Design and Implementation of Stable Wireless Media Modules for Interactive Location-Based Applications on Smart Mobile Devices

摘要

The success of smart mobile devices, such as iPhone, Android, etc., popularize the interactive location-based applications. One of the famous interactive location-based applications is the social networking software, e.g., Facebook. The interactive location-based applications allow users to interactive with remote servers/peers in the online fashion, and the information during interaction is grant to include users' current location to increase the richness and diversity of application content. However, two inconveniences on user experience are posed in most interactive location-based applications nowadays due to the inherent hardware constraints, including: (1) the network frequently disconnects while interacting with remote servers/peers, and (2) the location inconsistency frequently happens between the interactive location-based application and the physical user locations, but users are not aware of the inconsistency while users devote their attention to the interactive location-based application. Many marketing experts think that such the use inconveniences are the main reason to the success of vending applications. This paper presents the design and implementation of a proof-of-concept software system to improve user experience in interactive location-based applications. Two components, including disconnection-tolerance communication module (DTC) and interactive positioning module (IP), are designed to apply to the architecture of the interactive location-based applications. The integration of the components can avoid users distracting from unstable communication and positioning, so that users can enjoy the application content more. After the prototype and tests, the proposed system is able to reduce the frequency that users adjust the hardware settings, and thus, increase the quality of user experience. We show the design of the prototype in the UML representation, such as class diagrams and sequence diagrams, hence, software developers can easily reuse the design of our prototype to better user experience on their designed applications.