Experience shows that decisions in the early phases of the development of a multimodal system prevail throughout the life-cycle of a project. The distributed architecture and the requirement for robust multimodal interaction in our project SmartWeb resulted in an approach that uses and extends W3C standards like EMMA and RDFS. These standards for the interface structure and content allowed us to integrate available tools and techniques. However, the requirements in our system called for various extensions, e. g., to introduce result feedback tags for an extended version of EMMA. The interconnection framework depends on a commercial telephone voice dialog system platform for the dialog-centric components while the information access processes are linked using web service technology. Also in the area of this underlying infrastructure, enhancements and extensions were necessary. The first demonstration system is operable now and will be presented at the Football World

While there has been much successful work in developing rules to guide the design and implementation of interfaces for desktop machines and their applications, the design of mobile device interfaces is still relatively unexplored and unproven. This paper discusses the characteristics and limitations of current mobile device interfaces, especially compared to the desktop environment. Using existing interface guidelines as a starting point, a set of practical design guidelines for mobile device interfaces is proposed.

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As the growth of rapid prototyping techniques shortens the development life cycle of software and electronic products, usability inquiry methods can play a more significant role during the development life cycle, diagnosing usability problems and providing metrics for making comparative decisions. A need has been realized for questionnaires tailored to the evaluation of electronic mobile products, wherein usability is dependent on both hardware and software as well as the emotional appeal and aesthetic integrity of the design. This research followed a systematic approach to develop a new questionnaire tailored to measure the usability of electronic mobile products. The Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ) developed throughout this series of studies evaluates the usability of mobile phones for the purpose of making decisions among competing variations in the end-user market, alternatives of prototypes during the development process, and evolving versions during an iterative design process. In addition, the questionnaire can serve as a tool for identifying diagnostic information to improve specific usability dimensions and related interface elements. Employing the refined MPUQ, decision making models were developed using Analytic

In this exploratory study, we look into the emerging usage of Personal Information Management (PIM) applications on mobile devices. We collected data in two rounds of empirical investigation: first, with pilot users in an organization providing PIM services, then, in customer companies subscribing to these services. Our findings suggest that the benefits of PIM applications are mostly related to the users ’ personal work: planning schedules and work tasks, making mobile communication even easier, and increasing flexibility, and that the benefits for companies are mainly realized through the users’ benefits. There are, however, still a range of barriers, ranging from difficulties in use and technical limitations to organizational level security concerns.

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Mobile guides and mobile tourism services are gaining in popularity. However, many of such services are not tourist-oriented. Instead of targeting on the specific needs or interests of users and applying a user-centered design, service providers seem to focus on delivering as much information as possible and a more system-centered design. A user-centered design requires an understanding of the needs and problems faced by visitors. As the mobile context is subject to constant changes also these needs and problems can differ, requiring the implementation of context-awareness. Taking the various factors that influence the (mobile context-aware) interaction into account, the intention of this thesis is to evaluate existing design guidelines found in the literature that should be taken into consideration during the design of a context-aware mobile guide application. The evaluation as conducted in this thesis consists of several components. First, a non-functional prototype was build. During the design of the prototype three sets of design guidelines found in the literature, were considered and, if possible, applied. Furthermore, an expert evaluation was performed, letting the experts judge about the relevancy and applicability of the individual design guidelines. Matching the remaining design guidelines with different criteria found in the literature,

Wireless Field Force Automation (WFFA) is a wireless solution designed to support field staff such as service personnel, repair or installation employees, technical teams, or medical workers. Certain companies try to provide their field workers with this sort of solution to improve their productivity, their effectiveness and to reduce administrative costs, but more than 50 % of these projects fail. This paper discusses the Critical Success Factors (CSF) contributing to the success of these projects. To do this, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted with ten experts in the field. The results of this study show that eight CSF are important in this kind project and that conversely to traditional, sedentary Information Systems, successful WFFA requires taking into consideration a new CSF called “management of mobility ” that integrates device management, helpdesk support and mobile device fleet management. Keywords:

Computing is generally a combination of tools and technologies, which we may broadly refer to as software, hardware, connectivity, protocols and standards. In the recent years, mobile industry has experienced a phenomenal growth in mobile computing also known as pervasive computing. The field of pervasive computing is painting the picture of future as this is the most needed and sought after technology of tomorrow. The high demand for mobility and ubiquity has set a stage for the wide spread use of pervasive computing. In the past few decades the focus of the technology has shifted from technology perspective to utility and usability perspective and one may safely deduce that technology is more social and people oriented. Usability is a general concern that is more related to how humans efficiently and effectively utilize the solutions and applications offered on top of computing platforms. Usability concern becomes more critical when one comes to the world of pervasive computing. The aim of this paper is to review and analyze the existing literature in usability of in different applications from two aspects, i.e. needs and challenges. Furthermore critical success factors and concepts associate with the above mentioned metrics are identified and categorized under different views. A model is proposed to categorize usability characteristics.