Reach Out and Touch: Using NFC and 2D Barcodes for Service Discovery and Interaction with Mobile Devices

We investigate the use of 2 tagging technologies: Near Field Communication (NFC) and 2-dimensional barcodes. Our investigation combined a field trial and interview based study with an experimental evaluation. The field trial focused on users' experience of the usability of NFC for a range of trial services, users' perceptions of NFC use in their daily life context, and users' suggestions for potential applications of NFC. The tags were embedded in a variety of postcards, table-top signs and posters. The experimental evaluation compared the ease of use of NFC and 2D barcodes, operationalised in terms of time taken to read a specified sequence of tags on posters. We found that for untrained users the 2D barcodes were quicker to use than the NFC tags but that training significantly improved users' performance with the NFC tags while having no effect on their performance with the barcodes.

[1]  Vassilis Kostakos,et al.  Building Common Ground for Face to Face Interactions by Sharing Mobile Device Context , 2006, LoCA.

[2]  Wrg Hillier,et al.  Crime and urban layout: the need for evidence , 2000 .

[3]  Bernt Schiele,et al.  Location- and Context-Awareness, Third International Symposium, LoCA 2007, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, September 20-21, 2007, Proceedings , 2007, LoCA.

[4]  Richard Sharp,et al.  Using smart phones to access site-specific services , 2005, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[5]  Albrecht Schmidt,et al.  An Experimental Comparison of Physical Mobile Interaction Techniques: Touching, Pointing and Scanning , 2006, UbiComp.

[6]  Koutarou Suzuki,et al.  RFID Privacy Issues and Technical Challenges , 2005, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[7]  Richard Sharp,et al.  Using visual tags to bypass Bluetooth device discovery , 2005, MOCO.

[8]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  Farther Than You May Think: An Empirical Investigation of the Proximity of Users to Their Mobile Phones , 2006, UbiComp.

[9]  Roy Want,et al.  An introduction to RFID technology , 2006, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[10]  Daniel Gilling.  Secure Foundations: Key Issues in Crime Prevention, Crime Reduction and Community Safety , 2002 .

[11]  Rafael Ballagas,et al.  Spontaneous marriages of mobile devices and interactive spaces , 2005, CACM.

[12]  Simson L. Garfinkel,et al.  RFID privacy: an overview of problems and proposed solutions , 2005, IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine.

[13]  Jukka Riekki,et al.  Requesting Pervasive Services by Touching RFID Tags , 2006, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[14]  Paul Dourish,et al.  UbiComp 2006: Ubiquitous Computing, 8th International Conference, UbiComp 2006, Orange County, CA, USA, September 17-21, 2006 , 2006, UbiComp.

[15]  Oliver Günther,et al.  RFID and the Perception of Control: The Consumer's View , 2005, IEEE Engineering Management Review.