User Acceptance is the biggest challenge for Location Based Services (LBS)

The promise of LBS is providing useful information and services at right place and right time using demographic, contextual and location awareness via the mobile. Primary applications are mostly in advertising, navigation and social networking. LBS applications have garnered the most hype since the beginning,  and yet, critical mass eludes them.

With the technical challenges more or less resolved, I believe user acceptance, owing primarily due to privacy and security concerns,  is the biggest challenge it needs to overcome. LBS apps face distrust by users owing to the loss of personal freedom and control over the technology e.g. intrusive advertising, commercial pressure, loss of autonomy, etc.

It is crucial for the service providers to maintain a level of trust with users by acting transparently with regards to personal privacy translating into strict application of a code of ethics on the service use combined with clear and simple information for consumers on the usages that could be made of their location data / ensure consumers have the means of controlling what they can and cannot do i.e. right not to be located, not to be disconnected, choose who will have access to his data, etc.

Understanding ‘User Needs’ a Mobile Social Network can satisfy

Mobile phone enables real-time feedback from the users and enables him to live in the moment. When you are surfing the Web with a stationary PC at home, you are either accessing information about some past events, or some real-time information about some event a distance away. In contrast, with mobile phone you can take part in the event, capture it, provide comments and share all this with others. Mobile phone therefore provides richer social interaction. The core of mobility is not movement but context. Adding context-awareness to services brings about complexity, but at the same time lots and lots of possibilities.

In a previous post, I had written about a few mobile social networking scenarios. Now before we go designing something, it’s important to understand the user needs that the product will satisfy. Here I want to put forth my take on what user needs I felt a mobile social network can satisfy based on which I created those scenarios.

• Get updates on what’s going on with my social circle whenever I have time or feel the need to check on them.
  
• Conversation is what the whole deal is about. It’s easy to see who’s available to chat right now and a conversation can be started anytime/anywhere.
• Transmit my location to let others know where I am at the moment so they can interact with me based on that
• Find out if there are any friends near my location.
  This would be better executed with a map as user gets a visual reference of proximity of his friends, and can figure out exactly where all of them are easily in reference to his own location, much more powerful than say 10 street addresses. Narrowing down or expanding the field is useful if to get him those friends in range with whom he can interact with at that moment
• Instantly share my thoughts or pics/videos with my social circle and get instant feedback from those who may be tuned in.
• I’m at a location and curious about what others have done at or said about this location, phone can bring up photos, videos of the location and comments entered for the location
• As the number of friends increase, the noise level increases and it’s very tiresome to sort through them on a mobile. If there’s a person or group that user is most interested in at any time, he shouldn’t have to parse through the entire feed, he should be able to get updates just from that person or group.
• All said and done, privacy is a big concern. There are some things I can share with all my friends, others I only want to share with close friends and some I want to share only with family. These concerns must be addressed and user should be put in total control of his privacy settings.
• For a mobile social network to be of any use to me, it must work on my friend’s phones as well.

I feel a mobile social network is best implemented when integrated with the Phonebook. See Finally… Phonebook gets social for why I think so and advances being made on this front.

Mobile Wallet is “Near”

According to a recent survey, for 38% people, mobile has become more important than their wallets, no surprise then that the industry is working towards replacing the wallet with the mobile by integrating NFC (Near Field Communication) chips in the phone.

According to a new analysis from Juniper Research, NFC mobile payments market will exceed $75 billion globally by 2013, when 20% of all phones shipped will possess NFC capability. ABI Research claims that by 2010, more than 50% of mobile handsets – some 500 million units – will incorporate NFC capabilities.

Benefits to the user

NFC Touchpoint - Touch and Travel

The advantage of NFC integrated into the phone is it allows applications to be built on top of it, making it a true mobile wallet. This enables NFC to also be used for other purposes like access to public transport, your company or your car for that matter.

Forum Nokia describes the benefits of NFC for consumers

With just a point or a touch, NFC enables effortless use of the devices and gadgets we use daily. Here are some examples of what a user can do with an NFC mobile phone in an NFC-enabled environment:

• Download music or video from a smart poster.
• Exchange business cards with another phone.
• Pay bus or train fare.
• Print an image on a printer.
• Use a point-of-sale terminal to pay for a purchase, the same way as with a standard contactless credit card.
• Pair two Bluetooth devices.

A Usage Scenario

In response to a question on LinkedIn, Alvin Wong Kee Choong gave a wonderful scenario of how NFC coupled with LBS would simplify our daily life

Location: India
Scenario: Meeting a customer in an unfamiliar location
Transport: Delhi Metro
Phones: NFC enabled devices with GPS

Description:

• Key in address details on phone and click search
• Found address and selects transportation method, select Delhi Metro
• Calculates proximity to nearest station from current location and produces directions how to reach there
• Following instructions, reaches beginning train station
• Takes phone and makes quick purchase of newspaper to read from newsvendor or vending box secured and accessible via contactless reader, using NFC credit card application on phone
• Uses NFC phone to tap into station turnstile reader, using Delhi Metro card application in phone
• Reaches destination station, taps out with phone
• Passes by Starbucks smart poster on wall, quick tap of NFC phone, downloads mobile coupon
• Stops by Starbucks for purchase and uses mobile coupon for instant redemption of breakfast coffee at discount
• Checks phone location again, application recognises current location and with destination saved, maps out nearest path to reach customer meeting location
• Shakes hand with customer, taps customer NFC phone to exchange business card details

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pay-by-phone commerce coming closer
• Mobile Phones Equipped with Near Field Communications (NFC) to Generate $75bn worth of Payment Transactions Within 5 Years
• Nokia 6131 NFC: Can it give credit cards a run for their money?
• Taiwanese to use mobile phones for subway fares, shopping
• Mobiles to help drive contactless payments

Finally… Phonebook gets social

I have always believed that mobile phone is the best platform for socializing because the Phonebook already contains all the contacts that you care about, now you might go on binges and vampire bites with your 1000+ contacts on Facebook or MySpace, but those in your Phonebook (and email contact list) are the one’s that really matter.

I believe the best (or widely accepted) mobile social network will be the one which will integrate with the mobile’s Phonebook. I’m glad to see advances are being made in this area by Zyb. What’s important is that it needs to support the phones that my friends use, till then it’s of no use to me. Good news is that guys at Zyb understand this and support the widest range of phones that I’ve seen either directly or via 3rd parties.

Here are a few things Zyb enables:

Where are you

If your friends allow their location to be visible to you, it points them out on a map. It also shows a list of friends near you

What are you up to

Shows your friends’ Twitter and Facebook status. Also shows your Flickr photo updates and blog updates among other things. There’s even an icon that indicates if someone’s available, busy etc

What’s your new number

If your friends change their number or Avatar pic, it’s automatically updated in your ZYB phonebook

This is good, but I want more…

Now if only this could be integrated with the native phonebook on the mobile, and if someone could merge this with my email contacts so I have “one” device independent contact list

Biggest challenge Location Based Services are facing today

With the technical challenges more or less resolved, I think the biggest challenge for LBS is user acceptance owing to privacy and security issues.

Location based services face distrust by users owing to the loss of personal freedom and control over the technology e.g. intrusive advertising, commercial pressure, loss of autonomy, etc. It is crucial for the service provider to maintain a level of trust with users by acting transparently with regards to personal privacy translating into strict application of a code of ethics on the service use combined with clear and simple information for consumers on the usages that could be made of their location data/ensure consumers have the means of controlling what they can and cannot do i.e. right not to be located, not to be disconnected, choose who will have access to his data, etc.

Related Articles

RoseIndia tackles the privacy and security issues in detail

Ajit Jaokar gives his take on solving the privacy issues in his post Could the 5o9inc approach be a solution to the privacy problem for location based services?

Carnival of the Mobilists #129

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is up at mTrends. The main focus this week is on one of my favorite topics “LBS” with almost half the posts on this topic alone, also covers mobile advertising, mobile workforce, NFC, mobile apps and mobile browser.

And what do you know, it also features my post in the LBS category, Add context to your photos with Geo-tagging.

Add context to your photos with Geotagging

Image via Wikipedia

Geotagging lets you add geographic information, such as latitude and longitude as indicated by the integrated GPS system, to any digital content — from pictures and videos to news articles and blog posts . So when you take a picture/video or post a blog your location is also saved. Then you can overlay that information on services like Google Maps, and see where you’ve been.

According to Chadha, Sirf’s vice president of marketing

A location stamp is much more important than a time stamp in most cases. A year down the road, you have no idea where those pictures were taken and no way to search for location.

What’s wonderful is the ease of use, it’s not something I have to think about, the phone (or digital camera) automatically embeds the GPS coordinates.

I believe what Geotagging’s really about is bringing the virtual community to the physical world, walking with a GPS phone down a street past a church in Goa, I can bring up geo-tagged blogs that have been left by people who have passed that same place some time before me, or when planning a visit I can choose the sites based on the pictures people have taken on location which pop right up in the map itself.

We’re already seeing it making inroads in Phones and mobile applications.  Apple’s new iPhone 2.0 supports it and other major handset manufacturer’s like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung have introduced phones with Geotagging capability. On the applications side Shozu the popular App that lets you transfer pictures, videos and also post blog entries has it built-in.

If your phone doesn’t support Geotagging, Wired has a great article that explains how you can Geotag your photos from desktop or the web.

Related articles

• SiRF Creating GPS For Android Phones [Cellphones] [via Zemanta]
• iPhone 2.0 stores GPS location data in photos [via Zemanta]
• Down to earth: Geotagging photos [via Zemanta]

What I want from ‘Local Search’ on my mobile

Image via Wikipedia

Another one in the “What I want…” series. I’m focusing on ‘Local Search on mobile’ and not ‘Search on mobile’ because people searching from their mobiles will usually be doing so on the go and hence would mostly be focusing on local content like searching for something or someplace close by (or someone, but that’s part of mobile social networking, although I do see a huge overlap between these two).

‘Local Search’ is a space “begging” for attention. There are a few players out there but there’s so much more than can be done to give a better experience to the users.

Study analyzing movement of people

Before we delve into the scenarios, let’s take a look at the findings of a recent study published in Nature which analyzed the movement of 100K people.

One key startling discovery was that “despite the diversity of their travel history, humans follow simple reproducible patterns” which in plainspeak means that people tend to visit the same places again and again.

Does this mean that local search on mobiles is a doomed concept? I tend to believe that there’s scope for services that enable us to interact better with our local environment. And the need for local search/service becomes even more important when people do wander out to new places.

Location brings context and this is what we need to focus on most.

Pre-requisites

• Needless to say, I shouldn’t have to tell the application where I am, it’s supposed to know that. Andrew Grill rightly points out“True transparent local search will arrive when I don’t have to tell the application that I want to be found – it finds me and caches the location ahead of me needing it”
• I should be able to search from whichever medium is comfortable to me (via SMS, Voice, Browser or Native-App/Widget). This will ensure that the service is available universally and not dependent on type of phone (as the tier increases, the experience gets richer)
• Since we are focusing on location, maps will play an important role here, wherever possible, every result has to be mappable with directions to the end-point from where I am right now.
• To enable a ’socially enriched’ experience, I should be able find out what others who visited the location/business had to say about it (or pictures/videos they shared). More importantly, If any of my friends had anything to say about it.

A few Scenarios

• I’m looking for something to eat/drink and I enter say ‘pizza’ or ‘Chinese’ and I see listing of relevant businesses around me, their specials for the day are listed along with the prices. I call them to check for vacancy or make a reservation. I can check out their menu while on the way and make my choice before I reach there.
• I’m out shopping for say ‘Jeans’, I again get a listing of stores around me with the item prioritized by those who have a Sale on.
• If I’m looking to catch the latest movie, I’m shown the theaters around me with time-slots in which its airing and option to book the ticket from the mobile itself. Alternatively, If I’m interested in a particular theater, I’m shown the movies it’s playing (with ratings) along with the time slots (and the option to buy the ticket, of course)

Interaction Design
Like always, Interaction design will play a key role in enabling the right experience. Unable to suppress the designer in me, I can’t help but list some basic design elements of the main screen of the web-page/native-app

• A text-box with a label “What are you looking for?”
• Options to go to primary categories like “Food”, “Movies” etc which when clicked come up with relevant location-centric results with the behavior specified in scenarios
• Option to check “Where I am right now” on the map

Much more is possible with Context Awareness
Context awareness has the potential to enable much more than local search. Let’s say I’m in Delhi where it’s sunny and going to Mumbai where it’s raining. When I reach Mumbai the app understands the change in environment (via say local weather update) and suggest that I buy an umbrella and lists/displays-on-map nearby shops where I can buy it from.

Note: A few things I mentioned here are not possible currently due to technology/regulatory/infrastructure constraints, but I think those hurdles will be overcome soon.

Related articles

• Local Services For Local People [via Zemanta]
• Richer Local Search Results in Google Maps [via Zemanta]

What I want from my Mobile Social Network

In a previous post Social Networking and the Mobile Phone, I had discussed how mobile can extend the reach of a social network and open up new ways of socializing. I have gone through a couple of mobile social networks out there and they are nowhere near my expectations. So I decided to list down a few scenarios for you to consider.

Scenarios

• I open the client from phone menu, it opens quickly and I get recent photos/updates from my friends.
• I can easily send updates from main page itself.
• I open a map and my friends are mapped onto their locations in the map, I can narrow down the map by giving a radius of say 1 KM, 5 KM, 10 KM.
• I can easily start conversations with my friends
• I can classify friends in groups/categories and choose how much of my profile is visible to which group
• I can follow updates from a single friend or a group/category
• I am at a location and I can choose to see who else from the network is there, I can see their profiles and nudge someone I want to connect with. If they nudge back I can start a conversation.
• When I post something, I can also send the update to any other networks I’m active in as well, including say Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed.
• I take photos and videos from the camera and select post to <network> from the menu, I add my comments, geo-tags are automatically added and media is uploaded
• I enter (or point to) a location in the map; and photos, videos of the location and comments entered for the location are shown in a map indicating exact positions of photo/video/comment entry.
• My location is automatically updated. I can choose the level of detail of the location i.e. update only city, or just the locality or exact location. I can also choose to go “offline” where my location will not be published.
• If I just want to send a text update, I am able to do so via SMS.

Listed above are a few things I want to be able to do, now here’s something I don’t want to do - Check for compatibility with my phone, download a client etc; it should just be there on the main menu. Social networks that tie up with carriers and/or handset manufactures will be better positioned than those who are not.

This is just the beginning

This is just the “What to implement” part (and that too off the top of my head), what’s equally important is “How it’s implemented”. This is where Visual and Interaction design will play a key role in designing the experience. Making sure interface is clear (as in not cluttered) and visually appealing, user is easily able to do things that he wants to do (as in relevant options are readily available, contextual navigation will play a part here) etc etc. Oh and don’t forget performance….oh yes, engineering has a part to play as well

Social networking and the mobile phone

Social networking via the mobile phone is a big buzz these days. MOBILE user generated content and social networking was worth 3.45 B in 2006 (don’t have access to current numbers but I bet it’ll be more than double that). New services for mobile phones have been developed that allow people to create, develop, and strengthen social ties. MySpace and Facebook have each made deals with wireless carriers to develop limited versions of their services on mobile phones.

The core values that a mobile phone brings to a social network are:

• Always-on communication medium
• Location

Always-on Communication Medium

When I say communication medium, I don’t just mean 2 way communication, it also includes the 1 way feeds on status updates, picture/video/audio uploads, group messages etc;

Mobile phone enables real-time feedback from the users and enables “living in the moment”. When you are surfing the Web with a stationary PC at home, you are either accessing information about some past events, or some real-time information about some event a distance away. In contrast, with mobile phone you can take part in the event, capture it, provide comments and share all this with others. Mobile phone therefore provides richer social interaction.

Location, location, location

Mobility implies movement and therefore location-based/location-aware services become more important. There are already some location based services which take into account user-generated content. For example traffic jams and radars can be detected based on information shared voluntarily by other users of the system. However, the core of mobility is not movement but context. Adding context-awareness to services brings about complexity, but at the same time lots and lots of possibilities.

Adding tags to physical world instead of only in the Web is interesting. Physical places could be valuated: Getting good service or alternatively stomach disease in some restaurant.

The impact

Interest groups and friends are closer to you when you and they are mobile. People can engage in joint tasks with the mobile community in ways not possible with stationary communities.

Mobile user-generated content can bring a new kind of warmth and deepness to familiar things. If a restaurant review comes from someone having a particular relationship with you – be it a friend of yours providing a review of a new restaurant in your home town, or your fellow countryman providing a review of a popular tourist restaurant in a foreign city it probably feels different than reading a review written by a professional restaurant critic.

Added value for mobile user-generated content is easy to imagine for a tourist who does not know the surroundings. Practical information created by other people who have visited the same area depending on the need either other tourists or locals would be of use as an alternative to “official information”, provided for example by local travel agencies. The same model could work for buying a microwave: Access to user-generated information about microwaves in an electronic store, as opposed to the information provided by the manufacturer or the seller, would assist the buyer (kinda like book reviews on Amazon but in a physical world).