Remember, you can pull your smartphone out of your pocket, from your current position to anywhere in the world, and you can get immediate instructions from your cell phone? To me...
Remember, you can pull your smartphone out of your pocket, from your current position to anywhere in the world, can you get immediate instructions from your cell phone? It's a little fogy for me.
In fact, I'm used to relying on my cell phone, and I'm increasingly panicking in Costco's hallway, looking for elephant houses in the zoo, or looking for good food at the airport. Does my magic pocket computer help me with this, too?
The answer is yes, of course. But there are still challenges to indoor navigation systems.
User Interface
Map applications have a major focus on your phone: getting you from 106th Street to 301th Street, going home from work, or from home to Taco Bell. Why do you go to Taco Bell and how many of your Mexican beef fills? Applications don't need to know. So the typical smartphone map application interface is a big map and a search box.
You may think that indoor navigation applications say that the American Museum of Natural History has the same concern: to get you out of the front door. But why do you go to the Dragon? How do I know there's a Tyrannosaurus here? If my children have 20 things, they want to see that we only have two hours to see everything. What happens this week? Is there anything special?
It turns out that creating a useful indoor navigation application requires going beyond navigation. Therefore, an effective mobile user interface should be more "smart guides" and fewer "paper maps" on your smartphone.
This is a design challenge, like any other mobile application. Helps visitors to decide where they need to go first and then directly there.
Current location
Okay, so you decide where you want to go, the delta head that I mentioned earlier. Ideally, the application will start at your current location.
Now there's great grief: GPS, as you know, doesn't work indoors. Satellite signals are too weak to penetrate anything that is much thicker than the metal roof of your car.
However, all modern smart phones have built-in Wi-Fi, wireless networks in indoor space, and it is common for an application to scan known access points and calculate your location.
However, unlike Andre in the wider open world, the developers do not allow these Wi-Fi “sign scans” at the end of the mobile phone.
Fortunately, there are other options. One way is to get construction done, not equipment. Some Wi-Fi devices, such as CiscoMSE, can determine the location of any wireless device in the building. The access point itself listens to Wi-Fi signals created through mobile phones and estimates its location through triangulation. The solution has been successfully deployed in several locations, including the Natural History Museum in the United States.
Inaccurate design
One consequence of most indoor positioning systems is that GPS is less accurate than it is. For example, the indoor system usually guesses which room you are in, which is about it. Precision depends on how many people are in the room, how you keep your cell phone, and other vagaries.
An effective mobile application must design this reality from the outset. A technology would help users to point out that the environment for rapid recognition of the function is a great deal.
For example, an EM application uses a short text label to describe each direction. (Disclosed: I am the chief technical officer and co-founder.) Below, the Rose Room is in the “real world” space, allowing for field markings, such as downstairs.
The best way to strike is to make it as easy as possible for the user to correct himself. In the application of the trade, the map can be easily towed, rotated, zoomed down, and by flipping the steps. If the starting position is not perfect, the user will naturally drag it, and then get it out.
Put it together
It is not only possible to create an amazing experience of indoor applications, but it has already happened. This year alone, many places — from stadiums and retailers to museums and business campuses — have introduced daily applications for navigation and location-based content for hundreds of people.
The indoor Wi-Fi positioning technology is not a research project, it exists and works, and we all do it now. With the right user interface, it can be just as effective as GPS outside.
Its time has spread incredible experience, wandering around in one place, such as an extremely complex museum of history, without feeling lost.