Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Daniel Risi
Nokia Technology Institute Rd Torquato Tapajos 7200 69048-660 Manaus, Brazil +55 92 8136 9378
Mauro Tefilo
Nokia Technology Institute Rd Torquato Tapajos 7200 69048-660 Manaus, Brazil +55 92 8171 0137
ext-daniel.risi@nokia.com
ext-mauro.teofilo@nokia.com
ABSTRACT
This paper describes the concept and the technological solution used in MobileDeck, a content request and delivery system designed for emerging markets, which uses SMS as the main communications channel. MobileDeck consists of a mobile application with a graphical user interface dynamically integrated with a content providing server. The effectiveness of this system as a way to enhance the end-user experience is demonstrated by the results of two different studies.
data feed to a rich application. In that sense, it offers a new userfriendly channel for several existent SMS services like news, horoscope, promotions and so forth. Besides a general description of the technological approach used in MobileDeck, this paper aims to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of this kind of platform as a relevant communications medium. In order to achieve that, two different studies are presented: a usability test conducted during project development at Nokia Technology Institute (INdT) and a market research made prior to the commercial release of the product.
2. MOBILEDECK
The key idea behind MobileDeck is to provide an engaging frontend environment for requesting and receiving content via SMS. On the client side, it consists of a mobile application capable of displaying both textual information and graphics using predefined layouts that are accessed through instructions contained in a binary SMS. In other words, every time the user requests a service, the application sends an SMS that is received by a specific server, and the response is again redirected to the application. The returning SMS acts like a script that mounts and feeds the next screen with the appropriate content. This solution can be explained through the example in figure 1. From the main menu, which is a grid of icons, the user can choose one of the services, e.g. horoscope. That procedure activates the service screen (in this example, another grid menu). Once the desired content is chosen, the application requests the data by sending an SMS to a predefined short code. That request is then processed, while the application displays a receiving data feedback. When the response is received by the application (binary SMS), a result screen is populated with the respective data.
General Terms
Design, Reliability, Security, Experimentation, Human Factors.
Keywords
Mobile human computer interaction, mobile communication, SMS technology, mobile usability. wireless
1. INTRODUCTION
Short Message Service (SMS) has long been established as the de facto standard for sending and receiving text messages in mobile phones. In 2007, it was used by 74% of active users, with an average 2.6 SMS sent per day per person across the whole mobile phone subscriber base [1] and [2]. As one of the most widely adopted communications services, it has been successfully used for over a decade as marketing and services channel [3]. The fact that SMS has a relatively limited set of features basically a text string of 160 characters seems to be compensated by at least two factors: its huge active users base [4] and its high response rate [5]. In emerging markets, those characteristics are especially crucial when designing mobile services and advertising campaigns, considering that mobile Internet is still gaining momentum [6]. In that scenario, text messaging is the most viable way to reach larger audiences, albeit compromising a considerable portion of the engagement effect [7] and [8]. MobileDeck, initially introduced in the Brazilian market, where actually has more than 100k active users, is an end-to-end solution designed to address that issue, enhancing the SMS experience by adding a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to it. This implementation allows text messaging to behave exactly like a
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). MobileHCI 2010 September 7 - 10, 2010, Lisboa, Portugal. ACM 978-1-60558-835-3.
All the SMS traffic involved in this data request/receive process is thus transparent to the user. The response time is usually just a few seconds, so that the whole experience is extremely close to accessing content directly from the web using a mobile device. From that perspective, it is important to stress that this solution was designed for emerging markets, where fast data networks are still inaccessible to the majority of the population. Depending on the kind of service/content being accessed, different kinds of layouts will be displayed. This includes list views, input forms, and the above-mentioned icon grids and result screens. Some services will require accessing information from the server prior to the final result, in order to populate the next screen with the respective options. This situation can be exemplified by the location finder service, in figure 2.
important to remind the user every time a service is being charged, since only part of the SMS traffic is actually paid by the user.
3. MOBILEDECK ARCHITECTURE
MobileDeck is divided in four subsystems: a) a mobile client application, embedded in the mobile phone; b) a web server (SM Platform), that bridges the mobile client with information providers; c) a SMS broker that traffics the SMS; and d) a information provider. The embedded application, designed to Nokia Series 40 and Series 60 devices, sends SMS for a specified SMS short code to achieve a determinate service. The service response is done by binary SMS, listing a predefined SMS port. The core programming language used to develop the mobile application was J2ME and its WMA 1.0 (Wireless Message API, JSR 120). The Series 60 version has a user interface developed with Lightweight UI Toolkit (LWUIT), which is a free UI library and tool for creating richer and more portable Java ME user interfaces [9]. SM Platform is a subsystem built to enable SMS to be sent, received and transferred to different purposes (e.g. enterprise to enterprise, enterprise to people, people to enterprise, machine to machine, machine to people and others).SM Platform is one of the main telecom components used in MobileDeck, and is intended to provide a multi-service environment for message based information services. The core programming language used in server side was Java, having a combination of Servlet [10] and Application Server [11]. SMS broker is a business entity that negotiates agreements with network providers, acting as a middleman for messaging services between a cellular network and third parties [12]. The brokers message aggregator uses the SMPP to maintain connections with carrier networks. Aggregators typically provide access to their servers either through that same technology or using custom APIs written in Java, PHP, Perl, and so on [13]. The information provider is responsible for making value-added services available for end-users. For example, when a mobile phone user sends an interactive text message to retrieve information, the content provider returns the information (in this case, a text message back to the user) through the SMS broker. The way the main components of the MobileDeck architecture interact is shown in figure 3. This example illustrates a user requesting a service and receiving a response. First, a plain SMS is sent using the MobileDeck embedded application to a specific short code, through a standard protocol. Then, the SMS broker routes the SMS message to the information provider, which processes the service requisition. After that, the information provider queries the MobileDeck server (SM Platform) to obtain a secure code (see section 4.1) and so, order a requisition to the broker to send the service response. Thus, a binary SMS is sent to the user, which is received in the MobileDeck application. In order to reduce cost, compression data algorithms were used to keep messages small (see section 3.3). It is worth pointing out that many times only few messages are necessary to obtain a service response. The security issues related to the MobileDeck architectural concept are explained in section 4.
Figure 2. Example of a service being accessed (location finder) When this service is accessed, the user is required to choose an icon that corresponds to specific kind of location, e.g. hotels. Once selected, the user is directed text input layout, locally stored in the application, where the postal code of the desired hotel must be filled in. At this point, the system requests the data from the server, by sending an SMS and receiving a binary SMS response. On the next step, the application displays all the hotels that are located near that postal code in a list view, so that the user can choose one. Again, the application must access the server via SMS, in order to display the result screen containing the information being sought. The obvious limitations of this system must be taken into account when designing each screen, and each service workflow. It is critical to optimize the number of SMS requests per service as well as the amount of data being exchanged, in order to avoid exceeding the maximum length of a single SMS. Even considering that a binary SMS can concatenate a series of messages, the traffic time would increase considerably, as well as the possibility of errors. These limitations are also addressed by the protocol system used in MobileDeck, offers considerable scalability and flexibility for updating content. Since all UI elements are embedded on the application, the existing icons and screen templates can be used for a number of services in runtime. Another important concern about the MobileDeck solution is that the user must be accurately informed about the cost of each request. To avoid legal issues, during the registration process the user must accept an agreement informing that he will be included in a opt-in database. The agreement also informs how much the service costs and how the billing system works. Still, it is
<secure_code>|<list_view_id>|<services>| , where: <secure_code>: The secure code generated based on mobile IMEI. The information provider partners must request this secure code to send the show screen command to MobileDeck (more details about it are showed in section 4.1). <list_view_id>: This ID informs MobileDeck that the information sent follows the specification of list view protocol, i.e., the set of services must be presented in a list view screen. <services>: | <keyword>;<service_name> |... o <keyword>: The unique keyword that represents this service. o <service_name>: Service nameto be displayed on the screen. When a list element is selected, then the keyword is send by SMS to indicate it, enabling thus a communication between the mobile application and an information provider. The same essence is used to build other screen types, like grid, input text, only text screen, etc.
4. SECURITY
Although SMS is a well-designed communications protocol, there aresecurity issues that must be addressed to prevent the message from being intercepted by an unauthorized monitoring agent. MobileDecks security mechanism was developed with this premise. End-to-end security or confidentiality and integrity over the whole path between two parties (e.g., a mobile station to another mobile station) are not provided by mobile systems (such as GSM and UMTS) and therefore they have to be implemented at application level [15]. Due to this fact, some important aspects, like authentication and confidentiality must be analyzed during the project of an SMSbased service. There is a necessity to implement a level of wellknown security methods such as cryptography: to mess up the original chain of bytes to be sent in an incomprehensive chain of bytes that can only be read if the receiver has the key to put everything back in its right place. MobileDeck deals with two main different kinds of data transfer. First, the mobile application may need to send a message to the server requesting a service. The other case is when the MobileDeck server sends directly the UI instructions (see section 3.2), via SMS. During these transfers, it is absolutely necessary to guarantee that the message received by the server was sent by a
The protocol also defines whether a screen is embedded in the mobile application. For example, a horoscope service screen containing all signs could be an embedded screen because it is static (the signs are fixed). To push a screen into MobileDeck application in mobile phone, the following protocol must be used. This protocol is regarding list screen, enabling to build in MobileDeck dynamic screens. It is sent using binary SMS to a specific SMS-port.
real authorized MobileDeck-compliant application and that the UI update really came from the server. For each connection between server and application, MobileDeck uses an authentication policy based in password creation, using the IMEI (device serial number) as the key. This is a simple and efficient alternative, which makes difficult to an unauthorized third party to break the security. For a future work, this method can be improved by other techniques integration, like message digest [16] and cryptography [17].
The recommended number of evaluators for a heuristic evaluation is between three and five, given that the informational gain with an additional evaluator drastically decreases after the fifth one and that the benefit-cost ratio is highest when three or four evaluators are employed [23]. Therefore, for this experiment took part five persons, being two women and three men. To perform the usability tests was used the MobileDeck application shown in figure 1 and 2, and described in section 2, evaluating the main premise of MobileDeck system, which is to add a compelling visual and interactive experience to traditional SMS services, such as those offered by mobile operators and content aggregators (horoscope, news, promotions, etc). This experiment was made in Manaus, Brazil, where SMS technology is broadly disseminated, different from others mobile connection technology, as GPRS. The evaluation method was explained in details to each participant as well as what he/she should do and how long each session should take. Then, the use scenery was presented to user to introduce the participant into MobileDeck system conception, presenting some task, considered real and stereotyped, to be executed by participant to evaluate the usability. After finishing all tasks, the system evaluation questionnaire should be filled in by the participant. After carrying out all interaction tests, it was quantified all data of the applied questionnaires.
5. EXPERIMENT
This section describes the experiments executed in order to investigate the MobileDeck system in terms of usability and user acceptance.
divided among both prepaid (86,1%)and postpaid(13,9%)plan users. During the interview, a MobileDeck prototype was presented and each person answered questions about their general perception of the application and the relevancy of accessing certain kinds contents via SMS.
Table 2. Positive reaction by social classes Positive Reactions Improve the services based on SMS usage Allow receive news about my team Check horoscope It more cheap than internet Allow to take information when Im driving Its not necessary to type Its absolutely interesting. I would see it working B 60% 54% 20% 23% 46% 53% 48% C 29% 41% 18% 38% 21% 18% 31%
6. RESULTS
We begin this section by showing the usability tests result. Then, it is presented the user acceptance survey results.
Table 3. Negative reaction by social classes Negative Reactions Its expensive Im not interested in it Its missing services about advertising I want to customize the main service grid menu B 12% 54% 8% 43% C 46% 41% 17% 29%
Figure 4. Usability Test Result Based on these results, the MobileDeck application was considered as acceptable to go to market.
7. CONCLUSION
MobileDeck was developed with the idea that SMS, as a communications protocol, allows the interchange of messages at a relatively low cost anywhere at anytime. By allying this strength with a rich environment we hope to offer an alternative to mobile internet technologies like GPRS for content distribution one particularly adequate for the characteristics of emerging markets. The results of both experiments presented here suggest that SMSbased applications with a graphical UI are relevant and suitable to provide a relatively straightforward experience to the end-user. As MobileDeck is being currently released in the Brazilian market, during the next months it will be possible to evaluate its actual performance as a media channel, through access statistics provided by the server application. In this phase of implementation, it will be also possible to perform other usability tests to confirm if the results obtained previously will follow the same pattern across all operator networks and over the cultural idiosyncrasies within the country. Besides investigating how this sort of solution will meet the user expectations under real conditions, future works of this research include an overall improvement of MobileDecks underlying
technology. This will be done mainly by refining the current security workflow through cryptography and by building an algorithm to allow graphical elements (e.g. icons) to be also carried over binary SMS, as well as, include mechanism to become MobileDeck self-adaptive for the user (e.g., to make more accessible a service that is more used, even as, remove services that is not used, and update the MobileDeck with possible interesting service) such as purposed in [30] and [31]. Eventually, it is expected that market demands will also point out the technological directions of this system. Hopefully this solution will reach other countries, where new challenges will be faced.
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8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to INdTs Rosaurea Magalhes Usability Lab for performing usability tests cited in this paper.
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