Database Reference
In-Depth Information
l
Strands
2
is a mobile social network for runners that allows registered users to
connect other runners and share their training routes and evolution. Strands
application tracks all the movements of their users when they are running,
calculating their routes, average speed, running intensity, etc.
l
Google Shopper
3
is a mobile application that allows user to take photos of topics,
music cds, and other products and then it retrieves information about those
products from the Web in order to offer detailed product information such as
prices, reviews, specifications, and more.
These mobile applications serve as a connection between the real and virtual
worlds, an interface that let users access community-built databases from a mobile
device in a natural manner. To make all this possible, mobile phone applications use
several technologies, being the most relevant touchable interfaces, augmented
reality and positioning related sensors.
11.5.1.1 Mobile Phones Inputs
Mobile phones offer a challenge to input and output techniques due to their small
size [
30
], which allows rather limited UI functionality design. Whereas screen
resolution has increased allowing more sophisticated GUIs, the input mechanics
have remained quite unchanged throughout the short history of mobile phones.
Current phones provide either use buttons or a touch screen. To overcome the
limitations of small keypads, several approaches have been suggested including
speech input and auditory UIs [
11
], or gesture input [
64
].
Tangible user interfaces and touchable interaction are terms increasingly gaining
currency within the human computer interaction community [
33
], particularly in
relation to mobile devices. Touchable user interfaces utilize physical representation
and manipulation of digital data and offer interactive couplings of physical artifacts
with computationally mediated digital information [
74
]. Many different research
projects have studied enabling technologies, usability aspects and various applica-
tions of tangible user interfaces [
32
,
63
,
67
].
When dealing with mobile phones, tangible user interfaces are usually simplified
to touchable interfaces, where the interaction with the mobile phone is conducted
by touching the screen with one or several fingers, a more natural way to interact
with the device than navigating a set of menus by means of several keys or a joypad.
The introduction of touchable screens on mobile phones has been a major step in the
simplification of the interfaces of mobile phone and makes mobile devices a more
useful interface.
As an extension of touchable interfaces, the concept of “gestures” has been intro-
duced over the last years [
71
]. Gesture is a broad term defined in common usage as a
2
http://www.strands.com
3
http://www.google.com/mobile/shopper/
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