Touch-Based Access to Mobile Internet - Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation in Handheld, Mobile and Wearable Technologies - page 244

Table 6. Summary of findings related to discoverability

Issue Finding

Visual design Standard, easily recognized visual marking is needed, even though does not help visually impaired.

Expected response Tag identified as an NFC tag should always respond somehow upon touch and special-purpose visual design for

tags should be used to avoid confusions.

Size of the tag Circa four centimetre diameter is good for locating tags near by, but when the distance is tens of meters, visual

markings need to be bigger.

The findings related to discoverability are
summarized in Table 6.

tent to be up-to-date, and they wished that it would
be frequently updated.
The information tag users expressed hopes
of better utilizing the possibilities of the digital
platform by, for example, providing location aware
services. The users rated content describing local
events and information as most interesting (i.e.
local news and the program of local theatre). Some
content available through the tags did not take full
use of the location information. For example, a
tag that provided access to a tourism information
service provided information about another city
as the default. The users were puzzled why they
were provided information about events in the city
of Helsinki, when they were located 600 kilome-
tres away in Oulu. Of course, they could access
information about events in Oulu by selecting the
correct city from a pull-down menu, but the users
expected the knowledge about their location to be
automatically processed by the service.
The pilot specific tags were used more than
generic tags in all pilots (see Figure 6). In the
restaurant pilot, the pilot specific tags were used
for making an order, and the user had to touch
multiple tags to finish an order. This explains the
high volume of tag usage in the restaurant pilot.
Even though the pupils attending Amazing
NFC lessons mostly reported that the mobile
learning experience was better than classroom
learning (93,8% of web survey respondents) and
that they enjoyed participating in the lesson (see
Figure 7), they strongly criticized the Mobile
Internet content provided. The majority of pupils
reported that the tasks were not challenging enough
(70,4% of respondents of the web survey) and

Content

The most accessed Internet content during the
information tag trial was the news service of
the local newspaper. It was the most used when
measured by the logs (see Figure 5), and rated
subjectively as the most interesting and valuable
service provided in the trials.
The program of the local theatre was also rated
as interesting in subjective ratings. However, many
users were disappointed that the content of the
theatre program was static, which meant that it was
not updated during the trial, and therefore contained
old information.. This observation was repeated in
several comments; the users expected digital con-

Figure 5. Distribution of access to Mobile Internet
content through information tags during a nine-
day period estimated not to contain artificial
accesses caused, for example, by usability testing
or research demonstrations