Home // MOBILITY 2011, The First International Conference on Mobile Services, Resources, and Users // View article

Amazon-on-Earth Library Navigator

Authors:
Amnon Dekel
Scott Kirkpatrick
Niv Noach
Barak Schiller

Keywords: Indoor Navigation; Mobile Phone; QR Code

Abstract:
This paper describes the Amazon-on-Earth project that enables users to look for, navigate to and find objects of interest inside a physical space. We implemented a working prototype system in one of the libraries on our campus and ran a user study to see if there was any advantage to using the system relative to the existing library information services. Results show that subjects using our service were able to find information about a book 35% faster and were able to navigate to a book 52% faster. We also found that the control group made four times as many navigational errors and had to ask for help five times more than the experimental group. Measuring qualitative variables we found that subjects using our system rated the ease of finding the book in the library as easier than the control group and felt more positive towards the service. The results make it clear that the use of such a service can substantially help a user find an object inside a space in a faster, easier and more pleasant fashion. We end the paper by pointing out a number of shortcomings of the system and how they might be dealt with.

Pages: 14 to 21

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: October 23, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3468

ISBN: 978-1-61208-164-9

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from October 23, 2011 to October 29, 2011