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of the Zoological museum, bus journey and very
context specific Mobile Internet content integrat-
ing seamlessly with interaction with the physical
environment resulted in the user experience, that
was clearly preferred by the pupils (see Figure
8). The video recordings and average time spent
at each control point show, that in other places
the pupils only quickly touched the tag and left,
and did not really experience the environment.
Therefore, the Zoological museum seemed to be
the only place that provided a successful combi-
nation of the experience of a physical space and
the Mobile Internet experience.
Also, in the information tags trial, the implica-
tions of Mobile Internet use to the social context
and interaction were found to strongly affect the
user experience of Mobile Internet content. The
users expected the content to be highly relevant
and integrated with their current context and needs,
and were very disappointed when it failed to do
so, as illustrated by the following comment from
a theatre visitor:
attention should be given to these kinds of social
and behavioral concerns.
LIMITATIONS AND VALIDITY
Even though the goal of the field trials was to
provide as high an experimental reality (Aronson,
2004) as possible, there are issues in the trial
settings that may have affected the results and
probably did so.
Perhaps the most severe limitation of our re-
search setting was the availability, selection and
content available through the tags. If information
tags were to become popular and tags would be
used by commercial service and content providers,
there would be considerably more tags available
for use. This would mean that the selection of
Mobile Internet content and services would be
wider, and with experience, commercial content
providers would learn to provide more usable,
meaningful and valuable content. As the tags were
evaluated in a research project, there were no actual
goals for business or the public good that would
have needed to be met. Tag placement, design and
accessed information content were not rigorously
designed to meet any specific goals, such as, for
example, optimal coverage of a certain user group.
However, in the information tag trial, the con-
tent accessed presented the state-of-the-practice in
Mobile Internet content design, as it was actual,
pre-existing Mobile Internet content provided by
commercial actors. The content was not specifi-
cally produced for research purposes, but it was
provided by the content providers for Mobile
Internet users in general. This was not the case in
the mobile learning trial. For the mobile learning
trial, the content was created for the purpose of
the trial, as the learning concept was new and no
pre-existing Mobile Internet content was available.
Since there is little design knowledge available on
how to design engaging and motivating learning
material for Mobile Internet, it is understandable
“If I download restaurant information in Oulu, I
certainly do not want to receive information about
restaurants in Helsinki! I immediately stopped
using information tags when I realized this.”
(translated by the authors)
Our findings pointed out that in some cases
users have concerns on how consuming Mobile
Internet content might negatively affect social
interaction as the content is typically most suited
for personal use. In fact, the social interaction could
be fostered and encouraged with good contextual
design of the services and content. The user should
also be given some kind of indication about what
kind of media type the tag links to in order to avoid
embarrassing and socially disturbing situations,
e.g. when the user accesses the content that is in
audio format. For this purpose could be utilized
graphical design for indicating the media types.
Thus, when designing NFC-based systems, special
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