State-of-the-Art analysis - War

I have personally looked at mobile applications and the ones that I have based my analysis on are these applications Res I STHLM: SL Reseplanerare and Stockholm Travel Guide by Triposo with offline maps.

Res I STHLM: This application is SL own smartphone application that have been developed for people who want to travel with SL and get quick information about the travel route from a point A to point B. When the user opens the application the first thing you do is to type in your current location or its uses the smartphone’s location to locate the nearest station and then you enter your destination. The target group of this application is people who have access to a smartphone so it excludes many elders due to the fact that many elders don’t own a smartphone.

Res I STHLM application, this is the first thing that comes up when you open the application.

These are the pro and cons with this smartphone application:

Pro:

·      All public transportation in Stockholm is available.

·      The application provides timetables.

·      It warns the user delays and disturbances occur in the transportation.

·      Uses your current location as departure place.

·      You can choose the time you want to travel.

·      You can choose specific transportation.

·      Map is provided to show the user the travel route.

Cons:

·      Doesn’t work offline.

·      The user cannot change the language in the application.

·      No information in how to get from the tram station to the destination the user wants.

These are some of the use cases that the user can se.

Stockholm Travel Guide…: This application is for tourist who is visiting Stockholm. It offers information about Stockholm that can be very useful for tourists, it shows information of different categories Museums, Hotels, Tours, Mini Guides, Sightseeing, Nightlife etc. This application also offers variety of other functions, it’s not just an application that guides tourist around. The tourist can in the app read about Sweden’s History, culture, food and learn some practical Swedish phrases. The target group of this application is tourists who are visiting Stockholm and these tourists are people who have a smartphone and are comfortable with using their smartphone.

Stockholm Travel Guide... application, this is the first thing that comes up when you open the application. 

These are the pro and cons with this smartphone application:

Pro:

·      Works offline.

·      Users can read reviews that have been created from other users.

·      General information about places like opening hour, price, contact information, directions etc.

·      Users can create city walks that guide them through different museum, churches, famous buildings etc.

Cons:

·      Doesn’t show the users how to get to their destination via public transportation.

·      The users can’t purchase tickets via the application.

·      The user cannot change the language in the application.

Some of the categories the users can choose to look up. 

This is what it looks like when a user want to find information about ex. a museum. In this case it choose some detail information of Vasamuseet.

Analysis: These two smartphone applications are two very different applications, the Res I STHLM is mainly for people who want to travel with the public transportation in Stockholm and Stockholm Travel Guide is almost the complete travel guide for tourists. From the pilot studies that we have done, we in the group considered of making a smartphone application that almost in a way is similar to the Stockholm Travel Guide application but the idea that we discussed in the group had some improvements compered to this application. Because the tourist needs a guide that guides them from the boat terminal to Vasa museum none of the app that I have looked at offers this. The main difference between these applications is that Stockholm Travel Guide works also offline. Both applications are very User-friendly especially the application Res I STHLM, when you open the application the first thing you do is to plan your route where you can choose which time you want to travel and if the user want to exclude some types of transportation the user can change that in the application etc. The Stockholm Travel Guide is also user-friendly but some elder people may have it difficult to navigate through the application due to the fact that it has many functions. So in conclusion the usability of these two applications are simple to use and both of these application have a variety of different use cases, but one downside with Stockholm Travel Guide is that it doesn’t offer any public transportation.

The Interview- War

The picture was taken from Skeppsbrokajen, to show how the boat terminal where people buy there tickets and wait for the boat looks like.

I interviewed two persons that were on the boat together, one exchange student from Finland and the other one were from Sweden but not from Stockholm. The interviewed took place on the boat.

Question: How often do you travel on this line?

Answer: I have travel on this line few times, but this is the first time for my friend to travel on this line.

Question: Where are you from?

Answer: I’m from Sweden and my friend is an exchange student from Finland.

Question: What is the purpose of your visit?

Answer: To visit Skansen.

Question: Age interval? 0-25, 25-50, 50+

Answer: Both were in the age interval 0-25.

Question: Why did you choose this boat?

Answer: We didn’t choose this boat, our friend wanted to travel with this boat but she got sick and we thought that we should go with the boat.

Question: How did you get a ticket?

Answer: We both have SL access card, so I already knew that we could travel with these.

Question: How has the travelling experience been so far?

Answer: So far its has been great.

Question: Where there any surprises?

Answer: So far there have not been any surprises.

Question: Did you find sufficient information about the route of the boat?

Answer: We didn’t need any information due to the fact that I have earlier travel on this line.

Question: Would you use a smartphone application that guides you towards your destination?

Answer: Yes we both would use a smartphone application and especially my friend says that it would very useful due to the fact that she doesn’t have any local knowledge of Stockholm.

Question: Would an audio guide in the app be of use to you?

Answer: Yes, why not.

State-of-the-Art - Marcus Dypbukt Källman

One of the problems I learned from my interviews was the lack of signs and information when taking the ferry which makes apps with information and directions of Stockholm more useful. Even with the lacking amount of signs they weren't all translated into English, this sign that stated that passengers traveling to Skeppsholmen should tell the crew was only in Swedish.

 The first app that comes up when searching for “Stockholm” is a app by Stockholm stad called “Upptäck Stockholm”. It supposed to display all the exciting outdoor activities Stockholm has to offer and how to get there. The problem is that it doesn’t work, it crashes on startup and after reading a few reviews it seems I’m not the only one. The app hasn’t been updated since late 2014 and has a low 1,5 stars from reviewers with most of them complaining about it crashing. With it being the first search result and it not working it becomes a big problem for tourist who’s looking for a app to guide them through Stockholm. Even though the app doesn’t seem to target tourist but in fact people who live in Stockholm. I think they should first of all fix the crashes and secondly widen their target group to also include tourist searching for outdoor activities and to include indoor activities as well, like museums and such.  

Another app “Res I STHLM: SL reseplanerare” which allows the user to search how to travel with public transport between two locations. The app seems to target residents of Stockholm but is still very usable by tourists. A positive thing about this app is that it allows a search between two addresses and not only stops which makes it easier if you’re perhaps searching from your hotel to Skansen and don’t know the closest stop. The problem with this app is that since its focus lies on showing the fastest route it doesn’t display the more interesting route like ours, the ferry. I was only able to get the ferry as a suggestion if I started from Slussen but if I chose Gamla Stan or addresses closer to T-Centralen it suggested the train. Therefore, it’s hard for tourist who doesn’t know about the ferry to be able to find out about it.

Both of these apps require a internet connection which might be a problems for tourists. "Upptäck Stockholm" could be changed to only rely on GPS to guide you and use offline maps but seeing as Stockholms stad hasn't updated or fixed a major bug since 2014 it doesn't seem likely they'll try to improve the app. "Res I STHLM" relies on updated timetables to provide the best possible routes and is therefore hard to change to not need a internet connection.

Interview - Marcus Dypbukt Källman

I interviewed three women aged between 25 and 30 years old.

Where are you from?

All three of them were from Germany and lived in Berlin but one of them was originally from Sweden and had lived in Stockholm for the majority of her life.

How often do you travel on this line?

It was the Germans first time traveling on the ferry but the swede had been on it several times before.

What is the purpose of your visit?

They were in Stockholm just to visit and they were going from slussen to djurgården to visit skansen.

Why did you choose this boat?

They chose the boat since it would be the easiest and fastest way to travel to skansen from where they were living. They had also chosen the boat since it would be a more interesting than taking the bus.

How did you get a ticket?

Since one of them had previously lived in Stockholm, she already knew how and where to get tickets and she did so for the Germans. The two Germans agreed that it would have been hard to do on their own if they would have had to do it.

How has the travelling experience been so far?

They thought that the ride had been too short and that it could have been a bit longer.

They also felt that if the swede hadn't already known about the ferry and how to travel on it, that it would have been hard to know when to get off and where to go. A few more signs would have been good.

Were there any surprises?

There were no surprises

Did you find sufficient information about the route of the boat?

They didn't have to find out anything since the swede was guiding them but believed it would have been hard without her.

Would you use a smartphone application that guides you towards your destination?

A smartphone application would have been good since they felt it would have been hard to find the information if they were on their own and with the lack of signs it would have been hard to find their way once they were of the boat.

Would an audio guide in the app be of use to you?

They did not believe they would use an audio guide that was implemented in the smartphone application since this would require wearing headphones and since they weren't alone they would not use it.

They did think that it could be useful for a person traveling alone. Instead they suggested there could be a person speaking on the boat or a soundtrack talking about the sights around the boat would be better since you then easier can choose to listen or not.

They liked the idea of putting up signs along the sides of the boat with information on what is outside the window with information about the popular buildings and sights of Stockholm.

It could also be a app which contained the information and perhaps a function to point with the camera and get information on what you're pointing at.

State-of-the-Art analysis

GPSmyCity is an app for Android and iOS that offers walking routes, through a city of choice, to sites and attractions for tourists. It uses GPS that places the user on a map and presents colored lines through the map to guide the user to the next site. As the user walks around the map is updated in real time to match the user's current location. There are different kinds of walks (for instance, sightseeing walks and discovery walks) and you can create your own custom walks as well. Each attraction has a description with historical and cultural information that the user can choose to display at any time or when the site is reached. The description can be translated to different languages and its text-size can be modified. A selling point by the provider is that since the app uses GPS, it works entirely offline so no roaming or data plan is needed. The app is mainly aimed at tourists, which is our target group, but it can of course also be used by people who have missed some attractions in their own city.

During our second pilot study we had some ideas that roughly correspond to this app. An obvious limitation of this one is that it is meant for walking tourists only so it doesn't solve transportation problems, nor does it provide tickets to the attractions. It lacks an online mode so it doesn't provide real time updates on for instance traffic conditions or current events like temporary exhibitions and clubs. Another useful thing would be the ability for external organizations to put their own attractions in the guide and have it automatically show up in the app under some good classification system. If this is then combined with users putting up their own curated tours, you'll have a self driven system that evolves to an extent independently from the actions of the app provider.

Contextual Interview

Where are you from?
We are from Denmark and Sweden, but not from this city. We're here for a day.

Where are you going?
We don't know, we just came here.

Do you have a smart phone?
Yes.

How did you find out about this ferry?
Through the hotel.

Which one?
I don't remember, wait... Best Western, it's a 50 minutes drive from here.

Where did you buy your ticket for this ferry?
We have no ticket, the machine is off and we're standing here trying to figure out what to do next.

Can you think of a way to improve how tickets are bought?
There should be a human in the booth that can help!

Was there any difficulty getting here from where you are living in this city?
It was difficult to find this place with GPS, google maps, and the roads are confusing.

How?
There are no signs.

Can you think of anything that would improve your vacation experience today?
We would have liked help with planning from the employees at the hotel. They could have set us up with activities and tickets to the activities, and parking space. And also, better weather.

You know, you can buy your tickets from the SL app.
Really? We'll check it out... How many zones do we need? Anyways, good luck with your project!

Thanks for the interview. Good bye.

Pilot Study - War and Miro

Interview

The picture was taken on Skeppsbron to illustrate our readers how the fairy that we did our interviews looks alike.

Question: How often do you travel on this line?

Answer: For all the tourist that we asked this was the first time they travelled on this line.

Question: Where do you live?

Answer: The tourist that we interviewed came from USA, France and Germany.

Question: What is the purpose of your visit?

Answer: All of the 4 tourists were going to visit Vasa Museum.

Question: Age interval? 0-25, 25-50, 50+

Answer: All 4 tourists were in the age interval 25-50.

Question: How did you get a ticket?

Answer: - All 4 tourists got a ticket from the ticket collector, they just showed the ticket collector where they wanted to go on there map or on there phone and got a ticket that we paid for.

Question: How did you find out about the journey?

Answer: The tourist find the information in different ways, some found this information in a 72 hours guide about Stockholm and some find it online that should them this travel rout.

Question: Why did you choose this boat?

Answer: All the tourist choose the boat because this rout took least travel time.

Question: What was your experience like?

Answer: All the tourist liked the travel experience but they fought that could have signs that tells them which station there at.

During the seminarium 1, we in the group discussed that we should do a pilot study to see if any of our target group is present and if we need to improve our question. Miro and I personally went to the boat on the 4^th mars and did this pilot study. We had during exercise 1 discussed different ways of gathering data and we decided that questionnaires should be a good approach. The data gathering is a very important process during our field studies due to the fact that the data that we collect should establish the requirements needed for our product to fulfil. The question that we did in the group came up with was a mix between qualitative and quantitative data. This was done so that we can search for recurring patterns in the answers that we get from the tourists and so that we can translate some of our data to statistic data. By doing so we will get more interviews done.

Now to the evaluation of the interviews, on the boat trip we interviewed 6 people where 4 people where tourists. The answers that we received from the 2 swedes are not included in this text. When we went on the fairy and started to do our interviews we almost immediate realised that our question wasn’t that efficient as we planned. Firstly we need to readjust our questions, some of the question were to obvious like question 4,5 and 6. The tourist we interviewed replied identical to these questions. Everyone knew about the boat due to the fact that they had a 72 hours guide of Stockholm or they had checked online which was the fastest route to their destination. All the tourist that we interviewed took the fairy because their goal with their boat trip was to visit Vasa Museum and the fastest way from their hotel to the museum is the rout that involves taking the fairy. That was the only reason why they chosen the fairy over other transportations. Some of the tourist got confused on which destination they should go off. One of the tourists that came from Germany asked us if this is the destination that she would go of to get to the Vasa Museum. This was also confirmed by observation, when we observed the tourist they saw little confused on which destination they should go of.

                              

Our main conclusion from this pilot study is that we need to create more question that give us more information about how the tourist felt about the 72 hours guide and how well the online version of the guide works etc. During the interviews we almost sounded like automated robots when we asked the questions. So a more human approach is preferred.