User Experience and Technical Solutions for Location Based Push Commercials

Abstract

This project focuses on the creation of an Android app for location based push commercials, which henceforth will be called an offers app. The idea of the app is the following: Users are allowed to chose which ac- tors they want to subscribe to, and they only receive offers from that actor when entering one of their physical stores. Actor meaning any business with a storefront in this setting. The hypothesis was that if you let users chose who they get ads from, and only get them when entering a physical store, they would give users such a good user experience that they would be willing to download and use an app which only purpose is to give offers.To achieve this the author has usability tested prototypes of the of- fers app and interviewed subjects about it. After doing this and landing on a fitting design a questionnaire was given to acquaintances of the author through social media in order to collect some measurement on how people perceive the app. Google Locationing Application Programming Interface (API) was field tested in order to determine if it was suited for tracking and triggering ads when users enters a storefront of an subscribed actor. Other tracking technologies were also looked at in order to find a tracking technology that fit the purpose of the app.From the usability testing, interviewing and questionnaire we have found a solution people are willing to try, and seemingly have a quite positive feeling about. From field testing we have found that Google Locationing API is not suited for detecting when the user enters an actors storefront. The research of alternative tracking technologies and solutions suggests that Ibeacons using Bluetooth Low Energy would be a fitting technology for tracking when users enter stores.