Design of a Web-Based LBS Framework Addressing Usability, Cost, and Implementation Constraints

Abstract

This research investigates barriers that prevent Location Based Services (LBS) from reaching its full potential. The different constraints, including poor usability, lack of positioning support, costs, and integration difficulties are highlighted. A framework was designed incorporating components based on existing and new technologies that could help address the constraints of LBS and increase end-user acceptance. This research proposes that usability constraints can be addressed by adapting a system to user characteristics which are inferred on the basis of captured user context and interaction data. A prototype LBS system was developed to prove the feasibility and benefit of the framework design, demonstrating that constraints of positioning, cost, and integration can be overcome. Volunteers were asked to use the system, and to answer questions in relation to their proficiency and experience. User-feedback showed that the proposed combination of functionality was well-received, and the prototype was appealing to many users. Groundtruths from the survey were related back to data captured with a user monitoring component in order to investigate whether users can be classified according to their context and how they interact. The results have shown that statistically significant relationships exist, and that by using the C4.5 decision-tree, computer proficiency can be estimated within one class-width in 76.7% of the cases. These results suggest that it may be possible to build a user-model to estimate computer proficiency on the basis of user-interaction data. The user model could then used to improve usability through adaptive user-specific customisations.

A Study on the Effects of Sales Promotion on Consumer Involvement and Purchase Intention in Tourism Industry

“…It was mainly used for understanding personal consumption behaviors and decision processes. Delfos, Tan & Veebebdaal (2010) proposed that involvement was personal perception of an event under specific time and situations. Kao (2011) mentioned that involvement could affect consumer purchase decision and could be a moderator on the correlations between different variables and Purchase Intention.…”

Enhancing accessibility to web mapping systems with technology-aligned adaptive profiles

“…These profiles are processed and abstracted by a user model, to present values for criteria used by the adaptivity component for selecting adaptive profiles. This process may involve transforming the captured raw data, or modelling it using predictive techniques based on inductive decision trees, deductive multiple regression or other methods (Delfos, Tan, and Veenendaal 2010). The adaptivity component applies profiles for the various adaptive aspects on the basis of the criteria presented by the user model.…”

“…The use of adaptivity approaches and user modelling are then outlined along with the proposed technology-aligned adaptivity model (TAAM). Aspects of the model were trialled and demonstrated through the implementation of a location based system (LBS) framework referred to as LOCUS which integrates positioning, social networking and user adaptivity components (Delfos, Tan, and Veenendaal 2010). The user modelling and adaptivity components of TAAM were investigated by capturing user profile data and constructing adaptive profiles through the use of decision trees.…”

“…Delfos et al approach to achieving this, however, can be to show only the information and tools, which are relevant to the user's objectives and context, and which are suitable to the user's background and competence (Angelaccio, Krek, and D'Ambrogio 2009;Delfos, Tan, and Veenendaal 2010).…”

Distributed data possession checking for securing multiple replicas in geographically-dispersed clouds

“…Cloud computing has the potential to share hardware and software resources at the datacenters (or clouds) with the general public to reduce the price of Software as a Service (SaaS) [1]. Particularly, a SaaS provider can explore multiple geographically-dispersed datacenters according to the users' location distribution [3] or the web pages' local popularity [4] to build a SaaS and provide data (or computation) replicas that are physically located in distant datacenters to reduce the latency to the end users [5][6][7][8]. A typical example is that a SaaS uses a distributed web crawler [9] to collect web pages at a single site hosted on a datacenter may store data in a local storage facility and then distribute data replicas to other remote datacenters.…”