Context Aware
Services in Exhibition Environment-
The mEXPRESS
approach
Ioannis MATHES 1,
Adamantia PATELI2, Argiris TSAMAKOS2, Diomidis SPINELLIS2
1Intracom S.A.,
19,5 km Markopoulou Ave., 19002 Peania, Greece,
Tel: +3 010
6674080, Fax : +3 010 6671312, email: imath@intranet.gr
2Athens University of Economics
and Business,
Euelpidwn 47A & Leukados
33, 113 62 Athens, Greece
Tel: +30-10-8203663, Fax:
+30-10-8203664,
email: pateli@aueb.gr, tsamakos@aueb.gr, dds@aueb.gr
Abstract. The mEXPRESS system addresses the needs of the
professional
exhibition industry supporting and facilitating context aware services
in the indoor exhibition environment. The three goals served by the
platform are the enhancement and facilitation of the visitor
experience, the improvement of business communications, and the
provision of management and operations data. Our distributed
architecture relies on an application server, mobile access systems,
location positioning technology, and mobile terminals. Using a
contextual inquiry requirement capture method we created an application
scenario that forms our system's guiding metaphor.
1. Introduction
Exhibition
shows are natural exchanges for vast quantities of information and their
success relies on the quantity and quality of interaction of the involved
parties: the exhibitors and the visitors. The more effective the interaction
between end parties, the more successful the exhibition is considered.
The
mEXPRESS[i]
research project aims to develop an integrated system consisting of software
components, mobile terminals, wireless/mobile network infrastructure and indoor
location positioning technology to introduce advanced B2C and B2E oriented
electronic services through mobile devices. These technologies will be used to
enable personalization, location-sensitivity, contextual-awareness and
management of interaction in exhibition shows. The envisioned network
infrastructure provides indoor wireless/mobile access through two alternatives:
commercial Wireless LANs and Bluetooth. Indoor Location Positioning, which is
necessary to support the context-aware services, is realized through a solution
combining an indoor GPS system and a Bluetooth-based alternative. Software
components will provide the personalized services, anonymous visitors’
monitoring, information and navigation facilities. Data-mining techniques will
provide prediction of visitors’ trends and behaviour and the discovery of
unknown patterns to both exhibitors and organizers regarding the traffic in
front of each stand and in the exhibition. Finally, the results of the project
will be verified through two pilot installations in exhibitions in Greece and
Finland.
2. Motivation & Objectives
Current
business practices in the exhibition industry limit the interaction between the
three principal actors (exhibition organisers, exhibitors and visitors) to the
actual visit. The exhibition organizer contacts and invites the exhibitors in
the respective exhibition. The visitors go to the exhibition and interact with
the exhibitors at their stands, where they perform their promoting activities.
The exhibition organizers also interact with the users as part of the
facilitation and feedback process for organizing the exhibition. Thus, most of
the pre-visit and post-visit interactions are fragmented and isolated, while
all interactions are limited to synchronous request-response mode.
In an
attempt to provide a solution to the above problem, mEXPRESS aims to develop an
integrated system consisting of software components, mobile terminals,
wireless/mobile network infrastructure and indoor location positioning
technology, to support and facilitate the professional exhibition industry in a
context-aware manner. The intended end result comprises an integrated mediation
platform oriented to exhibition shows and events that satisfies three types of
objectives:
· To enhance and facilitate
visitors’ experience in terms of interaction and functionality in an
information-rich environment, such as an exhibition show.
· To improve business
communications and promotions within the exhibition, as well as extend
promotional effectiveness during and after the exhibition.
· To assist and support the
exhibition management and operations by offering real-time location information
of persons within the exhibition.
Whereas mEXPRESS targets visitors
and exhibitors and exhibition organisers, emphasis is given on providing
visitors with usable and value-added services, since their satisfaction
generates benefits for the other two stakeholders; exhibitors and organisers.
As a result, visitors are expected to gain the most visible benefit from the
final outcome of this project. From an initial research in the exhibition
industry, two types of exhibitions have been identified: B2C and B2B trade
fairs. Moreover, exhibition shows are also distinguished from the sector in
which they belong. The mEXPRESS project is not explicitly targeting a specific
kind of exhibitions. However, in order to apply the mEXPRESS system in
exhibitions it is expected that the target audience is up to a degree familiar
with new technologies, such as kiosks, mobile services or positioning
technologies.
To meet
its objectives, the mEXPRESS project has brought together a group of partners,
who are expected to make their own contribution to both the development and the
exploitation of the mEXPRESS results. The technology partners (INTRACOM,
POULIADIS, L.M. Ericsson A/S, ELISA and SSF) use their technical experience on
installing the network infrastructure and developing the mEXPRESS functional
components, but also bring several important technologies, such as indoor GPS
(SSF) and Bluetooth (L.M. Ericsson A/S), to the project. The users of the
consortium (FINNEXPO and ROTA) provide their insight on how the exhibition
industry operates as well as the needs and requirements of the targeted user
groups. As soon as the mEXPRESS application is made available, they will
provide access to their installations for testing and evaluating it. Finally,
the research partners (RC-AUEB and HUT) bring their technical know-how and
business background, but also provide their experience in international
dissemination activities to promote the results of the project in both the
research and business community.
3. Related Work and the
Proposed Solution
3.1 Related Work
Two location-based systems relevant to mEXPRESS idea
were tested over the past two years (2000 and 2001) in CeBIT, one of the
world’s biggest computer fairs, taking place in Germany. Their target was to
improve visitors’ experience and to provide more efficient promotion and
analysis tools for exhibitors. The first system was called eGuide and
was deployed in CeBIT 2000, while Mobile Fairguide, was deployed in
CeBIT 2001.
eGuide [1] used infrared
technology for communication between broadcast cell and hand held device and a
data exchange format, specified in XML. eGuide provided a set of services for
visitors such as find the way to the event, get information about the exhibits,
plan a personal tour, organize appointments, navigate around the building, visit
the right lectures or sessions. Also, additional information, like position of
the cash-points or restaurants could be easily visualized. For exhibitors
eGuide provided statistical functions (which topic of the booth was the point
of interest or how many persons came by actually) and also advertising and news
broadcasts. The exhibition organizers received useful statistical data
regarding the number of visitors in a specific time interval as well as their
location. The criticism of eGuide lies on the case of using infrared
technology. This choice of technology in populated areas, influenced the
quality of the communication, which is one of the major factors determining the
visitor satisfaction level. Infrared requires direct line of sight to work
properly and in populated areas is less likely that this criterion is met.
The Mobile
FairGuide [2]
used Bluetooth technology both as a wireless communication system and as
localization technology. “The Mobile Fairguide” offered three classes of
services: standard Internet access, event-based asynchronous
information indication using a WebTag mechanism (users received exhibitor
information upon approaching the stands) and Ticker-tape broadcast service
to all connected PDAs. Additionally, guiding services for finding the shortest
path to a particular exhibitor in the hall, as well as information push
services based on the selected user profile, were offered. For exhibitors and
exhibition organizers useful tools for statistics, advertising and broadcasting
purposes were provided. Trying to evaluate the services provided, the
experimenters were able to show a working system under very harsh conditions.
The location-based services were greatly appreciated by the customers, and the
positive reaction made them optimistic that these services will find their way
into the wireless Internet market rather quickly. On the negative side, it was
found that the reconnect time after handover was far too long. It was measured
up to 5 s due to the relatively complex enquiry mechanism of the Bluetooth radio.
Faults in the base band software of the Bluetooth modules caused some
system crashes.
Furthermore, two
commercial products were identified as relevant to mEXPRESS:
b2
Online Exhibition Platform (OEP). The b2 Online Exhibition Platform is a highly
interactive business platform, designed to complement the physical exhibition.
Its purpose is to connect the exhibition industry to a common platform where
users can share resources and manage their leads and contacts. The tools enable
exhibitors to reach out to the regional press as well as generate new leads,
exchange namecards with potential clients, and schedule appointments to meet
them during and even after the physical exhibition. b2 Online Exhibition
Platform (OEP) is produced by DCS Solutions Ltd., Singapore.
The
Remote Access Mobile Point (RAMPTM) is a compact high-technology component that
incorporates everything necessary to interact with handheld users on-location.
It is simple for attendees with handheld units to receive beamed content and
applications. Attendees do not need any additional equipment, options, add-ons
or accessories. Information is updated on the RAMPTM wirelessly and then beamed
directly to the attendee's handheld within seconds. Each RAMPTM can be
customized and tailor-made for a trade show or an exhibitor to match colour or
brand specifications. Remote Access Mobile PointsTM are provided in advance of
a Trade Show for placement inside exhibitor's booths or Trade Show meeting
areas. Streetbeam provides the tools to customize the content on the RAMPTM.
Attendees enter a Trade Show, step up to a RAMPTM and instantly download
material or information from the exhibitor.
3.2 The mEXPRESS Solution
The characteristics of the
mEXPRESS solution include:
· Wireless/mobile in-exhibition
access through the use of WLAN and Bluetooth technology.
· Indoor, real time
location-positioning mechanisms.
· Service access through
different terminal devices including mobile terminals (smart phones, PDAs),
info-kiosks and standard PCs.
· Personalised, context-aware
services (e.g. navigation planning, on-route “bookmarking” of interesting
material, provision of content for nearby exhibits, notifications).
· Tools for statistical analysis
of information regarding the visitors’ behaviour and interactions with the
surrounding environment.
· Content submission, management
and description using XML definitions.
· Integration schemes among the
various platform components such as positioning mechanisms, networking
technologies etc.
4. The mEXPRESS Technical
Approach
Taking into consideration the
requirement for providing context-aware service [3], the following architecture
(Figure 1) has been designed for the mEXPRESS system:
Figure 1:
The mEXPRESS Architecture
The mEXPRESS Application
Server. The
application server will be responsible for the handling of user requests and
the realization of the relevant application logic. Its main functionality
includes: a) a front end to user requests, b) authenticating the users and
imposing access control to subsequent user requests, thus providing a
privilege-based access system, c) providing a set of user applications
including appointment scheduling, navigation assistance, personalised
recommendations, “bookmarking” capability, business cards exchange, and virtual
communities application, d) adaptation of the applications’ output and
multimedia content to terminal device capabilities (screen size, CPU, input
method, etc.) and user preferences (e.g. language), e) continuous monitoring of
mobile terminal locations, collaborating with location tracking modules, f)
analysis of user behaviour and provision of useful information and statistical
reports to exhibition organisers and exhibitors and g) provision of management
tools to enable content submission and overall service management (e.g.
definition of user roles and access rights).
Wireless/Mobile
Access Systems. Two wireless technologies (WLANs and Bluetooth) will be employed and
tested to provide wireless access to visitors, exhibitors and exhibitor organizers
within the exhibition boundaries. Both technologies will be used to provide
interaction between the users and the mEXPRESS system, thus enabling
“bookmarking” requests, business cards exchanges, and the reception of location
relative multimedia content.
Location
Positioning Mechanisms. A number of positioning technologies are currently available [4]. While
outdoor positioning technologies are available for several years, many indoor
positioning technologies are emerging [5]. In our case, two different technologies
will be used for the anonymous tracking of visitors within the exhibition area.
· Bluetooth-based location
positioning.
In the simplest scenario, Bluetooth can provide information about the Bluetooth
terminals existing in each Bluetooth cell. This mechanism provides terminal
positioning information with a 10 meter approximation (the range of a Bluetooth
cell). Further improvements of this mechanism will be examined, such as
combining the signals from several Bluetooth access points, to provide better
accuracy (1-2 meters).
· Indoor GPS system. Taking into consideration the
limited or no visibility of GPS satellite in indoor environments, an innovative
indoor GPS solution will be employed. The provided solution includes a number
of ground transmitters, pseudolites (pseudo-satellites), that will emulate the
signal structure of GPS satellites and replace the GPS in the exhibition
environment, a set of reference receivers that are used for signal integrity
provision and synchronization of the pseudolites signals and the Master Control
Station (MCS) running the control software for providing monitoring,
configuration and control of the whole system. The receiver to be used will be
a slightly modified GPS receiver, one capable of receiving the signal transmitted
by the pseudolites.
mEXPRESS Terminals. Several types of terminal
devices will be used to provide access to mEXPRESS services including:
·
PDAs. PDAs
will be used by the visitors to make bookmark requests and receive multimedia
content, notifications and routing information relative to their location. They
will also be used by the exhibition organisers to receive notifications.
·
GSM/GPRS/UMTS mobile phones (or smart phones). The use of mobile phones as
visitors’ access devices will be examined in mEXPRESS taking into consideration
the capabilities of current GSM/GPRS and future UMTS technologies.
·
PCs/Laptops. PC and laptops will be used by the visitors for preparing the visit
before the exhibition and for later review of the exhibition from the office.
They will also be used by exhibitors and exhibition organizers to receive
statistics, notifications and content submissions.
·
Info-kiosks. They will be used by visitors to review material collected,
appointments and their virtual trail.
5. Requirements Gathering and
Application Scenario
The project has just ended the
user requirements phase. This phase included the mapping of the current
business model of the exhibition industry, the identification and capturing of
user requirements and expectations for mEXPRESS and the definition of mEXPRESS
application scenarios. The first results of this process are discussed in this
section.
5.1 Mapping of the Exhibition
Business Model.
The research
initially examined the Greek and Finish Exhibition markets. In the Greek market
35 organisers possess 70-80% of the market. The visitors are in the majority
SMEs (owners or front line managers with buying power). The Exhibitors spend
approximately 20-30% of their marketing budget for exhibitions. The Finish
market includes 6-7 major and another 10 smaller organisers. The relevant
expenditure account for about 6% of the exhibitors’ marketing costs. The latest
data gathered regarding visitors’ profile reveal that 84% are men, 38%
specialists and 18% managers while 76% of the visitors participate in decision
making.
The key
players in the industry include: a) Exhibition Halls Owners, who provide
physical infrastructure, b) Exhibition Organisers that provide the
service infrastructure for efficient interaction between exhibitors and
visitors, c) Exhibitors who use B2B & B2C events as effective
marketing tools, d) Visitors, who receive the services of exhibitors and
organisers, e) Sub-contractors, who provide support services to
organisers (e.g. security, cleaning, electrical and electronic equipment,
catering), f) Media Partners, providing media coverage of the event and
publicity to organisers and exhibitors and g) Sponsors that provide
funding and their brand name.
The current
trends identified in the exhibition industry include Visitor Orientation,
the “Extended-Stay Visit” (employing traffic-flow engineering to achieve
a desired pace), the “Experiential Exhibiting” (transform exhibit from a
mere display to an interactive experience and the “Demonstration”
(display of solutions, examples and use of new services or products).
5.2 Capturing User
Requirements.
The method
used for user-requirements capturing is called Contextual Inquiry and
constitutes a combination of user observation and interviewing [6]. The process
took place at an exhibition in Greece (Thalassa 2002, 5-10 of April) and
another one in Finland (Mobile Expo 2002, 16-18 of April). In Greece a total of
8 visitors and 9 exhibitors were observed and afterwards interviewed, while a
similar number of visitors and exhibitors were used in the Finish case.
During the observation phase the
observers watched the normal routines of visitors and exhibitors in general,
the visitor routes and exhibitor stands and interaction with the visitors. The
observations were followed by interviews with visitors and exhibitors observed
to verify the observation results. The set of tools used for data collection
included an Introductory Visitor Questionnaire, a Stand Visit Observation Form,
an Introductory Exhibitor Questionnaire, a Stand Observation Form and a
Semi-Structured Interview Questions.
Finally the process included interviews with the two organisers,
participating in the mEXPRESS consortium, to identify their point of view.
5.3 An application scenario:
“Wandering through the Exhibition Hall”.
This section presents a representative application
scenario regarding the use of mEXPRESS system.
The visitor enters the
exhibition centre and passes through the reception. The exhibition organizers
ask for his invitation and the visitor informs them about his online
pre-registration. The exhibition secretariat crosschecks the visitors’ data
with the computer. After verification, the secretariat asks the visitor if he
wishes to get a printed copy of the catalogue and a nametag or he prefers to
use the mEXPRESS system (if he is aware of the system). If he is not aware, the
organizers will inform him and then provide him with an access device. While he
is about to enter the exhibition hall, he meets a colleague who is about to
register onsite. The former visitor, who is assigned a leader and moderator of
a group comprising of the company’s employees, is inviting the latter visitor
to become member of the group. After that, the colleague gets his device as
well, and they go on their different ways as they intend to visit different
stands. Before splitting, they both ask to view on their devices a personalized
and location aware navigation plan.
Since our visitor wants to
locate specific products he is using his device in order to locate on the map
stands with the specific products (i.e. software products). After locating
those stands on the navigation plan, he is taking the routing advice of his
device to get there. As he approaches the stand of interest to him, he gets alerts
for offerings based on his profile as well as targeted promotional spots
of certain exhibits from the exhibitors. While wandering through the
stands, the visitor gets recommendations for specific events as well as common
announcements (i.e. the exhibition is about to close or the license plates
of a car that is obstructing the parking area). Some of the events seem
interesting to him but are taking place later in the day so he decides to go
on. He is visiting 3 or 4 other stands that are in his list and he follows the
exact same procedure with the previous ones.
After being in the exhibition
for 3 hours, he decides to take a break for a snack or coffee so he is moving
towards the closest restaurant or rest area by using his navigation plan and
routing advice on his device. On his way to the restaurant, he decides to meet
with his colleague so he is using the system to track him since they both
belong to the same user group. When he manages to position his colleague, he
sends a real-time message asking him to meet in five minutes in the restaurant
area. Before sitting in the restaurant, they get connected to the nearest kiosk
in order to get information on their visit trail and movements up to this
moment. Before leaving the exhibition centre, the visitor can get links to
useful information for transportation means, traffic and other matters.
After the exhibition, while
being at home or in the office, the visitor gets connected to the system and
downloads the material that he requested through bookmarks, as well as
additional promotion material sent either by organisers or exhibitors.
Furthermore, replying to the organisers’ request, he is using the system to
send feedback by giving his response to an online questionnaire.
6. Conclusions – Future Work
The described system aims to
exploit the technological opportunities arising from evolution in the areas of
wireless networks and positioning mechanisms to support and facilitate the
professional exhibition industry in a context-aware manner. By employing
currently available mobile networks, emerging indoor location positioning
technology and terminal devices, and providing a supportive mediation platform
it will act as the hub between visitors, exhibitors and exhibition organizers/administrators
before, during and after the exhibition. This will effectively enhance visiting
experience and interactions among the involved parties, leading to a successful
exhibition event.
The
mEXPRESS project officially began in January 2002. Till now, the mEXPRESS
consortium has gathered user requirements and presented them in the form of Use
Cases included in the project’s Requirements Specification Report. Based on
User Requirements as well as several other requirements implied by technology
and business framework of the project, a set of services has been defined for
each user group. Moreover, the physical and logical architecture has already
been designed and partners are currently working on the design of the system’s
functional components. An initial prototype of the mEXPRESS platform is planned
for delivery on February 2003. By that time, the consortium plans to have a
clear view of its exploitation strategy for the project’s primary outcome.
While the
prime application field under investigation is the exhibition market where the
exhibition organizers wish to offer to their customers (both visitors and
exhibitors) innovative and differentiated services and administer the
exhibition space more efficiently, we believe that several concepts and issues
considered in the mEXPRESS project can be applied and extended to environments
where context-aware information is of utmost importance, such as conferences
[7], museums [8, 9], factories, libraries, and construction sites. In our
emerging mobile world, where the environment and user needs change rapidly, the
use of positioning mechanisms and technologies, which constitute the core
innovation introduced by the project, may open the way for research in areas
such as contextual behaviour and design, developing location-based services,
and the use of the new location parameter in personalization and targeting
mechanisms.
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