Design of Mobile Technologies for Traveling with Public Transport: A Battle Against Information Overload

The thesis is a part of the project Mobile Applikasjoner Underveis. The project aims at finding out which mobile applications can make the public transport travel experiences more attractive. The focus of this thesis is solving two problems at the same time: Design mobile application to provide users the updated information about public transport, and design mobile application to avoid information overload. To conduct the investigation, I first reviewed the theoretical work regarding the problem field. Then I designed a mobile application Trafficker as my proposed solution to the research problem, based on the theories, technologies and design concepts that I reviewed. Later on I conducted empirical fieldwork, using qualitative research strategy, to investigate users' routines and needs regarding using public transport and mobile technologies as well as test the theories, technologies and design concepts that were introduced earlier. The data collection methods include interview, usability testing and ethnography. The findings showed that, giving users the choice of controlling the way they are receiving information and giving users the exact information they want, are the two key points to avoid information overload when designing mobile applications. Presence awareness and context-aware computing can help to realise these purposes. Other than that, privacy concern, stability, simplicity, readability and universal design are the important considerations that need to be taken into account when designing public transport mobile application