvida, 2008; Mccarthy, 2008). The privacy concerns

of users, with regards to the sharing and use of their location information, is but one of the many

reasons implied as a cause for the lack of adoption LBS have faced (Holson, 2007; Mccarthy, 2008;

Junglas & Watson, 2008; Barkhuus et al.,2008)

Location-Based Services have been noted to surge in popularity though (Junglas & Watson, 2008) The

newfound popularity of smartphones and localized services have generated specific services around

location such as Foursquare and Gowalla (Popescu, 2010), as well as location services provided by

platforms that are not internet based such as iOS, Android or Symbian. Foursquare is a location based

service which functions both as a social networking website and a LBS. While it functions as website, it is

also customized for use on smartphones and GPS-enabled mobile devices. Forsquares primary functions

is the “checking”, in which users can register or check in at locations utilizing a web browser, text

messaging or a device-specific application. This application detects nearby locations, or venues, and the

user can then select the one he is located in, therefore “checking in”. The user can obtain rewards for

this, such as points or virtual badges. Gowalla is a similar Location Based Service that also functions as a

social network, its main difference being the rewards the user can obtain for “checking in”. A user either

checks in through a dedicated website or from an application downloaded to a smartphone.

Interestingly, Gowalla allows users to check in via Foursquare, Facebook places, Twitter or Facebook.

Facebook’s Places functionality ushered LBS concepts within the Facebook platform, though Facebook’s

policy of centralizing its own service hampered its spreading, while consumer LBS gave rise to

personalization of services and contextualization of information (Schiller & Voisard,2004). The Facebook

Places functionality is similar to that of Foursquare or Gowalla – it allows users to post status updates in

which they “tag” their location. It integrates with Facebook’s other functionalities such as tagging

people in posts and status updates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_web

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_message

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_message

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The Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers have arguably been dealing with the issue of the

need for themselves, designers and software developers to more thoroughly investigate the context

mobile device and system use, so they could develop relevant and appropriate solutions for any issues

that occur in this area (Johnson, 1998). LBS researches frequently focus on dealing with privacy in

location-aware technologies and systems and software for privacy policy management (Kapadia et al.,

2007; Patil & Lai, 2005). Several studies have agreed that one of the most frequent uses of SMS is to

coordinate and schedule meetings, something highly relevant with regards to location. (Grinter &

Eldridge 2001) A slew of issues have been investigated so far, ranging from interface issues such as

modes of interaction or presentation formats of information and technical issues such as positioning

techniques or data models. User behavior with LSB is also a topic that warranted research (Ishikawa et

al., 2009).

2b. Technologies behind Location Based Services

Location Based Services can be provided via several different kinds of technologies, namely GPS,

Wireless positioning, cellular identification, IP location and web browser plugins.

The Global Positioning System (GPS), gets the location information by triangulation via multiple

satellites. It is a highly reliable method for location tracking. GPS however is not yet fully ubiquitous, and

most notebooks and laptops do not incorporate that technology. Battery consumption and lack of

consistency regarding indoor functionality can be considered the shortcomings of this technology.

Wi-Fi access points can, and have been utilized to provide LBS. For example, in their paper, “Who’s

Viewed You? The Impact of Feedback in a Mobile Location-Sharing Application”, the authors perform

research utilizing Locyoution, an application that uses Wi-Fi access points to determine location (Tsai,

Kelley, Drielsma, Cranor, Hong, & Sadeh, 2009). The application integrates with Facebook and allows

the user to track the location of all friends that they have listed. Wi-Fi access points do not share the

reliability of GPS, they are more consistent indoors, as well as it being a more widespread technology

with the common user when compared to GPS. (Tsai et al. 2010)

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/i/Ishikawa:Toru.html

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IP addresses are also a technology that can be used to obtain location information. A multitude of

websites that allow geographic tracking via IP, such as IP2Location and IPadressLocation, already

provide this service, and there has been research in integrating this kind of technology within location

based services (Bringing Location Based Services to IP Multimedia Subsystem). IP addresses are finite in

number and relate to any device that can connect to the Internet. This technology is mostly used to back

up one of the previously mentioned methods of obtaining location in case a failure occurs (Tsai et al.

2010).

Cellular identification such as GSM is a popularly used technology when it comes to LBS research.

Mobile phones are almost always in range of cell phone towers, and they send the signal towards them.

This provides an opportunity for the location of the cellphone to be triangulated, considering the

locations of the cell towers are known. The location of cellphones can be tracked down via the signal it

provides to cell phone towers, and the companies that gather this data can disclose it. Some operators

have thus partnered with telecom companies to use cellular data (J. Tsai et al. 2010).

Most location based services on mobile phones and computers are provided either by the user installing

software on their device or via a browser. If the service is provided via a browser, plug-ins will usually

need to be installed to allow for the appropriate technology (wireless or IP usually) to be used to obtain

the location information (Tsai et al. 2010).

2c. Research in Location Based Services

In researching LBS, it can be noted that most studies utilized a sampling method called Experience

Sampling Method (ESM), in which participants carry devices and then are requested location based

information]. Another kind of experiment that was often encountered was supplying automatic location

disclosures and SMS capabilities to pre-existing social groups (Tsai et al. 2010). ESM studies, sometimes

named ecological momentary assessments, involve participants filling in questionnaires multiple times

daily. The questionnaire features questions about the participants’ activities, feelings and conditions.

ESM studies are usually made up from signal contingents, involving several signals a day in the span of

several days. The authors Denise Anthony, Tristan Henderson, and David Kotz (2007) in Privacy in

location-aware computing environments have noted that ESM was used for a variety of purposes such as

evaluation of experience, communications technology, television viewing, and experience with

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ubiquitous computing devices. ESM methodology is in a constant state of improvement, with various

prototypes and methods being used; anything from paper and notebook questionnaires to voicemail,

PDA’s and mobile phones have been known to be utilized as tools for ESM studies.

As aforementioned in the beginning of this introductory chapter, the aim of this thesis is to use the

aggregation of data from several relevant papers that feature Location Based Service research in order

to form an informed decision of what the research direction which can be explored within the Medialab

of NHTV. An approach to finding all the information of importance to this research involves deciding on

precise research questions. To ascertain what data is needed to produce conclusions relating to the

Medialab, we must first examine what research has been performed in the LBS area? Therefore, the

first RQ would be: What are the current research endeavors in LBS? It is then by analyzing this data that

we can start making conclusions as to what can be done within the MediaLab within this branch of

research. The next main RQ would then be: What is the most promising direction for the MediaLab to

pursue in LBS? More on the research questions and the methodology behind this thesis is featured in

the Method section below.

METHOD

Research Questions

This paper aggregates information obtained from journals and conferences, as well as other works,

based on certain criteria. Primarily, the mentioned works must contain research on or utilizing location

based services. Secondly, the papers must somehow refer or hint at future research, so that certain

trends in location based research could be established.

Research Questions were established in order to create a framework for the filtering of all researched

literature. The two main research questions that motivate this research are:

1. What are the current research endeavors in LBS?

2. What is the most promising direction for the MediaLab to pursue in LBS?

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In order to better answer these questions, sub-questions were created to further refine the research

What research has been done on Location Based Services recently?

What trends in Location Based Service research do the authors of these works hint at?

Can, and how, some of the questions raised by the examined literature authors be answered by this

aggregation?

Question Purpose

What research has been done on Location

Based Services recently?

To aggregate all the research in order to

provide a comprehensive review of the current

state of LBS research, as well as give grounds

to answering the other Research Questions.

What trends in Location Based Service

research do the authors of these works hint

at?

This is of relevance due to the fact an

aggregation of multiple researchers prediction

can lead to a more or less accurate depiction

of where future research might lead to as well

as what kinds of project might be worth both

investing into and considering.

Can, and how, some of the questions raised by

the examined literature authors be answered

by this aggregation?

In effect, the knowledge gathered from all the

literature examined might provide answers to

some of the questions asked by some of the

authors of said papers, but were unable to

answer due to the limited scope of their

research. This is to ascertain whether or not

some of their own research questions can be

answered by compiling all the findings of

related works and suggesting the answer.

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Data Collection

Rules were established when searching through the relevant literature that ensured that all the data

could be collected in a reproducible and reliable way. The rules for including data are:

a) The work presents the results of a research that involves Location Based Services and their use

or implementation. It features some form of prototype, and asides results also offers suggestions on

what future research can or should be done within this realm of research.

b) The papers examined need to be recent. Though some older research was given admittance to

the database, the general rule is that newer papers take prime due to their increased relevance and the

speed of evolution of LBS related research.

c) Data from one paper does not coincide with data from another paper; there should be no

duplicate prototypes or systems. If such an occurrence does come to be, the more recent or

comprehensive work was picked.

d) In the case of a paper not presenting results on an LBS research, it must then feature some form

of information aggregation, akin to this one, or conclusions that relate strongly to Location Based

Services. Discussions as well as papers that describe all Location Based Services are some of the kinds of

papers that fall under this category.

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Data Evaluation

Once the primary body of the papers was obtained, the works were then read in order to analyze them

more thoroughly and get more detailed information relating to this research. A variety of questions

were generated to aid in the filtering process.

Question

What kind of research is performed in the paper?

What is the purpose of the research?

What is the scope and aim of the research?

How is the research set up?

How many participants does the research include?

How long did the research last?

How were the participants monitored?

What is the prototype and how was it used?

What technologies are utilized within the research?

What are the results of research?

What do the findings of the research imply?

What is the author’s opinion on the research itself and the findings?

How relevant are the results to other papers of a similar theme?

What do the results imply when concerning future research?

What remarks does the author make on either his further research or the future of such

research in general?

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OBSERVATIONS

The following section presents observations that stem from reviewing all of the papers that were

considered for this literature review. The observations are divided into categories, namely the

technologies used, the type of research performed, the setup of the research, the results of the research

and the remarks on future research. In each section, a sub-question is given and an answer, based on

the literature reviewed, is attempted. This is followed by specific evidence per paper. Sources are cited

once per section for each paper; it can be assumed that the whole section covering a certain paper is

citing the paper itself.

Observation 1: Technologies Used Sub questions: What technologies were used? What is the description of the system?

The majority of the papers examined in this review featured the utilization of GSM technology, such as

Iachello (2005), Brown (2007) and Barkhuus (2008). The common factor for all these papers was that

most of the featured a Location-disclosing application implemented on a cell phone, or similar device.

For example, the Whereabouts Clock (WAC), is a tablet based application (Brown, Taylor, Izadi, Sellen,

Kaye & Eardley, 2007).The tablet is wirelessly connected via a GSM modem to a cellular network. It is

important to note that aforementioned prototypes featured SMS communication with the device.

According to the Barkhus (2008), GSM was chosen due to the fact the “GSM tracing has been shown to

be adequately precise in locating a mobile phone, in particular in urban areas where cell phone towers

are dense” (Barkhuus, Brown, Bell, Sherwood, Hall & Chalmers, 2008) The authors discuss other

technologies and point out to why these were not chosen for their experiment instead: “GPS does not

work well indoors, consumes a relatively high amount of power and often has a long startup time

between being powered up and delivering an accurate location. Wireless positioning using is also

possible on phones, although the hardware is becoming far more common in small handsets, one

obvious downside of these techniques is that they primarily rely on privately owned Wi-Fi base stations;

the locations of which are not known and can change (be moved or turned off) over time.” (Barkhuus et

al.,2008) The authors of the other papers that contain prototypes that use GSM technology do not

disclose information as to why they have chosen that specific technology, so we can only speculate.

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However, a logical assumption would be that it is the same reason, or similar, to that mentioned by

Barkhuus et al. (2008)

Research by Tsai (2009) deviated from this pattern by also featuring a Location disclosing application for

cell phones but not utilizing GSM. Their experiment featured an application called Locyoution that

utilized Wi-Fi access points to determine location. Though the prototype Locyoution was based on,

PeopleFinder, has two versions; a GPS and GSM enabled one and a wireless one, the experimenters

chose to utilize only the Wi-Fi version. PeopleFinder was originally developed by Sadeh (2009). Why this

version was chosen for Locyoution is not disclosed, but it is safe to assume that the nature of the

application demanded this kind of connectivity due to its integration with Facebook (Tsai et al, 2009).

Another technology utilized was active radio frequency identification (RFID) This was used in the two

papers that featured tour guide systems, and therefore demanded a location system that suits their

research (Ishikawa, Murasawa & Okabe, 2009; Paay & Kjeldskov, 2007) The authors of justify their use

of this system in lieu of, say, GPS by explaining that “These ubiquitous-computing technologies enable

indoor, as well as outdoor, navigation with sufficient accuracy (roughly within 10 m, depending on the

types and settings of tags or beacons), contrasted to GPS-based systems.” ( Ishikawa, Murasawa,

Okabe, 2009)

The authors from Besho (2008) have similar qualms regarding GPS, claiming “…they have two

limitations in their applicability. Firstly, they are not capable of supporting indoor or underground

environments where GPS signals are not available. Secondly, they are not aware of the places of human

interest. We understand the space as a set of places, each of which is a label of space partition with

certain meaning defined based on human interest, but the coordinate information provided by GPS is

not suitable for recognizing such places.” (Bessho, Kobayashi, Koshizuka, & Sakamura, 2008) In effect,

the researchers in these two papers have opted for the RFID option rather than GPS due to the faults of

the GPS system rather than some innate advantage of a RFID technology.

Certain research demanded simpler technology utilization. Wireless PDA’s with Wi-Fi connectivity were

distributed for the research in the paper by Junglas (2008), and a Palm m500s device was provided for

the research in the paper Consolvo (2005). Participants in the research of Anthony (2007) were given

pagers which used an SMTP-to-page (simple mail transfer protocol) gateway operated by the pager


http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/m/Murasawa:Kei.html



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service provider. One of the reasons why they have chosen this solution instead of a wireless PDA

equipped with an 802.11 network, as described in the paper is that the authors believe they would not

have been able to signal participants when they were out of range of an 802.11 network

From these findings it could be summarized that the technologies used vary depending on the nature of

the research, however a majority of applications developed for location based services in these papers

utilized GSM technology. For experiments that related to orientation with location disclosure rather

than, for example, privacy issues, the RFID technology was deemed more appropriate. Finally, research

that was based on surveys or was smaller in scale, as far as the experiment demands, tended to utilize

technologies like PDA’s and pagers.

1a. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock

(Brown, Taylor, Izadi, Sellen, Kaye & Eardley, 2007)

A plethora of technologies have been utilized in researching LBS, varying from fully developed systems

and application to devices with simple software solutions. One of the unique examples of a LBS related

application is the Whereabouts Clock (WAC). The WAC is a clock-like application displayed on a tablet PC

with touch input encased in a box made to look similar to that of a normal household clock. It served to

display family members’ current locations as one of four privacy-preserving, deliberately coarse-grained

categories (HOME, WORK, SCHOOL or ELSEWHERE).

Whereabouts Clock in case (a), interface (b), close-up of message window (c).

The tablet is wirelessly connected via a GSM modem to a cellular network. Users of the WAC, the

family members, are given cell phones that communicate with the WAC. The WAC uses GSM cell ID

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available on cell phones to garner the location data. Users were able to change, whenever they wish,

what places they had set for the three different labels of “home”, “work” and “school”. Limited

messaging capability, namely sending SMS messages to the WAC, which are in turn displayed on the

WAC, is present. Upon text message arrival, the text is displayed around the icon of the sender, marked

by the sound of a cuckoo clock. The full message can be displayed by touching the icon. The WAC was

intended to be placed in visible place in the household, like a living room or kitchen.

If located at work, or school, areas such as this required labeling by the user, utilizing a menu within the

phone application. This makes a record of the cell tower IDs that are nearby, for that specific zone. The

application is constantly scanning for all cell towers in range, noting the ID with the most likely match

onto a registered zone. The WAC is constantly updated by SMS whenever the application finds that a

user from changed location between registered zones. Labels for work, school and home are

interchangeable, and able to attach to anything, meaning any place can be re-registered as work, and so

on. (Location family values a field trial of the whereabouts clock). The WAC is a relatively static form of

LBS, therefore a rarity in these kinds of research. A number of these studies required the development

of a mobile service, usually intended for cell phones.

1b. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location

enhanced messaging service

(Iachello, Smith, Consolvo, Abowd, Hughes, Howard, Potter, Scott, Sohn, Hightower &. LaMarca, 2005)

The researcher have developed a peer-to-peer, location-enhanced service for cell phones called Reno. It

was developed for the Nokia Series 60 cellphones, and is both a location and messaging service. It allows

users to request the location of other users, and communicate their own location to them. Users define

names for their locations, such as ‘’home’’ or ‘’work’’, but the application also provides information on

surrounding locations. The application has two automated functions: the Instant Reply List and

Waypoints. Waypoints cause Reno disclose location whenever the user enters a specific, pre-defined

location, with a two-hour timeout in order to deny bursts of messages during brief visits with many

returns to the same spot. The user must indicate both the location of interest and the recipient of the

message to successfully set up a Waypoint. The number of times Reno disclosed location can be viewed

automatically by using an audit tool called Activity Report. Instant Reply causes Reno to automatically

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reply with the current most likely location to any request that comes from someone on the Instant Reply

List. . A list known as the Instant Reply list is created by the user, is user-defined, and a part of the Reno

contact list. If the location is undetermined, Reno transmits “Unknown Location.”

Another feature is a custom, integrated list of activities that can be utilized instead of place names for

message replies. The authors’ claim this was done to eliminate the need to type for any kind of message

that deals with location disclosure, as it leaves only two steps are needed to successfully reply to a

location request.

A usage scenario for Reno. The application presents a list of likely locations and a static list of activities when replying to request

Reno uses SMS messages to communicate; consisting of both the user intended sentence and message

recognition code and checksum. Using inaccurate names to label locations, not labeling the location,

responding with an activity, or ignoring requests are all methods and denial strategies that Reno

supports in order for the user not to need to deceive outright.

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1c. From Awareness to Repartee: Sharing Location within Social Groups

(Barkhuus, Brown, Bell, Sherwood, Hall & Chalmers, 2008).

Another cell-phone based application was Connecto. It is a Windows Smartphone application, and

utilizes GSM fingerprinting techniques to ascertain the phones location. Locations are marked by the

user, which names them and subsequently select the ‘remember this location’ option. Thus a database

of user generated locations is formed in the phone. Other features of Connecto are the ability to record

the ringing profile the phone is set to, such as normal, vibration or silent, with the profile name also

being susceptible to change. The users can name locations whatever they desire. Both the name of the

profile and how the ringing profile behaves can be altered by the user. The data gathered by Connecto is

sent to a central server every 7 minutes, simultaneously downloading updates from the persons on the

contact list of the user

Connecto keeps a local database, and synchronizes with an SQL server database which runs on a server

by exchanging compressed XML datasets over standard GPRS connections. Connecto therefore updates

information in a time period of a minimum of 7 minutes.

21

A user can name a location in any way he wishes, ignoring the automatic location detection feature of

Connecto. Whether or not the user chooses to disclose the actual location or is ''lying'' is not disclosed

via Connecto.

1d. Who’s viewed you: the impact of feedback in a mobile location-sharing application

(Tsai, Kelley, Drielsma, Cranor, Hong & Sadeh, 2009)

Locyoution is a Facebook interface for a mobile location-sharing application built a technology based on

PeopleFinder. (Tsai et al, 2009). PeopleFinder is an application that enables cell phone and laptop users

to selectively share their locations with others, such as friends, family, and colleagues. It was developed

by Norman Sadeh, Jason Hong, Lorrie Cranor, Ian Fette, Patrick Kelley, Madhu Prabaker and Jinghai Rao

for their paper Understanding and capturing people’s privacy policies in a mobile social networking

application (Sadeh et al., 2009).

Locyoution is made out of two main components: software must be installed by the user onto a laptop

and an application which is added on Facebook, and it mostly functions via Facebook. It utilizes Wi-Fi

access points to determine location. In order to check a Locyoution user’s location, the users’ Facebook

profile must be visited, and click on the Locyoution application icon clicked, whereupon the user will be

shown a map of the searched user’s precise location (state, city and address). Once a request for

location is created, it is sent to the server, and if it does not function within a certain timespan, the map

location is shown on the Home screen; alternatively a message saying ‘’unavailable’’ is shown on the

Home screen. The Locyoution interface on Facebook has three major areas, Home, My Rules and Who

Has Viewed me. Home can be viewed by anyone on Facebook, while the other two are reserved only for

Locyoution users, with a username and password. Also appearing is the Friends with Locyoution list and

the map. The Friends with Locyoution contains all the friends of the user who have installed the

Locyoution application; allowing for their locations to be requested. The map displays the location of

any user selected person that appears on the user’s list. If another user isn’t found, it will display current

location of the user him or herself. There are two reasons to why location requests can be rejected:

either the locator is offline, or has a rule that does disallow location disclosure.

22

The Rules interface provides users with the ability to control when their location can be viewed by

others. Locyoution allows solely time-based rules, defined based on specific days of the week and a

combination of times of the day. Users of Locyoution can restrict the Facebook application privacy

settings to “My Networks & Friends,” “Some Networks (which the user selects) and Friends,” or “Friends

Only. See Figure 2, 3, 6 Appendix.

1e. Privacy in location-aware computing environments

(Anthony, Henderson, and Kotz. 2007)

The prototypes utilized were a pager and a questionnaire notebook. The pager was a Motorola Bravo

numeric pager operating in the 406-512 MHz band. The pager used an SMTP-to-page (simple mail

transfer protocol) gateway operated by the pager service provider. The notebook featured questions

about communications use (wired, wireless, and other communications devices), location, current

activities, and others. This option was chosen in lieu of using a PDA equipped with a 802.11 network

adapter, making it one device utilized both for participant contact and questionnaire. The range of the

network, the number and versatility of the questions as well as the possibilities of malfunction affected

the decision to use a notebook and pager instead of the mentioned PDA option.

1f. Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share

(Consolvo, Smith, Matthews, LaMarca, Tabert & Powledge, 2005).

Some research specific devices were often used in studies that

demanded less functions than some of the ones mentioned so far.

In one case, researchers needed to pose series of questions to their

users, within a LBS context. To accomplish this, a Palm m500s

device provided by the researchers was utilized for this research,

with software for running The Experience Sampling Method ESM on

PalmOS devices installed. The Experience Sampling Method was

used to capture participant responses to in situ, hypothetical

requests for their location, which is what the Palm devices were

used for. A plethora of ESM questions about the context of location

were also asked at the time of each request.

23

1g. Wayfinding and art viewing by users of a mobile system and a guidebook

(Ishikawa, Murasawa, Okabe, 2009).

Certain research demands that a very specific device is developed for the study, at least specific in

regards to the research. Ishikawa (2009) and his colleagues used an art tour system for their study on

orientation in a museum environment. The mentioned art tour system functions by utilizing 158 active

radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and 31 infrared beacons, which communicate with a hand-held

communicational terminal device known as a ubiquitous communicator. This communication is

performed with identification codes known as ucodes. This communicator allows for accurate

navigation, and also provides maps, speech guidance, text messages and photographs.

The art-information function is supplied with text descriptions about the artwork and the artist,

photographs and movies showing

other artworks by the artist as well as

artist interviews and production

videos. View Figure 1 in the Appendix.

The researchers also had to supply

some users with paper guidebooks.

The paper guidebooks supplied had a

map of the area as well as artwork

information contained within it.

1h. Location Based Services: Evaluating user perceptions of location-tracking and location-awareness

services.

(Junglas & Watson, 2008).

Simpler still was the technology applied to study aimed at determining different reactions users have to

wireless and Location Based services, performed Junglas & Watson (2008) In their study a series of

wireless PDA’s with different functionalities were distributed, as well as wireless devices to all

participants. The functions include location-tracking and location-aware functionalities, as well as

wireless connectivity.



24

1i. A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding Service

(Bessho,Kobayashi, Koshizuka & Sakamura, 2008).

The authors developed a Ubiquitous Tour Guide which they then researched the effectiveness of. The

developed infrastructure model features three layers: Firstly there is a layer of devices that contains

multiple space-identifying devices attached to a place of interest. Then there is a layer of places, with

each place given its own identifier. The third layer is one of spatial semantics. To quote the authors

themselves ‘’While the necessary semantics depends on applications, this model provides a framework

that allows flexible definition of their vocabulary. In this model, a place-based service can be realized as

follows. First, a user with a mobile terminal receives an identifier from advice, and accesses the service

provider with the received identifier. Then, the provider recognizes the place corresponding to the

device, and generates a service using the spatial semantics related to the particular place.’’ (Bessho et

al., 2008) The entire system functions with the aid of a unique identifier called a ucode. These ucodes

are 128bit unique identifiers. Ucodes are assigned a real world entity that demands identification. Each

ucode is transmitted from a small device named ubiquitous marker, which is attached to each entity. The

architecture supports different kinds of ubiquitous markers, such as active RFID tags, passive RFID tags,

infrared beacons, and 2-dimensional barcodes. See Figure 4, 7 Appendix.

An Ubiquitous Tour Guide was then created, to

function on the basis of the above detailed

infrastructure, and provide a tour guiding system to

introduce many art works in the Tokyo Midtown.

The system was deployed in the Tokyo Midtown, a

commercial complex in Japan. 25 artworks were

chosen for the guided tour. It was made out of two

place-based services; navigation and art

introduction. A user with a mobile terminal is

supplied with an Ubiquitous Communicator (UC)

and can then navigate to a number of art works,

sequentially, starting from the tour counter. Once

reaching the location of the artwork, a set of detailed introductory descriptions are showed to the user,

and upon completing the tour the user is then navigated back to the tour counter. The navigation

25

features map based route presentation, landmark-based guidance utilizing audio messages,

photographs and text messages.

Observation 2: Types of research Sub question: What was the research objective? What was the motivation for creating it?

While all the papers reviewed here uniformly dealt with Location Based Services, the motivation behind

each research was varied. The topics covered can be, very loosely, divided into those that deal with user

perception of a certain LBS, those that are testing out a LBS prototype and those that delve into

consequences of LBS interaction that are more psychological in nature, such as the issue of plausible

deniability i.e. how frequently, if at all, do users of LBS choose ‘’lie’’ or deceive about their location. This

issue was the main research objective in the research of Iachello (2005). The main research questions

set for this research were actually hypotheses meant to be tested, namely: Automatic disclosures are

not problematic with appropriate corrective measures, Deception and denial practices will occur with

Reno (the LBS application developed for the experiment) and Activity, as well as place, will be used by

participants in their communications. (Iachello et al., 2005) Other examples of these kinds of LBS related

topics within research are demonstrated the research by Brown (2007), where the emotional aspects of

utilizing an LBS for inter-family communication is examined. Similar to this was the motivation behind

research by Barkhuus (2008), conducted partly to investigate how, by sharing status and location, the

system developed by the authors supported the ongoing repartee of all participants, creating a form of

platform for development of friendship and social interaction . Feedback, or lack there off, was the main

topic of the research of Tsai (2009), while Anthony (2007) researched the difference between received

feedback and lack of feedback when using Location Based Services, as well privacy issues. Disclosure

was also covered in research Consolvo (2005). Performance, usefulness, and ease-of-use perceptions

associated with certain tasks given to users with and without forms of LBS was further investigated by

Junglas (2008)

When examining the motivation behind all the reviewed research, asides noting the fact that they all

featured either testing user perception and ease of use of different LBS, it is also worth noting that most

of the research featured at least some segments dedicated to privacy issues, even if privacy was not one

of the main motivations for the research in question. Another notable fact that can be perceived

through this kind of data aggregation is that the amount of disclosure, the relation and feedback to LBS

and finally the psychological effects of LBS utilization are the dominant research topic within the chosen

26

literature. As described later on in the Conclusion and Future Research sections, it is noteworthy that

navigation using LBS, privacy, perception and customization are the mostly covered issues within the

papers reviewed, and thus most future research will probably stem from these categories.

2a. Wayfinding and art viewing by users of a mobile system and a guidebook


A study that has a very clear research goal comes from the paper titled Wayfinding and art viewing by

users of a mobile system and a guidebook. The paper examines the various differences in effectiveness

and perception of two different systems for touring and experiencing a museum. One is a classic,

printed guidebook, and the other a location based service mobile art tour system. A test is performed

using these two mediums to ascertain the various differences, benefits and drawbacks of each. The two

major research questions are whether and how the perception of space and behavior in space differ

between users of a navigation system and users of paper maps, and secondly whether and how the

perception of artworks differs between users of an art-information system and users of a guidebook. As

mentioned above, the authors used a ubiquitous communicator, as they have called it, to perform this

research.

2b. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location

enhanced messaging service.


The paper called Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location

enhanced messaging service focuses primarily on the issue of plausible deniability. This paper examines

and reports on a study of a peer-to-peer, mobile, location-enhanced messaging service which was

developed to further analyze plausible deniability and how location based services and their

communication of time and place can be used to aid planning and intentions. It also covers research

performed prior to the main research - an Experience Sampling Method study aimed at developing the

prototype that would later be used in the main research. The mentioned mobile application Reno was

developed for this study.



27

2c. Who’s viewed you: the impact of feedback in a mobile location-sharing application


LBS usage and the feedback that the users provide was the main topic of research by Tsai (2009). This

paper focuses pre-dominantly on pointing out the difference between received feedback and lack of

feedback when using Location Based Services. The authors performed a study involving 56 users and a

mobile location sharing system called Locyoution. The study also deals with privacy, and is known for

being one of the larger studies of its kind, involving 56 users.

2d. Privacy in location-aware computing environments

(Anthony, Henderson, & Kotz, 2007).

A form of feedback was also examined by Anthony (2007) and his colleagues. The main topic of this

paper is a study conducted using the experience sampling method, in which 25 undergraduate students

were observed for one week, in order to examine their willingness to share location information in

various settings and with different requesters. Also researched was whether willingness to share

location information varied depending on who was seeking the information.

2e. Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share

(Consolvo, Smith, Matthews, LaMarca, Tabert &Powledge, 2005).

The willingness to share information such as location is a hot topic within LBS research. Research

performed in Location Disclosure to Social Relations consisted of a three phased formative study what

was performed to determine if and what users of location-based services are willing to disclose as far as

their location to social relations. The study was performed with 16 non-technical participants and using

a variety of different techniques, including in situ and in-lab. This study featured the participants getting

hypothetical requests from people they knew, questionnaires, a privacy classification survey, interviews,

exercises and a nightly voicemail diary study.

28

2f. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock

Certain papers, such as Location family values A field trial of the whereabouts clock focused more on a

specific prototype and its reciprocations in this LBS themed study. This paper details the research and

results utilizing a family oriented location awareness system called the “Whereabouts Clock” (or WAC).

It is a striped down location based service that displays information only within a home environment.

The goal of this research was, amongst others, to confirm and check on the emotional aspect, asides a

utilitarian one, which a location based, services of this sort can provide.

2g. From Awareness to Repartee: Sharing Location within Social Groups

(Barkhuus, Brown, Bell, Sherwood, Hall & Chalmers, 2008)

Again, a more prototype centered research was performed by Barkhuus (2008). The focus on of this

paper is research on micro blogging and location based services via an application developed specifically

for this purpose, called Conecto. This application is phone based and gives users a chance to ‘tag’

locations and have the locations shared automatically on a phone. One of the motivations behind this

research was further exploration of the user’s ability to form a social “repartee” when using these kinds

of LBS applications .


awareness services.


This research deals more with the perception of LBS, and is groundwork for many other kinds of LBS

research. Here authors examine why Location Based Services (LBS) have not become the widely popular

platform as predicted as well as further define the term LBS. They focus on the perceptions of users on

usability and usefulness of LBS, and coin several key definitions such as location tracking and location

aware services. Location-tracking services give information about a user’s location to someone other

than the user, with an external third party requesting and receiving location information about another

entity. Location-aware services, on the other hand, provide the person requesting information with

personal location data, and the location-information cause is the recipient himself. A car navigation

system is a location- aware service while a UPS’s truck-tracking system, where location information for

each truck is used to increase fleet management efficiency, is a location-tracking service. The

29

experiment conducted within this paper was aimed to measure , usefulness, performance, and ease of-

use perceptions relating to certain tasks given to users with and without forms of LBS.

2i. A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding

Service


The research performed in this paper features a tour guiding system based on a space-identifying

ubiquitous infrastructure, the Ubiquitous Tour Guide. The aim of this system is to introduce many art

works in a large commercial complex in Japan. Aside this, the infrastructure built for the research is also

able to supply detailed navigation services. The authors describe their system in great detail, and

perform several user test in real environments to confirm its functionality and effects. The research

performed in this paper was motivated by the development of said system, which was aimed to be able

to provide detailed navigation service as well as art introduction service in both indoor and outdoor

environments, as well as guiding users to reach the art works they show an interest for.

Observation 3: Set up of research Sub questions: What were the limitations?

Most of the papers reviewed had relatively small numbers of participants. The number of participants

went from 10 being the smallest to 58 being the largest. The research techniques used include self-

assessment surveys, interviews, diaries, in situ observation, interviews, questionnaires and the

experience sampling method, as well as usage of external diary and questionnaire applications such as

‘Flexifil’. For one study, Iachello (2005), it can be said that the major limitation of this research was the

relatively small number of participants, as well as the timeframe chosen for the interviews. It included

11 participants in total, with men, women and children participating. Performed in a period of 14 to 18

days, the participants were interviewed for 45 minutes after a week of using the application, and then

for an hour at the end of the study. The authors, however, suggest no obvious limitation in the paper.

Some research, such as the one conducted by Brown (2007) differ in scale, and though the scale of this

experiment is larger to that of the one in Iachello (2005), and the interviews were performed on a

weekly basis, it is worth noting that the nature of the application in this research was very specific with

very different research goals – therefore the limitations criteria that might apply to other works.

30

Certain research such as conducted by Tsai (2009) and Junglas (2008) feature large numbers of

participants. Where Tsai (2009) had limitations that regard the prototype rather than the research

method, Junglas (2008) points out that the laboratory setting of their research as a positive. It can be

debated, however, that this can also be a limitation. Furthermore the application in Tsai (2009)

functions via Facebook, and the user was demanded to install it himself – a definitive drawback.

Barkhuus (2008) performed a study featuring 11 participants, with ages varying from early twenties to

early thirties, were part of this study. The length of this study was two weeks. The method chosen was

interviews, one after a week of using the app and the other after the completion of the two week

period. Interestingly, the researches chose to also perform diary fill in’s utilizing a tool called ‘Felxifil’ to

generate questions based on the phones activity. The use of this application could be considered a

limitation, though no issues with its operation were reported in the paper. Certain research, such as the

one by Antony (2007) specifically remarked on the limitations, in this case the fact participants were

only asked about their location information when they reported using an electronic device. Another

limitation was the fact the participant body was not considered representative, even representative of

college students – which all the participants were. Representativity was also questioned in research by

Ishikawa (2009), where the authors point out that students are not necessarily a representative group,

making their choice of participants a limitation. Research, such as conducted by Consolvo (2005), was

multi-phased and featured participants creating buddy lists, participants answering to in situ requests

from their social relations, as well as the Experience Sampling Method (more details below). Again,

while the authors give no concrete mention to the limitations of their study in their paper, we can

speculate that the number of participants as well as the multi-phased nature of the research leaves a lot

of room for issues – from variance in behavior due to the knowledge of being monitored to issues with

the ‘’buddies’’ lists, and so on. The ESM method could also be seen as a form of limitation. The lack of a

controlled environment, combined with a small number of participants and a lack of diversity in data

collection could be considered a limitation for some of the reviewed research, such as Bessho (2008).

When aggregating the research setup of all of the papers reviewed, it can be noted that the number of

participants was mostly small, rarely going beyond thirty participants except in certain cases such as for

Junglas (2008). Most of research reviewed had limitations as far as the representativity of their

participant body, with some authors going as far as to specifically point this out as a limitation and flaw.

Other limitations, while not mentioned by the authors, concern the various research methods utilized,

and their lack or surplus of effectiveness. While mentioned, time constraints were not a lingering issue

in any of the research performed. Technical issues regarding the user’s relation to the LBS were noted as

31

limitations, and certain research methodologies. It is therefore suggested to review the representativity

of the sample, the time constraints of the research and its reflection on the results, as well as demands

on the technical ability of the participants prior to conducting any kind of future research.

3a. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location



Research was performed by exposing two families with teenage children to Reno, the mentioned a peer-

to-peer, location-enhanced service for cell phones. The children were asked to contact one schoolmate

or friend in order to monitor usage with both peer and parent relationships. The children were all under

16. In order to participate, the required elements were: use of a cell phone for adult participants (to

lessen novelty effects), adults not in Information Technology-(IT) related occupations, at least one

parent working outside the home, and children attending school outside the home (to ensure mobility

was at minimum). The families were interviewed by phone, and then called in for a 60 minute session I

which they filled in surveys and release forms, compiled activity lists as well as possible places they

would wish to visit during the weeks that follow. These lists were, in turn, pre coded into the Reno

software. View Figure 5, Appendix.

Reno was used by the participants in a 14 to 18 day period. Participants mail surveys every other day,

featuring questions about their usage of Reno. These questions included whether the participants have

left the phone behind, when and why they had requested or disclosed a location, if they had ignored

requests, delayed responding, responded something different from their real location or disclosed

location information in some other way than with Reno. 11 participants in total, 6 of which were female,

were involved. Adult participants all owned cell phones, as well as 4 teenagers.

Upon starting, and every 24 hours from then on, status messages were sent to the researchers with

information like messages sent and received, cumulative running time and cumulative time in unlabeled

locations. These messages were in SMS form. The application also sent location disclosure samples daily,

with four being the maximum number per day. Communication activity, the creation or deletion of

places and contacts and information application malfunctions were all kept within the phones internal

log.

32

Each participant for was also interviewed for 30-45 minutes after one week of use. There was a 60

minute interview at the end of the study as well. Certain aspects, such as privacy and deception were

monitored by keeping a log of disclosures in which the disclosed location differed from the most likely

location as calculated by the phone, and by asking specific questions in the email surveys and interviews.

Some of the items monitored were daily occurrences of:

– delayed answers (i.e., the user knowingly delays answering even if s/he could);

– Time-shifted answer (i.e., the answer describes a past or future location, but not the current location);

– ignored requests; and

– Explicit deception (e.g., sending an inaccurate location).

The interviews were formed with regards to the answers provided for the email surveys and status

messages sent back by the application. They Instant Reply List and the Waypoints function were only

activated after a week of deployment, coinciding with the interview that was performed after a week.

The participants were also asked to proclaim what Waypoints they would prefer other participants to

make for them, as well as on whose Instant Reply list they want to be.

3b. Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock


The research produced results from a trial of the Clock with five families (26 users) over a total period of

six months. The usage times varied from family to family, but overall 26 family members used it in a

range from 4 to 9 weeks. Participants hailed from the local Cambridge area, and at least three members

of the family owned cell phones, and possessed texting habits. Data on the results was garnered through

a series of weekly interviews that featured as many of the family members as possible. The questions

asked were centered on kinds of use, how the participants felt about their location being tracked and

have they sent any texts to the Clock itself. Other questions were aimed and finding out if, and how, the

massaging option merged with the families household activities. The participants were also given a

chance to voice their opinion on future devices and improvements. All interviews were audio-taped for

later review and the interviews transcribed.

33



Locyoution and its usage was examined in a field investigation in which 56 Participants, solicited from a

university population, were asked to install and use Locyoution over a period of four weeks. The study

consisted of four phases: a pre-study questionnaire, Locyoution installation and troubleshooting,

Locyoution deployment, and an exit survey. Phase 1 had participants completing a questionnaire and

filling in study consent forms. In the second phase participants were given a Locyoution username and

password, and installation tutorials. In the third phase participants were required to use Locyoution. The

patterns of usage of Locyoution were determined by analyzing server logs. In the last phase participants

needed to complete an exit survey on their experience with Locyoution. Participants were split in two

conditions: The No Feedback condition, where information about who had requested their location was

not received, and the Feedback condition, in which the participants could view their location disclosure

history. Participants were provided with online instructions for participation, no physical meetings or lab

sessions were conducted. Participation were in charge of downloading and installing the Locyoution

software and adding the Facebook application.

3d. From Awareness to Repartee: Sharing Location within Social Groups


Users were studied during their everyday lives, with methods like fill-in diaries and interviews being

utilized to monitor with a minimum amount of intrusion. For daily inquiries a diary tool known as

‘Flexifil’ was used, which creates questions based on the users activity with the phone, like incoming

calls and text messages (this tool was also used by Scott Sherwood, Stuart Reeves, Julie Maitland, Alistair

Morrison, Matthew Chalmers in their paper Adapting Evaluation to Study Behavior in Context) . This

diary was required to be filled in on a daily basis. Two groups were studied, all of which work and study

in and around the area of Glasgow, UK. The first group was made out of six young professionals and

graduate students in their early twenties, four of who knew each other from an activity club and two

who were partners of participants. The other group was a set of five close colleagues in their early

thirties who also socialized outside of their work in a large technology company. The actual study lasted

two weeks, with two rounds of interviews, one after a week of using the app and the other after the

completion of the two weeks. This is accompanied by the before mentioned diaries and routine

34

checkups to make sure there are no technical issues. Log data was also recorded, including records of

calls between the group members, text messages stripped of content for anonymity, participants’ profile

and locations. Also recorded was whether or not the participants set their location manually and, if so,

for what duration.



15 male and 15 female were originally included in this 2004 study, gathered via a website and college

bulletin board. All of the participants were undergraduate students, with the age of 20 being average.

One participant male participant dropped out during the study, and four others, one male, three female,

did not answer an adequate number of location requests to be included in the analyses reported here;

these participants’ data are excluded from the results, leaving a total of 25 participants. Each participant

was given a pager and a questionnaire notebook, which they agreed to carry for seven consecutive days.

Upon the end of this time, each participant was interviewed and debriefed. The participants provided

conflict times, during which they did not want to be paged—for example, when they were asleep or in

an examination. View Figure 8, Appendix. Outside these times, each participant received up to seven

pager alerts per day at random times. Each alert occurred at least 45 minutes after the preceding alert,

to prevent the alerts from being too intrusive. The study featured several limitations, pointed out by the

authors themselves. The first limitation is the fact users were queried about willingness to share

location information only when participants reported using an electronic device. Considering the arrival

of sensor and other new technologies that will most probably enable location sensing capabilities

regardless of active usage of devices, and the fact environment-embedded sensors could capture a

user’s location even when they are not carrying devices; it could be concluded the study does not fully

capture the entire range of experiences in which location privacy is relevant. The biggest limitation of

this study is the fact the sample is derived and consisted solely from undergraduate college students,

which is not a representative sample of all users, or even of all college students. At each page, the

questionnaire contained questions about current activities, location, communications usage (wired,

wireless, Voice over Internet Protocol, and other communications devices), how many people they were

with, and their willingness to share location information The questionnaire included a total of 203

possible questions per pager alert, but the number of questions varied according to the participant’s

activities. For example, at each page in which participants reported using an electronic device (any type,

35

though most often participants were using a laptop computer), they were asked whether they would be

willing to share their location. An example question would be “Which, if any, of the following would you

be willing to inform of your current location (for example, GPS coordinates or building name)?” The

answer options include: anyone who asked (yes/no); anyone who sent email to you (yes/no); or anyone

from the list you specified (yes/no).


awareness services.


58 subjects were divided into two groups, with most of subjects was between the ages of 19 and 23.

One group was equipped with wireless PDA’s with location tacking and aware services and the other

equipped with same devices with wireless connectivity. The groups were given various LBS related tasks,

such as finding a moving person or office, or checking the weather, and then monitored for

performance, usefulness, and ease-of- use perceptions associated with the tasks by asking the

participants for their opinions on said items. Although the authors claim that the fact they examined LBS

in a laboratory setting is beneficial, as it that was not affected by slow response times or imprecise

localization information, it can be argued that this could be a limitation. Removing real-world technical

problems did allow the researchers to us to focus on the pure effects of LBS on users’ perceptions, but it

could have also taken away the ‘’genuine’’ reactions from the participants.

3g. Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share


16 non-technical participants were included in this research. The research consisted of 3 phases. Phase 1

was based around investigating the structure of participants’ social networks and how they thought they

would use location-enhanced computing. The second phase consisted of participants responding in situ

to hypothetical queries for their location from their social relation, during a two week period. The final

phase featured reflection by the participants on their experiences and attitudes of said services and

location based computing. Participants also had to create a “buddy list” of individuals that they would

be willing to engage in information exchange about location, which consist of a maximum of 17 people

36

extracted from the social networks of said participants. Certain social groups such as spouse/significant

other, two family members of the participant’s choosing, manager, two co-workers of the participant’s

choosing, and up to 11 others from the participant’s social network are to be included in this list.

During this phase a differentiation was made between a single and standing request. The single request

allows for persons on a buddy list to make one-at-a time requests for another user’s location, while the

standing request option utilized a less known model where a request could be sent to anyone on the

buddy list for the requester to be informed whenever the user gets to a location. View Figure 9,

Appendix. Phase 2 included an experience sampling method (ESM). These included questions such as

“Where are you?”, “What are you doing?”, “With whom are you?” And disclosure based on location

based on hypothetical requests from a social relation from his or her buddy list. All the questions were

personalized using information from phase 1, such as replacing colleague from work with an actual

name from the buddy list or adding answers that users might have implied they might answer in phase 1

(such as answering “drinking alcohol” to the question “what are you doing?”) A nightly voicemail diary

study was done by the participants to report any events that were not typical for that specific weekday.

The final phase consisted of one-on-one interaction in a lab environment, including end-of-study

interviews, edited exercised from the first phase and an altered version of the privacy classification

survey.

3h. Wayfinding and art viewing by users of a mobile system and a guidebook


The study performed within this research consisted of 18 men and 2 women, college students, which

were divided into two groups, with one using solely the guidebook to navigate, while the other use the

art tour system. During 75 minutes, the groups were asked to view 13 artwork pieces within the

museum, utilizing said means (guidebook and art tour system) for navigation. An researcher followed

the participants around, monitoring their way-finding abilities and asking questions upon viewing that

relate to satisfaction and knowledge on said art pieces. A series of research techniques were then

utilized to ascertain the differences between the two groups, with questionnaires and self-reports

included, all in the aim of examining the following differences: Artwork satisfaction, understanding of



37

the artwork, retention of memory for artworks, direction sense, level of general interest in art ( Ishikawa

et al., 2009). One obvious limitation is the fact the students are not necessarily a representative group.

3i. . A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding

Service


The Ubiquitous Tour Guide developed by the authors was researched in an experiment on its navigation

capability. The aim was to determine how smooth the navigation is and how well it functions in general.

10 Participants unfamiliar with the Tokyo Midtown were given the Ubiquitous Communicator and left to

perform the tour, beginning at the tour desk and finishing at the same location. To finish the tour

several navigation tasks, such as moving through specific segments, needed to be performed. The

participants were monitored by an examiner, who in turn measured three values: the ability of the

participant to reach the destination, the number of times the participant deviated from the specified

route and the time he or she needed to reach each task destination. During this research 166 samples

were obtained.

Observation 4: Research results

The research conducted within all the papers featured in this review yielded various kinds of results. The

wide field of research covered a slew of topics, from behavioral to emotional and so on. To exemplify,

research featured in the paper Location family values: A field trial of the whereabouts clock shown that

an LBS such as the Whereabouts Clock can help in the planning capabilities within a family, and can

provide a sense of connectedness and togetherness (Brown et al.,2007)

Overall, findings seem to indicate that users to not demand, or specifically need automatic features in

LBS systems, as well as that users do not utilize LBS for deception as much as was expected (Iachello et

al., 2005). Location Based Services were shown to provide comfort, and increase organizational ability

within a community. User location disclosure increased the more feedback the system offered, and

Anthony (2007) added that disclosure was much more likely to occur with persons on customized lists.

Acceptance of technology was also highly related to technical ability of the user (Tsai et al, 2009). LBS

were largely used for meeting co-ordination, and the importance of personalization to users was


38

deemed high (Barkhuus et al.,2008). Interestingly, privacy classification of the user did not seem to

accurately signify how users behave when prompter for location disclosure by social relations , as

determined by the Westin/Harris Privacy Segmentation Model, was not a good predictor of how users

would respond to requests for their location from social relations, but mood was confirmed to be of

effect on location disclosure willingness (Consolvo et al.2005)

Concerning navigation, failure to understand the LBS system directions proved to be the biggest reason

for failed navigation (Ishikawa et al., 2009). Most navigation issues were easy to resolve, according to

Paay (2007), but it is important to note they did occur.

Aggregating all the results and finding featured in the reviewed papers is a daunting task due to

different nature of the researches. However, it is possible to conclude that location disclosure requires

levels of familiarity with both the system and the persons to whom the data is perceived as disclosed.

Deception is not as frequent as generally considered. Most mistakes in LBS application use stem from

misinformation, which originates in problems with the interface rather than the nature of the service

itself, especially when concerning tour-guide systems. Though LBS are considered useful, some

trepidation remains over privacy issues, but allowing customization seems to resolve any lingering issues

users have with privacy.

4a. Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location



The researchers came to several conclusions. Firstly, they claim that automatic features are not needed,

and so are not a priority for social mobile applications, partly due to the fact the participants did not

exhibit a desire for them. Contrary to assumptions none of the participants claimed they have been

overwhelmed by messages they have gotten via Reno. Three participants alone turned on any

automated features. When asked about the reasons for not configuring Waypoints and the Instant Reply

List, only one participant referred to possible issues with privacy. All others indicated that they were not

entirely confident of how the features would function in practice, and they did not feel setting up

Waypoints or the Instant Reply List was necessarily needed. None of the teenage participants set up

Waypoints or Instant Replies. Secondly, the study showed that Reno proved to be useful in controlling

environmental privacy, where the ability to know where someone is without interrupting them with a

call was invaluable, such as a school or meeting situation. When concerning deception using Reno, a far


39

lower rate than expected by the researcher was exhibited by the participants. The researchers theorized

that the reason for this could be due to the timing of the study, as it was performed during a busy part

of the school year. Their assumption is then that the normally rebellious teenagers that would be prone

to lying have been forced to be honest due to circumstance – the need for the parents to know where

they are, as they have no car and need rides. Therefore the length of the study might not be sufficient,

the researchers conclude. View Figure 10, 11 Appendix.

Cases of blatant deception relating to location were relatively rare, both in the ESM study and in the

deployment; however, participants in both studies pointed out that in those occurrences, having the

ability to deceive, “stretch the truth,” or deny a reply would be important, leading the researchers to

conclude that communication technology should support plausible deniability, achieved by maintain

certain imperfections in communication, for example. Due to the fact Reno operates on a family and

friends basis, and that the place names can be controlled by the users, most of the participants had

voiced no major concern on privacy issues. Participants perceived privacy concerns as co-related with

broader demand for control and application utility. Though location requests from unknown people

were unanimously rejected by all participants, a number of teenager participants pointed out that they

would feel comfortable disclosing their location to any of new friends who would make the effort to ask.

This study also demonstrated that activity and place are often used together or interchangeably for

realizing communication goals and that the choice of what to share is a function of, at least, the activity

being achieved with the communication. The study also implied that Automated Functions should not

be a priority for design, as all the participants in this study had a preference to maintaining control over

the messages their phones had sent. All participants viewed Reno as an enhanced messaging

application instead of simply a location-enhanced service.



According to the research, the WAC was useful in aiding the betterment of planning within the family,

such as dinner time and when certain members are coming home. The WAC’s functions also allowed a

signal of location change prior to the change actually occurring, such as a person changing his location to

HOME to signify he or she is on his way and that the other members should ‘’put the kettle on’’ (Brown

et al. 2007). The messaging option served to add more detail to such endeavors, as well as call to action

40

such as asking for a phone call. The Clock was also deemed reassuring by a large part of the participating

families, as well as providing a feeling of connectedness and togetherness. The Clock was also

sometimes used to display affection, with the messaging service being utilized for touching messages

such as saying goodnight to the whole family. The limited number of monikers allowed for the locations,

such as HOME, WORK and SCHOOL did not dissuade the participants from ‘’misnaming’’ locations in

order to be creative, such as naming the train station SCHOOL or walking the dog as WORK.



A total of 233 requests were made to locate 56 participants, which is around 4 requests per participant,

over the two weeks in which the application was used.. Results indicate that users of Locyoution were

concerned about their privacy prior to using the technology. After using it for a month, the participants’

privacy concerns were lessened slightly. Participants were much more comfortable, in general, with

friends finding their locations as compared to acquaintances, and acquaintances as compared to

strangers. According to the results of the exit survey, a differentiation was registered between privacy

concerns in the Feedback and the No Feedback conditions. Participants with feedback were far more at-

ease with being located by friends and strangers, compared to their perceived levels of comfort at the

start of the study. This was based on results of paired T-tests by condition. Participants in the Feedback

condition had the assumption they would be at-ease with being located by friends based on time-based

rules. After using Locyoution, they became much more comfortable about being located by friends.

Participants in the Feedback condition were not comfortable being located by strangers, even with time

restrictions.

41

The number of hours per week that a user’s rules allowed him or her to be viewable at the conclusion of the study are displayed

above split by the Feedback and No Feedback conditions.

After using the system, they became slightly less uncomfortable about being located by strangers at the

time allowed by their rules. Results on privacy have shown that users have privacy concerns about

sharing their location, but experience with the system slightly reduced their privacy concerns. Users who

had received feedback become more comfortable with sharing their location information with friends

and strangers. Users in the Feedback condition had a lesser degree of concern for their privacy after

using the technology. Overall the results indicate that users want to know who has been viewing them,

but that for those who did not receive feedback; more users were not sure if they would be more willing

to share their locations with others under any terms. Most participants would prefer an opaque system

to having the ability to know who has been viewing their profile. Users in the study seem to feel

comfortable with the levels of control they possess to actually use the system, but they also noted that

they wished they were given access to more expressive rules. Participants were generally satisfied with

time-based rules, but indicated their preference to location-based rules and group-based rules. Mobile

location sharing system users usually make their locations visible for a more hours, if time-based rules

are used, if they are able to track who has been checking their locations. Peers significantly influence

whether or not a user will adopt and continue mobile location-sharing technology usage. The more

technically savvy someone is has an effect on adoption mobile location-sharing technology. To

summarize the findings, the authors concluded that providing feedback to users about when and by

whom they have been queried tends to make them more comfortable about sharing location

information. Also highly lauded is the fact that feedback is a desired feature in such a system and makes

users more willing to share their location information.

42



The Connecto application was initially used for call co-ordination, with users checking when to call or

not to call depending on the profile the person they want to call is using. The location of the person

wished to be called was also critical to participants call co-ordination, as well as general organization: for

example, if a user can perceive another as home, he can then organize dinner accordingly. Co-

coordinating meetings and such matters was made easier by utilizing the application. Geographical

references, locations descried through personal meaning, locations named by activity and hybrids of

said classes are all different ways users chose to tag their locations. Users also tended to change their

profile setting names do more personalized forms, such as changing 'silent' to 'shhhh'. Whilst it was

predicted that user might want to manually set location to conserve privacy, this research showed that

it was better used for 'freezing' location, such as leaving the location set on ''on the road'' instead of the

location constantly changing. The manual setting was highly appreciated by participants, and was not,

contrary to popular belief, used primarily for deception and lying about location. The ability to name

location also allowed participants to add context to their location, such as marking ones location as

''drinking'' to invite friend instead of simply leaving the location name as is. The participants utilized the

naming feature in creative ways, striving to add a ''storytelling'' aspect to location marking. Participants

used the awareness of others’ activities for both practical issues as described above and social

navigation, such as serendipitous meetings.



Participants were willing to share location information for half of all requests. In general, participants

were significantly more likely to disclose location information with people in the list they specified than

with email contacts or with anyone who simply asks. In addition, participant’s willingness to share with

email requesters was statistically much greater than with anyone who asked when at home, in the

library, or at other public place. Contrastingly, participants were more willing to share when they were

at home or in the library compared to when they were in other public places or at friends’ households.

Nine participants answered no to all location sharing questions, with all requester categories, every time

and were labeled consistent- private (CP) users by the researchers. 10 participants answered at every

43

request that they would share their location with requesters who were on the list they specified, and

were labeled the consistent share- with-friends (CSWF) users. Different from both types of consistent

users were the six participants who varied in their willingness to share location information with

different requester categories, depending on the situation. These were labeled variable-privacy (VP)

users

VP users’ willingness to share with the three different requester categories according to place.

When at friends’ homes, CSWF users were significantly less willing than VP users to share location

information. There were no statistical differences between CSWF and VP users in willingness to share

when in the library or in other public places. VP users were most willing to share with requesters in

their list and with anyone who asked when they were in the library—a public space. These users were

also most willing to share with email contacts when in other public places, such as restaurants, other

public buildings, or outdoor areas. VP users were not willing to share with anyone who asked when at

friends’ home, but were willing to share with anyone who asked when they were at home in just over 20

percent of requests. View Figure 12, Appendix.

44

Participants were less willing to reveal location information when they were with others (typically

friends) than when they were alone. The influence of being with friends was statistically stronger when

participants were at home. When VP users were alone at home, they were willing to share their location

with anyone who asked for 25 percent of the requests, with email contacts for 39 percent of the

requests, and with their list for 79 percent of the requests. When VP users were alone and not at home,

including when they were exercising, in class, at work, eating in a restaurant, or in transit, they were the

most willing to reveal location to people on their list (85 percent), followed by anyone who asked (59

percent), and then email contacts (37 percent). When VP users were with friends and not at home

(typically engaged in a social activity such as at a sporting event), they were never willing to reveal

location to just anyone who asked, but they were sometimes willing to reveal location to email contacts

(about 25 percent of requests), often willing to reveal location to people on their list (75 percent of

requests). When these users were with friends at home (for example, watching television or a DVD,

playing video games, or studying), they were occasionally willing to reveal location to anyone who asked

(6 percent), and somewhat more willing to reveal location to email contacts (29 percent) and their list

(53 percent). CSWF users had significantly lower levels of concern about the privacy of email compared

to both CP and VP users. VP users had the highest level of privacy concerns for both email and instant

messaging, and these levels were significantly higher than for CSWF users. VP users also rated the

importance of email and instant-messaging security higher than both CP and CSWF users.


awareness services.


Location-tracking capabilities exhibited high levels of perceived usefulness and ease of use, and the

performance levels of participants with these capabilities were higher than those with only wireless

capabilities. Enthusiasm and concern were both voiced by participants over the ability to track location

with relative ease, with interviews displaying participant fascination but also worry over the fact their

movement could be tracked. Participants that used the location-aware services were more convinced of

the usefulness than their other counterparts. Both groups performed similarly though. Subjects tended

to perform the same, irrespective of whether or not LBS were available.

45



The two major conclusions are that participants want to disclose what they think would be useful to the

requester or deny the request, and that participants’ privacy classification, as determined by the

Westin/Harris Privacy Segmentation Model, was not a good predictor of how they would respond to

requests for their location from social relations. The Westin/Harris Privacy Segmentation Model divides

participants into fundamentalists, pragmatists and unconcerned. fundamentalists have “very high

privacy concern” and are “passionate about what they *see+ as business threats to their consumer

privacy, and *favor+ active government regulation of business and information practices.” (Consolvo et.al

2005) Pragmatists, who are a “middle group with balanced privacy attitudes,” “ask what benefits they

get as consumers in sharing their personal information to balance against risks to their privacy interests,

and they usually favor a mixture of government and private solutions.” (Consolvo et.al 2005)

Unconcerned individuals have “little to no concern about consumer privacy issues.” (Consolvo et.al

2005) This research seemed to show that the most important requests were who was requesting, why

the requester desired the location of the participant and what is the detail is most useful to said

requester. The participants tended to either disclose the most useful details about their location or none

at all. Overall, participants were willing to disclose something about their location most of the time they

received a request The findings also seem to imply that blurring location to protect one’s privacy from

social relations is not needed, or at least is not something participants thought to use, with vague

information given out relatively sparingly, confirming this claim. Participant choosing not to disclose

their location mostly used this denial as a method of sending a message that the request was not

appropriate. Disclosure to friends and family was much more frequent than to that of co-workers and

managers. The participants feelings about the requester, as well as their opinion on what the reason for

the requesters query is, are largely influential to the decision do disclose or not disclose information.

Location of disclosure and participant mood also had significant effect, with participants at work, doing

chores or being depressed most likely to disclose information. Conversely, participants that are studying

or engaged in conversation, as well as angry, are least likely to disclose information. On average,

46

unconcerned participants disclosed something 58% of the time (with a range of 85%), pragmatist

participants disclosed 88% of the time (range of 25%), and fundamentalist participants disclosed 70% of

the time (range of 19%). Though pragmatists behaved as expected, unconcerned and fundamentalists

did not. To exemplify, two participants who were least wanted to disclose their location (12% and 41%)

were both unconcerned, and fundamentalists usually decided to disclose their location. Most rejected

request stemmed from the fact the requests themselves were deemed non-appropriate or strange, such

as request from co-workers in non-work hours. Many participants mentioned that they did not want to

disclose location to anyone when they were busy doing chores, usually with the exception of their

partner.



During the tour, people from the mobile group were disoriented 27 times, as compared to 17 times of

the people from the guidebook group. Out of these, 15 cases were due to inability to understand the

system’s provided directions. There were also cases of where problems comparing the provided picture

on the screen and the real one. In case of the guidebook, seven cases were caused by map reading

issues, and in the case of four people there was trouble in understanding which floor what was located

at. The same flooring error led to a larger number of errors in map sketching when concerning the

guidebook group. View Figure 13, Appendix.



47

There was no large difference in performance between the two groups when analyzing their perception

of the surrounding scenes during the tour, or with satisfaction with the artworks. The guidebook users

did seem to have viewed more photograph and movie contents than the mobile users. People with a

lower interest in art tended to view less when in the mobile group than in the guidebook group.

Otherwise, when concerning interest levels, the groups were pretty equal. Relative equality was also

achieved in correctly remembering the photographs. It was, however, later established that participants

who toured with a mobile terminal tended to forget about the artworks as time passed, whereas those

who toured with a guidebook did not.

4i A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding

Service


All the navigation tasks featured in this experiment were successfully completed by all participants,

without external aid. There were 27 occurrences where participants deviated from the designated

route, but all of the said participants were able to return to the right path by following a recalculated

route.

The experimental result of the number of successful navigation and out-of-route cases, and average time ratio.

48

The average walking time of four persons that knew the best possible route in advance was recorded,

and used as an ideal sample to compare to the times of the participants. The ratio of the resultant time

compared to the ideal time was recorded and analyzed, with shorter task that last less than a minute

eliminated from this record.

The distribution of the ratio of the spent time to the ideal time.

The average ratio of the 97 samples was 1.21, and its variance is 0.0326. Table 1 the timing result of 10

examinees is shown, revealing that visitors spent about 20 % longer to walk than the ideal time spent by

familiar visitors to Tokyo Midtown. As shown in the histogram, 91.8 percent of the sample ratios are less

than 1.5. The authors observe that ‘’ most of the out-of-route cases were noticed by the examinees at

once to recover to the designated route, but a few cases were not and new routes were recalculated for

such cases. Therefore, it is considered that the larger samples were mainly caused by the latter

49

infrequent cases because the walking path itself became much longer than the ideal one in such a case”

(Bessho et al., 2008).

Observation 5: Remarks on future research and the future of said technology

Sub question: What future directions do they stem from this work?

Though most of the research papers have been scarce in their suggestions on future research, some

data was given on this topic, while the rest can be concluded from their findings. Researching to what

degree are automatic functions unnecessary is one option, suggested by Iachello (2005). Looking into

integration of disclosure history (Janice Y. Tsai et al, 2009) and re-analyzing population to further

examine their sharing habits (Henderson & Kotz, 2007) are also promising future research options. The

E911 protocol is significant to consider in all future research that concerns the U.S (Junglas & Watson,

2008). The Westin/Harris Privacy Segmentation Model and its validity were put in question (see the

relevant section below for more detail) (Consolvo et al., 2005). Analyses of all the suggested future

researches leads to the conclusion that the authors either demand the same research be performed

again, but on a larger scope, or lament the non-availability of certain information and would suggest

further research on those topics. Overall, however, there seems to be a demand for further research in

user perception of an LBS. Intrusiveness and privacy are issues present in all of the works reviewed, and

even if briefly addressed, are given high regard. Reliability, usability and sample representativity are

recurring issues that are mentioned. Therefore, it is logical to suggest that future research should not

necessarily focus in a novel approach, but refining the already tried research methods. Some

suggestions could involve having more participants which are more representative in relation to the

target group, prolonging the duration of experiments or broadening the scope of research by varying the

location (the Medialab could be very useful in this regard). Personalization, user interaction with the

LBS, privacy preferences and the amount of customization of the LBS application – these are promising

areas for research, with reciprocations for all of the reviewed research, from the ones concerning

navigation to ones concerning the ubiquitous nature of LBS. An example would be an experiment that

looks into the amount of customization the user is given and its relation to privacy issues. Another

would be the consequence of location disclosure system customization to navigation using LBS – seeing

how the ability to customize the service reflects the user’s ability to navigate; for example, does naming

locations differently allow for an easier interaction with the LBS and quicker navigation? Finally, as

50

mentioned, privacy and intrusiveness remain an issue, so an experiment that tests varying degrees of

intrusiveness and its effect on user interaction with LBS would also be warranted.

5a.Control, deception and communication: Evaluating the deployment of a location



Considering the participants did not use automatic functions and provided strong evidence suggesting

that even in a “complete” social network automatic functions would be unnecessary in the face of loss

of control, the paper implies this area could be researched more to conclude to what degree is

automatic functions an unnecessary function. A similar study to this one but with a longer duration is

suggested by the researchers as the next step in researching all of the covered topics in this paper.



The authors of this paper suggest that understanding the value of location-in-interaction may lead to

technical design distinct from optimizing the underlying technology, such as less accurate but more

meaningful location information – therefore implying further research in this topic is warranted. They

also hint at further working on redesigning the WAC while learning from the results of this study. They

consider giving families more flexibility in labeling locations and move from a clock to a watch.



The authors suggest building disclosure history feedback into future systems as well as urging the

invention of methods to define more expressive privacy preferences, as well as offering a diverse palette

of rule types to govern the disclosure of personal location information, this empowering people to

protect their own privacy. According to the authors, the adoption of a mobile location-sharing

technology depends highly on technical ability. One of the items implied in the paper is that developers

need maintain a positive buzz about their services to keep users and their peers enthusiastic about

location-based technologies.

51



This research was aimed at pointing to a gap in studies of real-life use of LBS applications in terms of

open location sharing, as well as exploring the social interaction around the application. The paper

suggest that researching technologies in this manner can and should open up the research agenda to a

more encompassing set of technologies. Subsequent studies should, the paper suggests, add different

functionalities and features for comparison and more detailed findings (L. Barkhuus et al.,2008)



The authors of this paper specifically claim their usage of college students is not a representative sample

of all users, or even of all college students. They therefore imply that future research, including studies

of representative samples of the population such as in survey research, must examine whether

population groups vary in their concerns about, or willingness to share, location information. Another

important area to be studied is further exploration of how and for whom privacy preferences are

context dependent. The authors perceive a challenge in develop interfaces that can adequately control

information commensurate with user preferences but that do not constantly interrupt users, and advise

further research to better understand location privacy behavior across a broader sample population, as

well as the need to explore privacy behavior across a larger range of context sharing technology.


awareness services.


The future of LBS, according to this research, will be largely dependent on the development of solutions

for the privacy issue that seem to be one of the technologies downfalls. Another point of consideration

is the completion of E911 implementation, for which full compliance in the US is expected in 2012. The

52

E911 is a new model of telephony that features location tracking for any emergency 911 call. This is

relevant, and applicable, to the US only (Iris A. Junglas & Richard T. Watson, 2008).



Suggested research includes exploration of the introduction of social ramifications in social relation

disclosure, and the balance between a system that the user controls and can interrupt the user and one

that relies on a priori preference configuration. The Westin/Harris Privacy Segmentation Model seems

to require further investigation as well.



Due to the fact that more errors in navigation were made by people utilizing the mobile-art tour system

than the guidebook, more research in precision and reliability of such Location Based Service (LBS) is

probably warranted, as well as the usability and HCI aspects of said services. This researched showed

that this type of mobile orientation method is helpful for dealing with the issue of remembering

locations on wrong floors etc. Further research is suggested on the effect of small screens of the mobile

units on the wayfinding behavior of the user. As participants’ configurational understanding of the

environment was not strictly examined, more in-depth research in whether this type of spatial

understanding is affected by different navigational media is a suggested area for future research. The

effect of technological novelty (or rather the lack of effect) on attention attraction will also probably be

looked into with more detail. More thorough research on the various aspects of evaluations of art and

art information will probably be required to supplement this entire study.

5i. A Space-Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for a Tour-Guiding

Service




53

The authors suggest that various kinds of place-based services can be constructed on the basis of the

infrastructure they have developed. They hint at their future plans which include integration of a

different e different place-based services within this existing system, such as shopping assistance and

navigation to the nearby rest rooms. The authors also conclude that their system is user-friendly

towards persons with disabilities, and that it opens up multiple commercial opportunities.

Observation, additional : Location Based Services best practices

(Tsai, Kelley, Cranor, & Sadeh, 2010)

Guidelines were issued by International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry in

order to assist providers of LBS in the protection of user privacy. It is based on two Fair Information

Principles (FIPs), user notice and consent. The guidelines include:

- Notice: Providers of LBS have to first inform users as to how their location information will be

used ,protected and disclosed. This allows the user to make a decision on using the LBS based on this

information, as well as authorizing any disclosure.

- Consent: If the user decides to use an LBS, or authorize the disclosure of location

information, the user must have choices on whether or when location information will be

disclosed to third parties. The user must be enabled to revoke any authorization of that kind.

The CTIA guidelines do not determine the “form, placement, manner of delivery or content of

notices” . Most providers tend to provide their statements regarding notice and consent in their

posted privacy policies or terms of service.

54

CONCLUSION & DISCUSSIONS

5a. Conclusion

Analyzing each separate aspect of the research found in the reviewed paper has allowed for an easier

outlook on LBS research as a whole. The technologies used were varied, with simple ones such as

wireless-PDA’s present in research that did not demand more elaborate prototypes, but others such LBS

as applications that integrate with Facebook were also present. A conclusion could be made that none

of the prototypes seem difficult to replicate. However, the papers that dealt with navigation using LBS,

such as Wayfinding and art viewing by users of a mobile system and a guidebook and A Space-

Identifying Ubiquitous Infrastructure and its Application for Tour-Guiding Service, would be difficult to

replicate, and the research there presented could only be re-created in environment such as the

Medialab, where the locations and artwork that those experiments featured could be virtually

simulated. It can be noted that most of the researches featured in this review had small participant

groups, which debatably hampered the representativity of their sample groups. It is also interesting to

note how most researches suggested more research into the cognitive and psychological, as well as

design and HCI aspects of LBS utilization.

To answer the main RQ’s of the thesis, it was important to examine a number of LBS research papers

and establish what the research trends are. Researching navigation with Location Based Service was one

major research theme. The other was how participants relate to location disclosure, from a variety of

angles: is there deception, how easily do they adopt this technology, how it applies to the lifestyle of

families, what are the other privacy issues. While privacy remains a very vibrant issue and is covered, at

least briefly, in almost all of the paper examined, it is not necessarily the central research subject for

most of these papers.

It is immediately apparent that there are several promising branches of LBS research when concerning

the MediaLab and its application. The most obvious case is with research dealing with navigation and

orientation when utilizing LBS, such as the ones performed in museums etc. The distinct advantages of

the Medialab, with their virtual reality options, become apparent when considering that all the

environments described in LBS navigation featuring papers, such as an art-gallery, for example, can be

emulated in the MediaLab environment. Obviously, research that features participants queried in their

55

daily lives, or whole-day interaction with an LBS, such as the one in …….Locating Family Values…. Is not

replicable in the Medialab, but many of the findings, such as the ones on privacy for example, can then

be applied to new experiments that can be performed in a controlled environment such as the

MediaLab is.

Another field of LBS research that is promising for application in the MediaLab is research on the

perception users have of location-tracing and LBS. These issues were explored in LOCATION-BASED

SERVICES: Evaluating user perceptions of location-tracking and location-awareness services, among

others, and with minor modifications, could probably be applied to the MediaLab. In effect, most

experiments that feature orientation as a tool for garnering results, be it on privacy or perception of use,

are perfectly suited for implementation within the MediaLab.

In conclusion, it is worth considering the results of all these papers in setting up any future LBS research

within the MediaLab, as even if the research itself does not feature the same set-up or goals, certain

parameters could be established by cooperation, as all of the papers deal with prominent issues within

Location Based Service research.

Reviewing both the chosen papers and the results of this thesis, it is clear that the MediaLab offers many

options when concerning LBS research. The most apparent one is the emulation of environments that

are featured in research on navigation and perception of usefulness, such as mentioned bellow. Simply

put, the MediaLab can create, or re-create any environment required virtually, therefore opening up a

window for a plethora of LBS research. For example, to create an art gallery and test out if participants

perceive the artwork differently when using LBS, the MediaLab would merely need to simulate the

gallery; instead of researchers having to move participants to that locations (if unavailable). While

research on, for example, sharing location within social groups, might be difficult to emulate in the

MediaLab, research on perceived usefulness, orientation and wayfinding and even privacy and

intrusiveness is a wide open field for the MediaLab, and would be advantageous to consider.

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5b Discussion

1. Reflections of this project from a personal viewpoint

While the LBS field seems focused, it is actually quite broad considering the wide range of factors

Location Based Services themselves feature: issues of navigation, privacy, perception, usefulness and

many more. This research has given me an opportunity to view the whole field of LBS from a more

analytical viewpoint, prompting me to ask questions such as “how can this particular LBS be applied in

future research?” or “how have the creators of this LBS dealt with the issue of privacy” for example. It

has proven difficult to aggregate all the knowledge gathered from various LBS research due to the sheer

amount of information, as editing it down proved troublesome. However, I believe this thesis functions

well as a summary of relevant information relation to each separate paper, as well as a useful tool for

someone looking for a ‘’bite sized’’ view on LBS research with which they can orient themselves with

before starting their own.

2. Limitations

As I have mentioned, the limitations of this paper are the sample size i.e. the number of papers

reviewed, and the amount of information presented as opposed to the information gathered. To put it

simply, it was difficult to choose a small number from such a large variety of papers on the subject, and

it was even more difficult to then compact this information so that the essence remains, but so that the

paper is in an acceptable format and length. These can, therefore, be considered the drawback and

limitations of this thesis, but they are by no means debilitating, nor do they lessen the value of the

information contained within.

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APPENDIX Figure 1: The art-information function provides the user with various contents about each artwork,

including text descriptions, photographs and movies. The user can access any information by clicking

tabs on the terminal screen.

Figure 2: The Locyoution”Home” interface, displayed in Facebook. It shows, by default, the user’s own

location, and presents a list of friends using Locyoution. This allows users to quickly query their friends’

locations without having to navigate to each of their Facebook profiles individually.

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Figure 3: The Locyoution “Who Has Viewed Me” interface.

Figure 4: The installation of ubiquitous markers deployed in a city as space-identifying devices.

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Figure 5: Graph depicting how often participants see each other. (Adults in darker circles.)

Figure 6: The Locyoution ”My Rules” interface

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Figure 7: Space-identifying model with three layers of devices, places and spatial semantics.

Figure 8: Pages answered and location requests made at various places.

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Figure 9:

Figure 10: Daily messages sent; family group aggregate.

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Figure 11: Volume of messages exchanged between pairs of participants

Figure 12:

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Figure 13:

Documents

Location Based Services - A Literature Review