Hi everyone,
In this blog post, we want to summarize our ideas and test results of our location-based stickers in Berlin.
Florian presented the results in his speech at the Mobile Monday. For those who couldn’t attend we also suggest you check the presentation on slideshare. A big “thank you” to the organizers of the Mobile Monday Berlin – it was a great evening.
The topic of the evening was “Location-based Services” (LBS) – a surely hyped subject in recent years when it comes to mobile business. We presented the following topics:
- Why locations matter in social networks
- The concept of hyperlocalization
- The Friendticker placemark stickers with various technologies
- A test in Berlin with 200 stickers
- What we learned from the test in Berlin
- Where we go in the future
On 1: Why locations matter in social networks
For location-based information about certain locations, three facts matter: (a) Real-time information, (b) the social context, and (c) the availability of real places in the LBS.
a) Real-time information is the only relevant information in LBS. Let’s say, someone wants to meet with his friends who used a system to tell others “We are here”. They located themselves to a specific place. Now, the person decides to meet his friends who have already left the place – the person will be disappointed in the system and angry to not having called right away.
b) Social context: During the day your social context (colleagues) might differ from the context in the evenings (girlfriend, close friends). Also the areas you move in are potentially different. For LBS this means that time and location also relate to the persons in an environment (social context). A system should be capable to differentiate friends and colleagues – or at least allow the user to do so.
c) Real places: No one would ever say (well, maybe a real nerd): Meet me at Lat. 46° 10’ 11”, Long. 10° 46’ 98”. You’d rather point out: Meet me at The Raven in the East Village. Real places matter in LBS. GPS coordinates are a way to determine locations of users, but more relevant are known places, such as bars, restaurants, offices, landmarks, sites, sightseeing spots, etc.; they are not relevant to a user.
On 2: The concept of hyperlocalization
Whereas standard localization technologies, such as GPS/A-GPS, Cell Identification, AoA, Wifi/WLAN positioning systems (WPS) allow a very good and granular localization of a device, they are not helpful when it comes to ranges below 1m. An example is meeting rooms in an office space – preferably three next to each other. How can the aforementioned technologies determine where exactly a person is at?
Another example is several bars in one house or a car in a certain floor in a car-park. How to determine the exact position of a person in the bar or the car in the car-park? This brings us to the concept of hyperlocalization. Hyperlocalization would theoretically allow a user or an object to specify his/its location to a system on a high granular level (<1m). This concept would (a) not work with standard technologies (at least not yet) and (b) not work with maps on a mobile phone or in the internet. A map can only show a certain amount of information, which leads to confusion if there are too many little spots on the map.
However, hyperlocalization allows for a whole new range of services – such as voluntary exact user positioning in large rooms for meetings etc.; To do so, we created our LBS stickers.
On 3: The Friendticker placemark stickers with various technologies
Friendticker is a mobile location-based service to tell other people where you are at the moment.
The Friendticker stickers use three technologies: Near Field Communication (NFC), QR-Codes and text messaging. Each sticker has a unique ID number. The ID number is printed on the front of the sticker; it is encoded into the NFC chip as URL, and into the QR-Code as a URL. For instance, the number 1148 is the sticker number, then the user has the ability to text this number to a long number (0176 888 100 00), or touch the NFC tag with his NFC-enabled phone to open the URL http://n.uisle.com/1148, or scan the QR-Code with a QR-Code Software to open the URL http://q.uisle.com/1148. The different URLs allowed us to track which technology the user used to access Friendticker. In the Friendticker back-end service the number 1148 is connected to a specific location, in this case “HomeBase Berlin” (the location where the Mobile Monday event took place).
Using one of the three methods (NFC, QR or SMS), the user can check himself into the location related to the number. In the case of the URL this happens via the mobile browser, in case of the SMS, the gateway does the rest. Every number has been specified upfront with GPS coordinates or exact address data. Every sticker is placed at the door of a location (bar, restaurant). The stickers therefore allow exact localization, because the user must be in front of the door to see the number or use one of the other technologies. Servtag owns a utility patent on the combination of these user identification technologies.
On 4: A test in Berlin with 200 stickers
To determine which of the three technologies is relevant to the end-user, we attached our stickers to approx. 200 locations in Berlin, mainly in the three central quarters of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, and Schönefeld. Ten students helped us to “tag” the locations. Friendticker was the back-end service that allowed users to handle the check-ins, show these to friends, connect to each others, say friends “where they are now”. Each person who tagged locations was asked to also take a picture of the location inside, outside and one picture of the sticker. We were able to determine if the sticker was in the right spot, right height, and visible.
On 5: What we learned from the test in Berlin
The results can be seen from a (a) company perspective and (b) from a user perspective.
a) Company perspective: It took quite long to tag the locations, because we had to always talk to the managing director or owner of the place. Employees were not allowed to decide if the door can be “tagged”. Especially as the sticker included an RFID chip (this is the NFC component), these decisions were taken seriously. From a cost perspective of a company who “tags” a city: There were the costs of a sticker (material), the costs of applying the sticker (personnel costs), and the costs to manage the back-end (e.g. connect the photos of the locations to a location in the back-end, etc.). Feedback from location owners was very positive as they liked the idea to let guests tell other people where they are.
b) User perspective: The best way to use the stickers clearly was Near Field Communication (NFC). One could use it at night, with no light on; it was fast and reliable. However as there are not enough NFC phones out there, usage was low. QR-Codes were something new to the people, but difficult to use when behind glass, with bad cameras in phone, or if someone was in a hurry. Usage was low. The text-messaging service was accepted best among the three interaction patterns.
On 6: Where we go in the future
Servtag has implemented a system that allows multiple identification technologies to be used with the back-end service Friendticker. Be it KML data, GPS data, SMS codes, NFC, QR-Codes or URLs. Furthermore we have designed a system that allows a variety of location-based social context adaptations – for friends, co-workers, or family members. The system includes real places, not raw GPS data. We think that Friendticker is a good start. For the future we see the easiest usage with iPhone, Android and GPS-enabled mobile phones and localization. The stickers have been a very good concept, when it comes to determine exact locations and positions of people, devices, or objects. With an increase in NFC phone availability the sticker becomes relevant.
Are you interested in our services, please contact the sales department: info@servtag.com
