Embodying services into physical places: Toward the design of a mobile environment browser

The tremendous developments in mobile computing and handheld devices have allowed for an increasing usage of the resources of the World Wide Web. People today consume information and services on the go, through smart phones applications capable of exploiting their location in order to adapt the content according to the context of use. As location-based services gain traction and reveal their limitations, we argue there is a need for intelligent systems to be created to better support people's activities in their experience of the city, especially regarding their decision-making processes. In this article, we explore the opportunity to move closer to the realization of the ubiquitous computing vision by turning physical places into smart environments capable of cooperatively and autonomously collecting, processing, and transporting information about their characteristics (e.g., practical information, presence of people, and ambience). Following a multidisciplinary approach which leverages psychology, design, and computer science, we propose to investigate the potential of building communication and interaction spaces, called information spheres , on top of physical places such as businesses, homes, and institutions. We argue that, if the latter are exposed on the Web, they can act as a platform delivering information and services and mediating interactions with smart objects without requiring too much effort for the deployment of the architecture. After presenting the inherent challenges of our vision, we go through the protocol of two preliminary experiments that aim to evaluate users' perception of different types of information (i.e., reviews, check-in information, video streams, and real-time representations) and their influence on the decision-making process. Results of this study lead us to elaborate the design considerations that must be taken into account to ensure the intelligibility and user acceptance of information spheres. We finally describe a research prototype application called Environment Browser (Env-B) and present the underlying smart space middleware, before evaluating the user experience with our system through quantitative and qualitative methods.