A Location-based Content Search System Considering Situations of Mobile Users

Mobile devices have become popular to access the information on-the-move. Users carry around mobile devices all the time, and thus they often search location-based contents (e.g., locations of specific spots around them, reviews about the spots, and routes to the spots) in their daily life. However, physical restrictions of mobile devices such as display size and input capabilities affect users’ operations, e.g., it is difficult to input a search query and move to another page. When searching contents by using mobile devices, users’ situations often change and this change may affect the users’ information needs. Therefore, it is effective that search systems provide users with information suitable for the users’ situations. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a location-based content search system considering mobile users’ situations, which aims to reduce users’ load of operations in content searching when users stand or sit and can concentrate on the display to some extent. Our system decides the importance of each location-based category (whether useful for users or not) based on the users’ situations and presents the information related to high-importance categories on the menus and map. Users can get contents by only selecting menus and markers on a map. We conducted a user experiment with 11 people. The experimental result shows that users could get contents more easily using our system than using a commercial Web search system and map search system.