Localite: Crowd-sourcing localized information

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Elson Ponte, Xavier Ferreira, Ruben Silva, Lus Lopes, Sofia Pereira
xavier_3d@hotmail.com
INTRODUCTION

Sometimes we need to obtain information about

a place or a service. Until now that is only
possible if we know the name of the service, the
name of the store or the specific location
(Address) and search it online, because the
internet has those indexed details, but even that
method has restrictions, because it depends on
having internet access which means we have to
use a computer (at home, or with your laptop in
a hotspot, mobile internet, etc.) or use your
mobile which brings other restrictions such as
not having internet on your mobile phone or that
the websites that index that information may not
be optimized for mobile platforms. Now
imagine that we do not have any of that
information about the place and that we have
urgency in obtaining that information? How will
we get it?
Imagine as well that we need to find someone in
an unknown location, that the people we are
looking for dont even know how where they
are or how they got there. How will we get to
that place without knowing the name of the
street where they are or without knowing any
know place near them? We could at certain
point start asking for directions to the people
that pass nearby, but that is also not very
effective because we may not know how to
explain where do we need to go, or the people
may not understand what we are trying to
LITERATURE REVIEW

In literature review you dont reflect what

youve learned from these papers. You report
what has been done already and conclude how
your contribution is different from theirs. It
should first dive in to demonstrate that you
know well the literature, and then try to link to
your study proposal section where you motivate
your research questions.
Humans are beings extremely creative and very
intelligent, but sometimes people just by
themselves cant overcome some challenges and
that is where the technology goes. It is true that
men and technology sometimes does not get
along, especially when technology is not well
developed and cant be flexible enough to adapt
to the personality or the minimum requirements
for each of us. It is extremely crucial that every

explain. Another aspect that may condition

obtaining information from other people is
using different languages. We may need
information about the place where we live or
about some place that we are visiting in a
business or leisure travel. That restrains the way
foreigners obtain information or how we obtain
information when we are abroad. How would
we obtain information about friends that are
travelling with us, or how would we find the
place to our business meeting?
One of the current solutions for these problems
involves using GPS or online maps services like
google maps, but these services are not always
effective because there are location errors by
lack of GPS coverage in case of being inside of
a buiding and because this service sometimes
has errors in its maps and not indexes all the
usefull information we might need. Google
maps still have a lot of errors and the marked
locations dont always match to reality, joining
the fact common to GPS of lack of specific
information.
All of these factors affect a lot of people on a
daily bases and a solution of obtaining fast and
accurate information on our mobile phones
would decrease the time we spend searching for
locations and services.
technological advance, every discovery, every
development, has the features of a huge research
process that allows help develop correctly that
whatever is project or application.
Sometimes we can count on researches carried
out previously, that alone may already be a big
help if needed for a possible comparison of data
with other times or places. In our case, and
regarding the time and place, have concluded
that the backwards, the technology was
undeveloped and limited, and there are also
places where people have easier access to other
equipment. There is also an issue that touches
you at least to the Portuguese, or even all people
is a fear of trying new things. The applications
needs to Wake Up the curiosity of its users and
gain their trust, otherwise will not succeed. To
succeed we must first consider the following
questions:

The target audience that is interested in the

product? What is the area that we are driving?
Are there any restrictions technological, social,
cultural, etc?
It is necessary to know if any aspect is left out,
and for this the help of individuals willing to
collaborate with the project allows us to
somehow hear their views. The more research
material there means that the study is more
detailed and will have fewer failures. The
surveys will be part of one of our methods of
researches most decisive and important because
they are what demonstrate once more and more
concrete form all we need to know the user like
and feel that this project is complete.
After all information has been collected, there is
nothing left to remove the most important and
applied in this project, reviewing the state that

always follows. Another detail that perhaps

might be important is the better choice of
method of operation of the application. Since it
is located, if the devices will communicate with
each other to share information, the
environment will be using the internet, and
mobile operators tend to charge fees for Internet
usage. If it exists, or has created a special plan,
possibly more people that perhaps they were
afraid to go into high costs, could more easily
join and use the service. We note also, for the
detail that the age range of users of this service
is not fixed, or at least can vary greatly, but most
likely are children or older do not possess the
wisdom or the intention of using a cellphone
enough advanced functions and never imagined
that 10 years ago.

STUDY

To develop any application, there are several

stages that when completed allow us to advance
to the next stage and so on until the application
is complete. The first of those stages is research.
Research is what sets the pace to the other
stages, it defines the overall shape of the
application and what should be included in it,
based on the problems people have with current
solutions.
If we are developing an application, is because
it can useful to users in ways where other
processes failed. For that we need to ask people
how they solved until now the problems that the
application is trying to solve. We also need to
ask what devices they carry around all the time.

If an android phone is in the list, than we can

assume that an application for that mobile
operative system can be the answer to solve the
problems. If they do not carry an android mobile
phone with them we can try to figure out if this
application would push people into getting one
of those devices to use the applications
advantages.
With questionnaires we can gather all those
answers to our questions, and based on the
answers we can start add functionalities that will
make the application effective for the tasks that
is designed to do, the design that will also be
chosen based on those answers.

Survey Study

Participants

-Gender: Male or Female?

For this study we gathered 104 participants that

decided to answer or questionnaire. Regarding
to the gender 49 were Males and 64 were
Females. Their ages go from 12 to 45 years old.
Most of the participants were students but the
rest of the participants occupations include also
technicians, engineers and tourism related
activities, commerce related activities and also a
fireman. This is not a surprise because most of
the participants are from Madeira Island, 57 of
them are from the city of Funchal and there are
several participants spread around the rest of the
island. There are also people from Lisbon,
Porto, Coimbra an other parts of continental
Portugal. There is also a participant from Dublin
and two from Venezuela, so we have some
variety of participants that can give us a lot of
different perspectives.

-Age:
-City where you live:
-Occupation:
-Imagine a situation in which you were looking
for information that you could not find via the
internet.
Describe us your situation, what you were
looking for and how you finally solved your
problem?
Example: "I once needed to find a coffee shop
with internet access in a city that I was visiting.
So I asked the nearby people to help me find it."

Method and procedure

To acquire information for this research we set

up two online questionnaires (one in Portuguese
and one in English). Each questionnaire had
five questions: Gender, Age, Occupation and a
development question where they were required
to describe a situation where they needed to find
information that they could not find online and
how they solved it.
These questionnaires where than made public
and advertised on facebook, shared by email,
messenger and by person to person. After we
gathered about 100 questionnaires answered
there was enough data for our research.
Analysis

To analyze the results we had to start by

translating all of the Portuguese answers to
English. After that we indexed them in an excel
sheet by the order they came in and inserted the
English answer on the side.
After that was done we gone through each
question individually and started attributing
them tags that could describe that problem
experienced by that person and then categorize
those tags so we could have a better perception
of the main problems faced by the enquires.
RESULTS

From the questionnaires we made we gathered a

lot of problems that were faced by the people
who answered it. The problems they faced while
searching for some location based information
were diverse but we analyzed the answers to
find out what were the most common problems
shared by the users.
The most common problems where on finding
the location of some buildings like Police
stations, fire station, shopping malls,
pharmacies,
Hospitals,
clinics,
cafes,
restaurants, nightclubs, real estate agencies,
hotels, service companies, monuments and
museums.
The second most shared problem was to obtain
information about buildings and services like
stores,
restaurants,
public
transports,
pharmacies, cinemas, cafes, clinics, libraries and
museums. People have trouble about requiring
services, contacts and the services opening and
closing hours so they can use a service or visit a
store in ways that dont conflict with their
routines.
The third most common problem shared by the
people who answered the questionnaires was
about
getting
some
information,
but

documented information like travel routes,

books, international news, articles of any type,
gastronomy, culture and software and naming.
The rest of the problems shared by the users
relate to getting internet acess while outside the
house and knowing real time information about
the cinemas.
Regarding the information that allowed us to
describe the user, we noticed that we had more
answers from female that male but with not a
big difference and being this an online
questionnaire we were ready for this because
almost everyone use internet, men and women.
Relating to their ages it varied from 12 to 45
and we had more answers from people with
ages around 20s and 30s, most of them from
Madeira Island.
From all the questionnaires we selected some of
the answers that we think described problems
that were common to a lot of people and that we
could solve with our application:
-Once I needed to find out what the fastest
route to a place he wanted to visit. As I could
not find on the Internet, I asked several people
who had already visited.
-This person wanted to find a fast route to a
place and asked people with opinions about it.
-I was looking for information about the festive
traditions of the city of Funchal, as there wasnt
sufficient information on the internet I went
searching for some books.
-We choose this one because it can be very
common in our touristic island. Someone is
looking for information that some of the locals
can provide.
-It was necessary to find a pharmacy in service,
I found the Internet.
-This person got her answer from the internet
but some pharmacies dont have websites and
information about it can be clearly answered by
someone who was passing near a pharmacy.
-Once I tried to search the Internet for how to
make popcorn?
-This person wanted to know how to make
popcorn. She could ask someone who does
popcorn daily like someone who works at the
movies. An expert showing how to make better
popcorn could improve her popcorns.
-Information on hours of transports in Funchal,
internet access points, where we have
advantages as students etc
-Transport information is essential for everyone
who uses it. An application which shows real

time information about transports would be very

useful.
To better organize our data and better realize
what were the problems based we attributed tags
to all the answers and then organize those tags
in categories.
The tags we got are:
Location (156 times): Location, around, home,
library, bars, destinations, monument, route,
local, trip, buildings, city, store, guide,
Orientation, place, navigation, way, shop,
transport, house, school, travel, access, nearby,
coordinates, town, landmarks, Museum, map,
Company, dental clinic, university, GPS, Clinic,
Coimbra, train station, Funchal, Lisbon,
bookstore, direction;
Objects (7 times): appliances, Image, picture,
photos, Manual arts, music;
Food (12): food, coffee, cookbook, recipe;
Characters (14):
persons, foreign, people,
citizen, student, witness, friend, companionship,
aliens, son, supplier, teacher;
Expressions, states and acts (60): opinion,
advise, explicit, quality, solutions, question,
Ideas, surprise, free, weird, unknown, problem,
resolution, know, preparation, indication,
benefits, traditions, language, real, settings,
jealous, open, ancient, manual, online, phone
number, cheaper stuff, doubt, comparison,
values, recommendation, Birthday, items,
service, companies, job, stage, resources,
company, Planning;
Time (18 times): time, holidays, vacation,
fastest, weather, timing;
Health (5 times): health, disease, medication;
Tasks (80 times): have fun, help, talk, rent,
meet, contact, find, work, sell, purchase, ask,
research, repair, make, Prepare, develop, pay,
seek, browse, cook, call, watch, answer,
play;
Leisure (22 times): entertainment, sports,
shopping, purchasing, photography, partys,
Leisure, games;
Data (78 times): book, author, Information,
document, course,, study, yellow pages,
questionnaire, papers, citations, magazine,
history, story, data, solid information, Song
book, literature, Pamphlet, math, formula;
Technology (36 times): Internet
access,
internet, mobile, sms, network, technology,
phone, design, Article, TV show, website,
Facebook, Google, software, television;

DISCUSSION / IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN

After selecting and interpreting all the

information we gathered from the questionnaire
we had to come up with ideas to solve all those
problems. Some of them we think it would be
useful to include in our application.
The most occurring problems during our
research were about getting information about a
specific building or services based on a specific
location.
To our application we think it would be suitable
to add these functionalities:
-Index all of the near emergency
services and health related buildings such as
clinics and pharmacies and also all the
information about them, such as opening hours
and available services or consults. It can also
show distances, travel times, etc.
- Near leisure places such as bars, nightclubs,
parties and events, also restaurants and all food
related places. It can also include the persons
opinions of each place and supply pictures,
directions and ratings.
- List available properties, houses, apartments
and rooms to rent near the user's location. It can
also include conditions, such as parking
availability, public transports nearby and what
the housing conditions.
- Show all the near culture and education
facilities libraries, schools, research centers on
specific subjects and also community centers
near the place where the user is. It can also
show book clubs, what is each facilitys strong
point, their opening hours, their availability for
visit and opinions of people who have visited it.
It can also show what specialists each facility
has.
- Index all of the available places with internet
access such as internet cafes, Wi-Fi points and
restaurants and cafes with access to their clients.
- Show all sports related buildings such as
stadiums, sport bars by teams, teams related
buildings and fan bars, show what are the teams
those facilities support, upcoming events and
joining conditions.
- Send private information to a user that allows
it to determine where you are.
- Index all of the travel related buildings such as
airports, travel agencies, flight lists with times,
promotions and vacancies.
All of this is possible with a system of virtual
notes that can be indexed to a location in a map.
All of these notes will have categories that serve
as filters. If you activate those filters, it will
show only locations with notes about that

subject and if the user has questions, redirect it

to someone who knows about. For this feature
we may need a user profile system that allows
the users to add in what areas the user is
specialist and places he has visited such as notes
he has posted on the maps. If someone has a
question they can post a note with it and a
notification will appear on the map for that
person to answer. And if the question is location
based and anyone in the area can answer,
anyone in that area can answer that application.
If a user is lost and needs to tell someone of his
location, he can use a description to describe the
place where he is and the application will try to
find matching monuments and know places, or
search notes to determine where the user is. If
he desires he can share that description with a
user so that user can help to find where he is.
CONCLUSION

After all the interviews, the data selection,

getting answers and solutions made, we have
ideas for an application that could help people
know information based on their location,
something that is innovative in many aspects
and that can help a lot of people. We have
indexed all of the main problems faced by the
people who answered our questionnaires and
developed functionalities that we will try to
apply in the development of our android
application.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
Jos Elson Ponte.

During this report I

contributed in the construction and promotion of
the questionnaires so we could achieve the
desired number of responses, I collaborated in
finding answers for the questions that the users
gave us and in translating those answers to
English. I also collaborated in the building of
the report. With this process I learned how to
build and promote questionnaires, select
information and interpret their answers,
decomposing the answers to better understand
them and then creating answers.
This work was a new
experience for me. Usually my methods for
performing a job like this would finished in a
conclusion that could be poor or not so wise.
But thanks the orientation of the teacher, I
managed to improve my methods of research
and development of a job. I have improved my
methods by helping in the preparation of the
report, the preparation of questionnaires and
Xavier Ferreira.

disclosure. I was also attentive and tried to offer

ideas for every situation that is emerging, made
a part of the interpretation and analysis.
Summarizing, with the whole process of
preparation and planning of this work I learned
and improved my research methods, preparation
of a job and how to use a questionnaire for
collect data from users.
Luis Lopes. In my part of the job, I tried to

perform some tasks. First suggested some

questions for the online questionnaire in which
they were chosen by the group. Then I review
and disseminate the questionnaire to the best I
could, explaining its importance for the future,
where people have struggled to provide more
reliable and satisfactory. However the group has
been reviewing the questionnaires and I tried to
give some solutions for every situation, but by
vote of the group some of the solutions were not
the most correct and has been banned. I also did
data collection on the most searched things, if
they were buildings, documents, or schedules,
or services, among others. And helped to make
the graphics on the study.
We obtained 106 responses over a period of one
week, which has been very good, and it has
exceeded my expectations. Because not
everyone is willing to cooperate, although for a
good future, and the lack of dissemination
projects teconologics.
The questionnaire was answered equally by
boys and girls were, and most of our island, but
from different districts. The questionnaire also
covered different professions and occupations,
and most of those students.
Due the analysis I propose that our application
answer at three conditions. The first situation
could be answered through a map where they
were identified all the monuments, buildings,
businesses, cafes, restaurants nearby. For that he
would help his own printed application and
noted with tags, and people who needed to find
the building put the services they wanted and
would map filtering, if it were a restaurant, only
appeared on the map restaurants. If you know
the name, to write it appeared immediately. To
answer at second and third question I propose
something like a forum, where you put at
question, and can obtela in real time by another
user, that is in place or are in the know.
I learned that we should not think of the final
product before starting the study, because it ends

up being influenced. And what we want is that

through research to develop ideas for creating
the final product.
Sofia Pereira. After exposure of the work

proposal submitted by Mr. Professor Evangelos

Karapanos my group and I organize on us
consistently the do the job correctly and
perceptive.
Initially has been all some pertinent questions to
ask in the questionnaire available online future
questions were discussed by the working group
to reach a agreement. After developing the
questionnaire I reported on the importance of it
by the various broadcast channels taking the the
maximum collection of responses to it.
After collecting the questionnaires was analyzed
together whith the working group the answers,
and tried to organize a credible answer for every
situation. It was presented by several members
of the group being applicative solutions that
come to a a agreement vote by the most
practicable solution. Procedures for data
collection on the criteria most wanted, which
could be buildings, documents, schedules, or
other services. Jointly developed the graph that
reflects the subject of study.
We collected 106 surveys properly completed
within one week, which according to my
perspective it was great. I felt great difficulty in
collecting the surveys because not all

respondents knew for what purpose they served

and their importance. We can assess that the
surveys were answered by both sexes in equal
proportion with those aged between 12 and 45
years and residing in the Autonomous Region of
Madeira. The respondents belonged to various
sectors of work and that most were students.
With this work I learned that to get to the final
product is much research needed in order to
verify the need for people. The initial idea may
change during the study because it is in contact
with reality and with the information provided
to us that we can build any project. It is to
emphasize that our product, our project must
meet effectively and quickly to users that is
viable and feasible.
Ruben Silva. For the project i developed some
of the features present in the project, as is the
case manager's tabs, which will serve to change
the menu in an interactive way, also conducted
some tests with the "google maps" api, which
lets you very easily through coordinated to
produce a map of a given area. Researched how
to get the current coordinates of the phone, this
to be possible through the gps know the exact
position of the user, then you can make this for
research at your position and surrounding area.
During the research, i collaborated in the
promotion of questionnaires so we could
achieve the desired goal.