Public defence in Media Technology, M.Sc. (Tech) Tuomas Vaittinen

Title of the thesis: Designing Mobile Applications with Locative Media for Navigation and Location Annotation

Doctoral Student: Tuomas Vaittinen
Opponent: Professor Matt Jones, Swansea University, UK
Custos: Professor Marko Nieminen, Aalto University School of Science, Department of Computer Science

A lot of our photos and social media messages are geo-tagged, i.e., assigned real-world location coordinates to indicate they relate to that location. This thesis studies how to best support navigating and annotating locations with locative media. It belongs to the field of human-computer interaction and the approach is constructive, i.e., we have designed prototypes and conducted field studies where people take the systems into use. By analyzing the design process and field studies, we describe user needs and present design implications to help designers of future systems. 

Our empirical research probes the variety of location-based annotation types people would be likely to create, and the value they perceive gaining by creating them. Key insights include user preferences for sharing annotations with specific individuals and their interest in annotating both ephemeral targets and larger areas beyond singular GPS points.

We apply annotations and other locative media to tourists’ navigation and create design implications for systems aiming to support it fluently and seamlessly. Observations during our field studies reveal distinct phases in city navigation behavior, but they also highlight the fluid transitions tourists make as they react to the opportunities they see around them. We show that foraging theory can be used to guide the design of city exploration support tools but applying it requires some considerations. In fact, a lot of the exploration is quite exhaustive and the value maximization behavior foraging theory predicts becomes visible only when tourists do not have enough time or energy to explore the area comprehensively.

The prototypes we have created vary in how they present the locative content since different phases of navigation have different requirements. Our evaluations confirm the advantages of egocentric visualizations of the content when aiming to support in-situ city exploration, as displaying the content from the point-of-view of the user makes it straightforward to know the direction it lies and minimizes the time needed to focus on the device. In contrast, third-person visualizations are valuable for pre-trip planning, offering unrestricted exploration of any part of the city, independent of one's current location.

Thesis available for public display 10 days prior to the defence at: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/doc_public/eonly/riiputus/ 

Contact information:

Doctoral theses of the School of Science: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/52