Navigating and Interacting Indoors with a Mobile Learning Game

Schwabe, G., Göth, C. (2005): “Navigating and interacting indoors with a mobile learning game“, International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education.

This paper focuses on the design of a mobile learning game to experience immersion. It discusses height implications resulted from three trials performed in 2004 and 2005.

Design recommendation 4 deals with visual imprecision of location information appropriately.

Dealing with imprecise location information: Indoor navigation requires a higher precision than outdoor navigation. The Ekahau system provides positioning information with a reliable accuracy of 3-5m. The effect of the limited accuracy is amplified by information delays. [...] Thus there is an important design issue how to present the imprecise location information to the user. For physical reasons, the location error of the Ekahau engine is not linear.

Design solutions depend on activities:

1. Navigation to another location: Here it is most important to indicate the precision of the location information to the users.
2. Solving a task: An appropriate design answer is an automatic or manual locking of location information while a participant is solving a task. If a task requires local movements beyond the precision of the W-LAN positioning system, changing to a Personal Area Location Information system with active digital objects is advisable.

Relation to my thesis: Valuable implications for design for location-based application (beyond games) and how to deal with imprecise location information in the context of mobility.