Using smart phones to access site-specific services

We investigate how smart phones can augment site-specific services - that is, electronic services or applications that reside in a specific location. Site-specific services already exist in the form of ticket machines, electronic information kiosks, interactive product catalogues, and so on. However, integrating users´ smart phones into these interactions can enhance service functionality while reducing deployment costs. Our approach offers several benefits. By using personal information stored on smart phones, site-specific services can automatically tailor their actions to suit a particular user. Our research led us to develop the Mobile Service Toolkit: a client-server software framework supporting the development of site-specific services that exploit interaction with smart phones. We discuss the Mobile Service Explorer (MST) and present case studies of two site-specific services implemented using it.