You're getting warmer!: how proximity information affects search behavior in physical spaces

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the results of a Wizard of Oz study of people's search behavior using BuddySystem, a proximity-sensing system designed to help end-users locate people, places, and things. BuddySystem uses distance estimation based on signal strength alone, since direction is difficult to obtain in ad-hoc radio-based systems. Overall findings indicate that the BuddySystem changed people's search behavior to reduce walking area, but may increase search times if the system demands too much of the user's attention, suggesting that reducing distractions and adjusting search strategies could improve search effectiveness of proximity-based tracking systems in physical spaces.

REFERENCES

• 1: Back Country Access. Available at http://www.bcaccess.com/
• 2: Jennica Falk , Peter Ljungstrand , Staffan Björk , Rebecca Hansson, Pirates: proximity-triggered interaction in a multi-player game, CHI '01 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, March 31-April 05, 2001, Seattle, Washington [doi>10.1145/634067.634140]
• 3: J. M. Kahn , R. H. Katz , K. S. J. Pister, Next century challenges: mobile networking for “Smart Dust”, Proceedings of the 5th annual ACM/IEEE international conference on Mobile computing and networking, p.271-278, August 15-19, 1999, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/313451.313558]
• 4: Klemmer, S., Waterson, S., and Whitehouse, K. Towards a Location-Based Context-Aware Sensor Infrastructure. Internal report available at http://guir.berkeley.edu/projects/location/Location.pdf
• 5: Lojack. Available at http://www.lojack.com/
• 6: Hongshen Ma , Joseph A. Paradiso, The FindIT Flashlight: Responsive Tagging Based on Optically Triggered Microprocessor Wakeup, Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, p.160-167, September 29-October 01, 2002, Göteborg, Sweden
• 7: Nissanka B. Priyantha , Anit Chakraborty , Hari Balakrishnan, The Cricket location-support system, Proceedings of the 6th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking, p.32-43, August 06-11, 2000, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/345910.345917]
• 8: WOZ. Available at http://www.wheelsofzeus.com/
• 9: Wherify. Available at http://www.wherifywireless.com

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human factors; Human information processing
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Prototyping; User-centered design

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
BuddySystem, Wizard of Oz, proximity sensing