Where Am I? : Studying Users’ Indoor Navigation Location Needs

Location has emerged as the single-most important context whilst building pervasive mobile applications. Several mobile applications have appeared that use location to provide a host of services such as location-specific advertising as well as navigation. As a result, the key challenge of positioning techniques has been to provide the most precise location of the user (device) and much effort has been put in computing this fine grained location in indoor environments. This is under the assumption that highly accurate location is crucial for all indoor services. To understand the location accuracy, that should prove sufficient, for users to navigate to a specific store in a mall, we conducted a user study that mimicked the mall-like setting in two university buildings. Our results suggest that for navigating indoors in mall-like settings, users do not require highly accurate location awareness.