A Mobile Information System for Improved Navigation

in Public Transport

User Centered Design, Development, Evaluation and e-Business Scenarios

of a Mobile Roadmap Application

Bernhard Peischl

, Martina Ziefle

and Andreas Holzinger

Softnet Autstria, Inffeldgasse 16b/II, A-8010 Graz, Austria

Human Technology Centre, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, D-52056 Aachen, Germany

Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation, Research Unit Human-Computer Interaction,

Medical University Graz, A-8036 Graz, Austria

Keywords: Mobile User Interfaces, User-centered Design, Ubiquity, m-Business Models.

Abstract: End-user friendly interface design is of tremendous importance for the success of mobile applications which

are of increasing interest in the e-Business area. In this paper, we present an empirical evaluation of a

mobile information system for improving navigation of public transport. High air pollution and respiratory

dust, along with other threats to environmental conditions in urban areas, make the use of public transport

system less and less a matter of choice. The central hypothesis of this study is that useful, useable and

accessible navigation contributes towards making public transport systems more attractive.

1 INTRODUCTION

Public transport is crucial to the liveability of any

urban area. Millions of journeys are made on trains,

trams and buses every day. However the social,

economic and environmental benefits extend beyond

those who use it regularly. The advantages of public

transport include social, economic and most of all

environmental issues (e.g. air pollution, respiratory

dust etc.) which is definitely a big issue (Nel, 2005).

Consequently, it is commonly accepted, that the

environmental impact of increasing transport

volumes can be significantly reduced by

environmentally-friendly public transport systems

(Kroon and Schoebel, 2012). In order to reach such

goals, public transport systems must be made much

more attractive to the end-user. A highly important

issue is to make navigability not only attractive, but

useful and usable (Ziefle et al., 2012).

In this paper we introduce a novel end-user friendly

mobile roadmap application and discuss challenges,

design, development and evaluation of the mobile

user-interface and propose a revenue model for the

app. Section 2 introduces our app in detail and in

Section 3 we report on its empirical evaluation.

Section 4 discusses revenue e-Business models and

Section 5 concludes this article.

Worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 440.5

million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 5.6

percent from the same period last year, according to

Gartner.Smartphone sales to end users reached 115

million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 42

percent from the third quarter of 2010 and accounted

26 percent of all mobile phone sales. In the third

quarter of 2011, Android OS accounted 52.5% of

worldwide smartphone sales to end users (compared

to 25.3% a year earlier) whereas Symbian accounted

16.9% (36.3% a year earlier), iOS accounted 15.0%

(16.6 a year earlier) and Research In Motion

accounted 11.0% (15.4% a year earlier) according to

Gartner (Gartner, 2011). The majority of

smartphones are tailored toward the business-to-

consumer (B2C) market, the predominant input

technique for mobile devices is the multi-touch

concept (Wang and Ren, 2009).

Moreover, a press release from IDC in

September 2011 stated: By 2015, more U.S. Internet

users will access the Internet through mobile devices

than through PCs or other wireless devices. As

smartphones begin to outsell simpler feature phones,

and as tablet sales explode, the number of mobile

Internet users will grow by a compound annual

217

Peischl B., Zieﬂe M. and Holzinger A..

A Mobile Information System for Improved Navigation in Public Transport - User Centered Design, Development, Evaluation and e-Business Scenarios

of a Mobile Roadmap Application.

DOI: 10.5220/0004068402170221

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Data Communication Networking, e-Business and Optical Communication Systems (ICE-B-2012),

pages 217-221

ISBN: 978-989-8565-23-5

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

growth rate of 16.6% between 2010 and 2015.

2 ANDROID BASED MOBILE

ROADMAP APPLICATION

A user employs the roadmap application for tasks

such as requesting the current timetable and buying

tickets: Table 1 lists the use case for buying a ticket.

In designing the user interface we followed

standard usability engineering methods (Holzinger,

2005).

The user interface of the application has been

improved iteratively. In the following we discuss the

most notable steps in designing the user interface.

We started with a Spinner layout and improved this

design incrementally. This new view also (in case of

a successful route request) automatically adds the

entered entry into a list, which automatically

suggests this location or station when the first letters

are entered (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Auto-complete view.

A further step in improving the user interface

was the redesign of the results page (see Figure 2).

Compared to the original version of the results

page, this view is much easier to understand, it also

gives

information about the number of stops, the

duration of the trip, the departure and arrival time

plus the types of transportation used for this route.

Regarding the result page outlined in Figure 2, the

trip would consist of a short sidewalk, a train- and a

tram trip.

3 EMPIRICAL EVALUATION

To evaluate the usability of the roadmap application

Table 1: Use case buying a ticket.

Name

Buy a Train Ticket

Actor

User

Requirements

 Internet access available

 Departure and destination

location are valid

 Name for the ticket

Inputs

 Desired departure and

destination information

 Number of persons, desired

time

 A name

 Selection of class (1

or 2

)

Outputs

 Confirmation message from

to the service

Story

1. User selects to buy a train

ticket (Menu –Buy train

ticket)

2. User enters desired

information

3. User sends request

4. User receives confirmation

message

5. User has to answer to this

message to receive a valid

ticket

Figure 2: Results pages.

the System Usability Scale (SUS) was performed

(Brooke et al., 1996). This is a simple and short, 10

question based survey, which asks the users about

their general feelings about the application

(complex, cumbersome, easy to use etc.). The SUS

test can also be used to review systems, webpages

and mobile systems, see e.g. (Holzinger et al., 2011).

The user questionnaire consists of 10 questions,

where odd-numbered items worded positively and

even-numbered items worded negatively. The

questions are as follows:

1. I think that I would like to use this system

frequently.

2. I found the system unnecessarily complex.

3. I thought the system was easy to use.

4. I think that I would need the support of a

ICE-B 2012 - International Conference on e-Business

218

technical person to be able to use this system.

5. I found the various functions in this system

were well integrated.

6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in

this system.

7. I would imagine that most people would learn to

use this system very quickly.

8. I found the system very cumbersome to use.

9. I felt very confident using the system.

10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could

get going with this system.

The test was performed with 20 randomly

selected people from the campus of Graz University

of Technology. The average user age was 25 years

(min: 19; max: 32); 6 female, 14 male; Figure 4

illustrates the results obtained from our survey.

The results gained from the survey show that the

roadmap application has an above average usability

rating. An average rating has been abstracted from

over 500 studies, where the average SUS score has

been 68 (Measuring Usability, 2010). The value

representative for comparing it to other applications

or usability studies is 80.75, which is definitely

above average. From the perspective of an observer,

most of the users felt very confident with the system.

Also positive credit was gained for this project and

this work.

Some users directly downloaded the application

to their phone to start using it on a regular basis.

Considering the download statistics, it is notable that

the number of users is growing constantly (17.421

by September 2011, see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Continuous growth of the number of users.

4 e-BUSINESS SCENARIOS

In building up a business case around our app we

differentiate between three different models of

revenue creation. Further, to increase the awareness

level of the availability of such an application, social

media may be used as a low-cost facility for

distribution.

Free App with Advertisements: Advertising is

a controlled form used by an identified sponsor to

deliver messages (text-based, image-based, etc.) to

consumer, in an effort to influence and persuade

them to take some action (buy, try, talk about, etc.)

in relation to the sponsor’s products and/or services

(Brenner et al., 2008).

Mobile advertising therefore makes use of

mobile devices. Instead printing or presenting

advertisements on large screens, mobile phone users

(users of PDAs, smartphones, handhelds or tablet

PCs) are used as potential customers.

Advertisements are presented within applications or

on websites, which directly address desired end-

users. Mobile advertising is an important factor and

makes use of both, the advertising and the software

business. As mentioned in (Information Gatekeepers

Inc., 2007), mobile advertising presents a unique

opportunity to directly interact with customers.

One example is Google Ad Mob (Mobile

Advertising, Ad Mob, 2010). Google provides

developers with an API, which allows easy access to

millions of merchants which can select, where, how

and which customers (age, country, gender) the

advertising is meant for. This can also be used to

strengthen the customer loyalty (i.e. cross selling by

local vendors). Local customer retention has been

analysed in more detail in (Bulander, 2007) and

context sensitive marketing strategies are discussed

in (Bulander et al., 2005).

Making services monetarily free could be highly

beneficial for government sectors, educational

institutions, and non-profit organizations

(Gangadharan et al., 2010). The implications of free

services are discussed in (Gangadharan et al., 2010).

Non-free App: In addition to the free app (that

comes with advertisements), an advanced version of

the app can be provided. Besides of further

improvements and convenience functions, this app

comes with no advertisements. However, the user

needs to buy this app instead of downloading it for

free.

Royalty Fee: As our app allows one for buying

tickets on the fly, this offers another opportunity for

revenue generation. Today there are various ways

for electronic payment. For example, micro

payments can be executed via credit card, mobile

phone bill or Paypal.

Whenever a ticket is purchased, the user is charged

with a small fee. Compared to the ticket price, this

royalty fee is almost negligible, but for a bigger

number of users, the generated revenue may be

considerable.

Most notably, the three strategies discussed

above can be combined as they do not exclude each

other: The app can be offered for free and for the

A Mobile Information System for Improved Navigation in Public Transport - User Centered Design, Development,

Evaluation and e-Business Scenarios of a Mobile Roadmap Application

219

Figure 4: The Evaluation results.

enhanced version without advertisements it is liable

to pay some fee. Further, a royalty fee when buying

a ticket can be charged to the user for both models.

Thus we can achieve a kind of diversification in the

strategy of generating revenues and thus reduce the

overall risk in generating adequate revenues. This is

particularly important for Small and Medium-sized

Enterprises (SMEs).

In general, it seems to be a widely accepted

notion that play an important economic and social

role and often contribute to innovation. But at the

present situation the development and operation of a

service to be used with mobile and wireless

terminals (mobile service) is not bearable for most

of them due to technical reasons and the market

structure. The authors of (Decker et al., 2006)

discuss the SME specific obstacles in m-business.

Although there are various benefits to B2B e-

commerce, there are also inhibitors to its

deployment. The authors of (Teo et al., 2006)

empirically investigate the inhibitors for deploying

Web-based B2B e-commerce applications in

organizations and the authors of (Stuckenberg et al.,

2011) discuss Software as a Service (SaaS) and its

implication on revenue streams.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we have introduced a novel mobile

application for improving the navigation on public

transport. We point out some challenges in for

mobile e-business applications including

developments in mobile operating systems, mobile

application development and end-user friendly user-

interface design. We introduce some of the core

features of our app and outline the (iterative) design

of the user interface for the mobile application. We

report on an empirical evaluation (system usability

scale test) and conclude that the app has an above

average usability rating (approximately a score of 81

compared to the average score of 68). This claim is

further supported by the fact that the number of

users is continuously growing. Mobile applications,

such as roadmap applications are a great possibility

to make public transport systems more attractive for

customers, thereby helping to protect our

environment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work has been partially carried out within the

ICE-B 2012 - International Conference on e-Business

220

competence network Softnet Austria II (www.soft-

net.at, COMET K-Projekt) and funded by the

Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and

Youth (bmwfj), the province of Styria, the Steirische

Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft mbH. (SFG), and

the city of Vienna in support of the Center for

Innovation and Technology (ZIT). We are grateful

to Mike Kober, who worked on the implementation

details in partial fulfilment of his master studies.

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Evaluation and e-Business Scenarios of a Mobile Roadmap Application

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