Evaluation of a mobile information system in context

The motivation for this work has been to provide relevant information to the right situation for mobile phone users. We have iteratively developed applications for travellers and tourists to provide a general travel guide with local tourist information. This used a combination of wireless tag technology and information from content service providers. The paper presents our evaluation methodology and how we used it to develop the applications. The methodology is user centred, iterative, and progressive. It combines information retrieval (IR) evaluation methods with human–computer interaction (HCI) development techniques. Two groups of three user studies and a large survey were conducted in context with the studies scaling up to 238 participants and 438 user survey responses. The participants tested the applications in context, including the IR functions. They also filled in a pre and post questionnaire immediately before and after the system use. Some participants were additionally interviewed