Context-awareness for Mobile Ticketing Systems

Abstract

One of the most pervasive technological devices that exist is the mobile smartphone. With the emergence and embedding of multiple sensors and connection possibilities found in today s phone, the boundaries of what we can accomplish are nearing a limitless horizon.

The thesis looks at how we can advance an application of a smart device to achieve another degree of functionality. By exploring context-awareness, its approaches and practical uses, we wish to enhance the User Experience (UX) of such an application. To do this, we survey and explore context, context-awareness, the roots of how it came about, and what context is considered to be.

We focus on a case-study of mobile ticketing systems, and review the current situation of these in Norway. By providing a foundation of approaches and technology that can benefit context-aware applications, we confirm our research questions with a Proof of Concept (POC) application that take advantage of a certain level of context-awareness. With the help of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, we show how to accomplish validation of tickets in our system to provide a seamless process for users and event organizers. We end by verifying our hypotheses that context-awareness can give a better UX by accomplishing an above average score in a System Usability Scale (SUS) test.