Evaluation of Users‘ Effort in a Human-computer Cooperation based Indoor Mobile Location System

Abstract

Due to the utilization of existing infrastructure and powerful mobile devices, many different indoor localization systems have been booming in recent years. However, most of those systems very focus on technical issues, a few studies investigate usability issues from users’ perspective. In this paper, we conduct a case study with 18 participants to study how many effort (e.g., physical and mental workload) users would spend in a human-computer cooper-ation indoor positioning system. To support the study, we develop a Google Tango tablet based infrastructure-free indoor positioning system, by mapping users’ walking trajectory and environmental features. Through the evaluation, we confirm that the workload increas-es as the increase of required walking distance, specifically for the physical and temporal demands. While positioning in an infrastructure-free environment, the participants were willing to contribute and would walk maximum 50 meters with their mobile devices.