Exploring Urban Events with Transitory Search on Mobiles

Searching for unknown urban events in the hope of making serendipitous discoveries has been the focus of multiple mobile tourist guide and recommender systems. This study investigates how transitory search can be used as an interaction mechanism for making such discoveries on a mobile phone. Our prototype, onMelbourne, returns a changing collection of urban events within physical and temporal proximity based on the setting and adjustment of search sliders by the user. Laboratory tests with 5 participants show that users understand transitory search for urban events and do make serendipitous discoveries. In addition we found that users fear missing out on events not shown by the system, and that the choice of labels on sliders impacts their understanding of a slider set halfway. The contribution of the paper is a better understanding of how transitory search can facilitate explorative behaviour when browsing for urban events on mobiles.

[1]  Jon M. Pearce,et al.  To search or to explore -- that is the question: a study in mindful engagement , 2008, OZCHI.

[2]  Jon M. Pearce,et al.  So now you're ready to play: but with what? a system to encourage playful exploration , 2009 .

[3]  David Elsweiler,et al.  Entertainment on the go: finding things to do and see while visiting distributed events , 2012, IIiX.

[4]  Gregor E. Kennedy,et al.  Search and explore: more than one way to find what you want , 2012, OZCHI.

[5]  Bracha Shapira,et al.  Recommender Systems Handbook , 2015, Springer US.

[6]  Lassi A. Liikkanen,et al.  Out of the bubble: serendipitous even recommendations at an urban music festival , 2012, IUI '12.

[7]  Johan Koolwaaij,et al.  Context-Aware Recommendations in the Mobile Tourist Application COMPASS , 2004, AH.

[8]  Michael Roberts,et al.  Activity-based serendipitous recommendations with the Magitti mobile leisure guide , 2008, CHI.

[9]  Paul Ayres,et al.  Investigating the influence of transitory information and motivation during instructional animations , 2008, ICLS.

[10]  Charalampos Konstantopoulos,et al.  Mobile recommender systems in tourism , 2014, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[11]  Keith Cheverst,et al.  Developing a context-aware electronic tourist guide: some issues and experiences , 2000, CHI.

[12]  Susan Rodrigues,et al.  Search or explore: do you know what you're looking for? , 2011, OZCHI.

[13]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Exploratory search , 2006, Commun. ACM.

[14]  Gediminas Adomavicius,et al.  Toward the next generation of recommender systems: a survey of the state-of-the-art and possible extensions , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.