Design and Evaluation of an Personalized Mobile Tourist Application

Abstract

Mobile applications supporting tourists with travel information can make use of information about the user's location, time and personal preferences to provide personalized recommendations. This could be a solution to the problem of displaying information and navigating on small mobile devices, as it allow tourists to receive information that fit very well with their current situation and needs. However, filtering of information introduce new challenges in terms of facilitating user control and transparency. In this thesis we have developed and evaluated a personalized mobile tourism applications based on collaborative filtering that have tried to meet these challenges. The design of this application is based on experience from similar projects and research on interaction design in recommender systems. The user evaluation of our system suggests that our approach is feasible, but more research must be done to predict the acceptance of this application among tourists.