The Potential of Virtual Real World for Usability Test of Location-Aware Apps

Tomoyo Sasao, Ruochen Si, Mitsutoshi Shibuya, Min Lu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Recently, many kinds of location-aware applications of smartphone are developed. However, it is difficult to test them for usability in the same way as the non-location-aware ones because of the test environment. For example, in case of supportive applications for emergency situations, the usability test can be carried out only in normal period of outdoor fields. Key competitive technologies beyond the issues will be Augment Reality and Virtual Reality. We focus on advantages of laboratory experiment and present a usability test environment of location-aware apps based on virtual real world using Google Street View. In this paper, we aim at understanding the weaknesses and strengths of this approach. We developed an initial prototype of the usability test environment and a simple map viewer app. The usability test has two conditions from a designated start point: (c1) go to a designated place and (c2) explore the area freely. We observed two participants’ behaviors: (b1) movement in the virtual real world, (b2) body motion, and (b3) operation of the map viewer app. From the results, we discuss the better ways to collect these data as well as the weakness and strengths of laboratory-based usability test environment. These outcomes spotlight laboratory survey’s strengths of fine grain spatiotemporal data.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDistributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions - 7th International Conference, DAPI 2019, Held as Part of the 21st HCI International Conference, HCII 2019, Proceedings
EditorsNorbert Streitz, Shin’ichi Konomi
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages172-186
Number of pages15
ISBN (Print)9783030219345
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Event7th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2019, held as part of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI International 2019 - Orlando, United States
Duration: Jul 26 2019Jul 31 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11587 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference7th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2019, held as part of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI International 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityOrlando
Period7/26/197/31/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

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