Location Aware Mobile Interactive Guides: Usability Issues

This paper discusses the issues related to the application of wireless communication and positioning technologies to the development of hand-held electronic tour guides. These issues are discussed presenting HIPS, a project recently funded by the European Commission that aims at developing a hand-held electronic tour guide allowing tourists to navigate both the physical space and a related information space when visiting a museum or a city. HIPS detects the position of the tourist and provides personalised and contextual information. The methodological approach of the project plays a fundamental role for the development of such a system: user-centred design and scenario-based design are means for assuring that the final system is appropriate to the user and to the context of use. The usability issues of HIPS are also discussed comparing its features to other audio guides like the one currently available in the Louvre Museum.