XyberScout: a platform for the efficient construction of mobile location aware information systems

For many years mobile visitor information systems for museums or exhibitions are a topic of research. Research prototypes aim to provide the user with powerful means for organizing his visit and for navigation within the event's surroundings. But today, in real-world applications, we mostly find rather simple tools - mobile guides for fairs, conferences and similar events. In the area of these electronic catalogues, the Fraunhofer IGD Rostock has developed quite successfully a line of such systems. Our experiences with these events have shown that the true challenge of mobile information systems for real-world use is not to provide a large set of features, but to provide an effective and efficient production environment and a suitable and configurable browser application on the mobile platform. We need the integration of the diverse technology fields involved in such applications into a manageable and convenient production tool. With the XyberScout platform, we try to develop such an integrated environment for the efficient creation of such mobile information systems. It aims to provide a suite of technologies for the efficient delivery of mobile information applications that support intelligent and context-aware assistance for real use. In this paper, we outline motivation and concepts of the components of the XyberScout platform and describe some of the new possibilities and advantages for both types of customers of such a system - the organizer and the visitor of an event. Beside the construction platform itself the focus is directed to the user interface concept on the mobile client side.