When I first thought about creating my personal web site, what I had in mind was to create a meeting point for researchers, academics and practitioners, both from the ICT and tourism fields to discuss and share ideas about mobile solutions in general and more in particular about mobile solutions for the travel and tourism industries. Following other (existing) examples, I think we can generate good project and cooperation ideas by creating (online) discussion groups combining the vision of researchers and practitioners with the real-world knowledge of the industry. Sometimes, we researchers go too far, for we can do almost anything with technology. We need more contact with the real world, we need to get to know more and better what the real needs of the travel and tourism industries are, as well as what tourists themselves need. We need a multidisciplinary interaction of professionals. This way, we can leverage good products if we unite and share thoughts openly. This blog is an experiment in this direction.
Let me then start this first post by bringing up some trends both in the ICT and travel industries. On the one hand, the evolution of mobile devices and their proliferation in society, the advancement of communication technologies and the trend towards creating hybrid spaces (a physical environment augmented with digital information) are triggering a radical change in the way we consume information by the use of mobile devices while we are on the go. According to Cysco Systems the number of smartphones represents about 10% of the market. This figure is foreseen to rise up to 40-50% over the next 5 years. In addition, following some information from the Google Mobile Ads Blog, more than 165 million tablets are expected to be sold over the next two years. Regarding connectivity and (mobile) data traffic, by 2013 3G and high speed broadband mobile device access will generate around 80% of mobile data.
On the other hand, according to some reports by SITA, in 2015 there will be more than 1.5 billion people moving around the world. 90% of these people will be carrying a mobile device with them at all times, 60% of which will be of the smartphone type. These people will require to be connected to sources of information in an anytime anywhere manner.
Thus, the following questions arise: Can mobile devices help us detect behaviour patterns? How can we understand what travellers need? What is their decision making process? How can we help them find what they need? How can we get to better know and understand how, why and what they use their mobile devices for? Can we make their smartphone work for them? How?
We could use (there are plenty of examples) their location to provide location-based services and/or to enhance their search. We could even take into account more variables other than location such as profile, preferences, weather conditions and so on, in what it is called context-aware services, or as I like to call it contextual computing. Contextual computing has been an intensive field of research over the last 20 years. However, these kinds of systems still do not exist for the general public. Why? Is there something we can do? Are we missing something? What is it that we are missing?
I see two different (somewhhat orthogonal) approaches to this subject. We can think about a theoretical model approach, in which some kind of set of evidences drives us to a model that can be used to extract some knowledge about different aspects of the user, like the ones you propose (decission making process while in mobility and in tourism mode, etc). The tricky point there is definitely to be able to come up with a reliable model, that can be computed and used in real time, etc.
However, the mobile world is moving (has moved?) towards another paradigm, which is based on gaming dynamics. Via some kind of reward mechanism, the user WANTS to give you some information that (in the previous approach) you would be extracting via some tricky and sophisticated algorithm. I am thinking about whhat 4square does, or Facebook places now, or some other apps like the copuning ones, that more and more often includes some gaming and reward functionality inside, so that the user sees FUNNY or USEFUL to provide some info. Like what I am looking for now (restaurant?), or whhere I am now, or doing whhat, because I get some badge and I become the major of some plaace etc. In this second procedure the algorithhms to deploy are MUCH LESS COMPLEX, as the user will be providing the info or triggering the service when there is a need. Just because he/she gets some reward/value/whatever. Given that the technical complexity of this second model is much lower (easier to develop, easier to deploy an app like these ones), and that the user would inevitable choose one of such apps over a strange procedure that gets information out of him/her (which it is often seen as “Big Brother whatching”, telco operators know a lot about the big mental barrier that is generated by such feeling among the users), I would bet that the gaming approach would suceed over the first one.
Floor is yours!
I think Alejandro’s comments rise some interesting issues. One of them is that of obtaining users’ (tourists’) information. It may not be about knowing more about the user, but we need to know the right kind of information that allows us to have a sound understanding about the user (tourist in this case) so that we can provide a good and reliable context-based service. It also rises another interesting issue, which is that of context modeling in a way that is (quickly) computable. I was actually planning to write a about context modeling in some coming posts.
However, don’t you think that we need a theoretical approach first and once we agree on what information we need to model context we can set this new gaming dynamics approach to obtain tourism data? Why aren’t we able to agree on a definition and model?
On the other hand, how much interaction does this way (gaming dynamics) of obtaining information imply? Aren’t we making it not too convenient for the user to provide information through the gaming approach, since there is much interaction foreseen?
Alejandro, have you been using gaming dynamics? Could you provide some more information about it?
As we all may know in contextual computing, comprehensive modeling leads to increasing the complexity of the solution you want to provide. Modeling complex phenomena is straightforward (you can model the world) but it is useless for the purposes you describe. I agree with Alejandro, and believe it’s high time for less theory and move into action.
I like Andres’ post because it brings me back to something I have long been thinking about and struggling with since I do research: theory vs. action…, but I have never been able to get to a conclusion, or to decide which way or how to proceed. My current work and what I have been concentrated on in the last years (PhD – http://www.carloslamsfus.com/PhD) have made me focus mainly on theory. But the change of knowledge production models (Mode 2 –I will come back to this in future posts) and the (dis)-irruption of apps in the mobile world are changing the whole panorama and I think we need to re-think about how we do research, may be more action-driven?
I agree with Andres in the fact that we need more action than now, but is it (solely) more action what we need? Or is it more action supported, or based or ruled on/by theory? Because, if we did not have a theoretical framework, how could we do anything at all? How would we rule what we do? Theory should then be accompanied with (more) action to get finally something that works (in form of an app) done.
For example, we could go into more action (following Andres’ suggestion) by using Alejandro’s dynamic gaming approach to get to know more about the user. We could do a series of trial-error approach, for example, to discover which user information is more used/demanded, and then develop an application…, which gets me to one question that I would like to address in an upcoming post: how are apps going to change the way we do research? How are apps going to change the world of information-intensive services and products? But I will come back to this in a few posts’ time.
So, what do you think if we agree on a theoretical framework and then we use action based in dynamic gaming or similar approaches to start doing things? With different trials and doing careful evaluations, we could have an action-based theory context model… Then we should work on the computing model, but that’s another story for another day.
What do you think?
Sorry about the previous link which is wrong, this is the right one: http://www.carloslamsfus.com/ph-d/