The importance of 'neighbourhood' in personalising location-based services

Rainer Wasinger, Hai He, Winyu Chinthammit, Christy Collis, Henry Duh, Judy Kay

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Location-Based Services (LBSes) provide information and functionality based on a user's geographical location and surrounding area, yet there is currently little known about how people actually perceive their surrounding area in relation to its use by online services. With a focus on the home neighbourhood, this paper introduces an experimental platform that supports a variety of LBSes and the results of a study designed to understand how users define 'neighbourhood' as a geographical construct for use by online LBSes. To this end, the study analyses the suitability of five different representation methods (freeform, radius, suburb, postcode, and council area) and their frequency of use across four different LBSes (item borrowing, media mention, directory listing, and property). Results show (1) that user-defined neighbourhoods differ greatly to the existing geographical constructs that are typically employed by LBSes like suburb, postcode, and council area (with only 22% similarity in overlap); (2) that representation methods allowing a user to self-define an area (i.e. freeform and radius) are used significantly more often by users (64% of the time) than pre-defined constructs (i.e. suburb, postcode, and council area); and (3) that many users (61%) have a dominant preference for a particular representation method that they use across multiple services. These findings are statistically significant and indicate that LBSes need to accommodate for individualised representations of neighbourhood, or face missing the next wave of personalisation in this field.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, OzCHI 2014
EditorsToni Robertson, Kenton O'Hara, Greg Wadley, Lian Loke, Tuck Leong
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages172-175
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450306539
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Dec 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, OzCHI 2014 - Sydney, Australia
Duration: 2 Dec 20145 Dec 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, OzCHI 2014

Conference

Conference26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, OzCHI 2014
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CitySydney
Period2/12/145/12/14

Keywords

  • Hyperlocal computing
  • Location-based services
  • User studies

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science
  • Human-Computer Interaction

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