Workshop “HCI in mobile Guides”, Udine (Italy), 8 September 2003 An Approach to Intelligent Maps: Context Awareness Annu-Maaria Nivala Department of Geoinformatics and Cartography Finnish Geodetic Institute P.O. Box 15 FIN-02431 Masala, Finland +358-9-29555224 Annu-Maaria.Nivala@fgi.fi L. Tiina Sarjakoski Department of Geoinformatics and Cartography Finnish Geodetic Institute P.O. Box 15 FIN-02431 Masala, Finland +358-9-29555319 Tiina.Sarjakoski@fgi.fi ABSTRACT In this paper we regard the map on a mobile device as a type of a graphical user interface. Therefore the same usability issues that occur in other software development must also be involved in designing mobile map applications. In general, there has been an emergent need for more intelligent user interfaces and one approach to be considered is the context awareness of the systems. We think that this applies also to the screen maps, and propose, that embedding context awareness into the maps could also increase the usability of mobile map applications. We describe here the different mobile contexts from the map users’ points of view, based on user tests of topographic maps in PDA. As expected, the most important context of use for mobile map services today, is location of the user. However, the users’ needs to adapt maps in to other context elements too, appear obvious. Several other context elements relevant for topographic maps include purpose of use, time, physical surroundings, navigation history, user, and cultural and social elements. In this paper we list the contexts relevant for maps, and suggest that by adding some context awareness to maps in mobile devices we could be able to compile more intelligent map applications. Keywords Context awareness, topographic map, mobile device, usability, intelligent map 1. INTRODUCTION When designing new products for users in general, it is essential to know beforehand what the real needs of the users are, to make the products usable and saleable. This also applies to maps in mobile devices. Users need various types of maps in different situations and when usability of maps is concerned, one of the main issues is that the user has the right type of map, at a suitable scale and with the symbology adapted for the specific usage situation. Originally, the responsibility for having on hand an appropriate map in each usage situation is part of the users’ tasks. In turn, the responsibility of the map producer includes that the map is accurate, the information presented is up-to-date and the visualization of the map is of high quality. During the first stage of map applications in mobile devices, typically the fastest way to provide maps was to use the same visualization as in desktop and Internet applications. However, the main problem turned out to be the presence of totally different usage situations. Maps in small displays of mobile devices are often used in outdoor situations, which means that their visualization should be totally different compared with indoor situations at office desktops. And not only the visualization, but also the information needed and used in the mobile environment, should be distinctly different [20]. As graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in software engineering, maps could also be regarded as user interfaces (UIs); e.g. Kraak and Ormeling [8] described maps as interfaces to geographical information systems (GISs). Kraak and Brown [9] stated that due to the multimedia nature of the Web, maps can be seen as interfaces or also as indices to additional information. Peterson [18] also suggested that the word interface can be related to maps in two ways: maps are firstly interfaces to the world and secondly are composed of UI elements. The layout of the map, the legend, its colours, sectioning and folding, are all aspects of the map’s UI and there is interaction between map and user when the map is used. Intelligence in user interfaces could be described e.g. as a way to make the system more adaptive and flexible for each situation and user. Lieberman and Selker [12] stated that a considerable portion of artificial intelligence or good design in human-computer interaction (HCI) amounts to being sensitive to the context. In other words, intelligence could be implemented into UIs by making them aware of the context. In this study it is thought that this applies to the maps in mobile devices, too. We propose that embedding context awareness into topographic maps in mobile devices could increase the intelligence and the usability of mobile map services. This paper is based on previous works by the authors (Nivala and Sarjakoski [15], [20]). The following Section 2 discusses about the former studies on context and context awareness in general. Contexts relevant for topographic maps in mobile devices are presented in Section 3. Finally, discussion and conclusions are given in Sections 4 and 5. 1. DEFINITIONS OF CONTEXT In general, intelligence could be implemented into UIs e.g. by making them aware of the context. Before categorization of context awareness needs in mobile map environments, the previous studies of context definitions are examined in the following.