Topiary: A Tool for Prototyping Location-Enhanced Applications

1
Topiary A Tool for Prototyping Location-Enhanced
Applications

• Yang Li, Jason I. Hong, James A. Landay,

Presented by Daniel Schulman
2
Location-Enhanced Applications

• Use the location of users, others.
• Examples
• ATT Find Friends service.
• E911
• Hard to design
• Need lots of technical expertise.
• Must use low-level sensing technology.

3
Topiary

• A prototyping tool for location-enhanced
  applications.
• Supports iterative design without actually having
  to wander around for testing.

4
Topiary

• Active Map
• Models a map and locations within it.
• Scenario Producer
• Specify which people and locations are involved.
• Storyboard Workshop
• Storyboards can be triggered by scenarios.

5
Topiary User Testing

• Testing is done via a Wizard-of-Oz setup.
• The designer can move people and items around on
  the map.
• If real sensor data is available, it can also be
  used (via wireless networking).

6
Topiary Evaluation

• Participants created a tour-guide application.
• All were able to use Topiary, and found it
  relatively easy.
• The research team also iteratively designed a
  tour guide themselves.

7
Critique

• A useful new tool for a fairly new type of UI.
• Based on lots of assumptions about the type of UI
  that is being designed
• Heavily biased towards map-based UIs.
• There could be other kinds of location-enhanced
  applications.

8
Future Directions

• Why restrict yourself to 2D maps?
• 3D is important what floor am I on?
• Is the map always the most important thing to
  show the end-user?
• Is there always a single map?
• Shifts in scale from an outside to an inside
  map.

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Future Directions

• Why restrict yourself to location?
• Can sense orientation, temperature, lighting,
  movement, etc.
• The use of a Wizard-of-Oz setup for testing can
  generalize can Topiarys interface also be
  generalized?