 Hello everyone. So I have been working as a Ruby developer and last year I decided to quit and move to North and Sweden to study human computer interaction and During my studies. I have got to play around with a technology called beacons And I thought that would be interesting to share today So let's imagine we are at a large and much larger Multitrack conference and I can think of a couple of questions. I would be asking myself during the day Like for example, I would be wondering is the next talk in the room I'm currently sitting in interesting for me or not and I might decide I want to go somewhere else look and other talk But then I need to find another room. So I need some sort of map navigation system or As an organizer, I might have some scheduled changes and I want to inform everybody that is currently at the conference It also might be that I want to make my talk a little bit more interactive and do some sort of group voting with the people in the room All of this is of course Possible today, but it's a hassle to navigate through the web page to find the information that is currently important for me so beacons can help improve these scenarios and What are beacons and how do they work? I? Have some beacons here those are like little tiny devices battery-powered and What they do is they constantly send out a signal and that is just like a lighthouse so it it pretty much works the same so That beacons constantly sends out the signal and if you walk past it as soon as you are within range You can see the signal and then decide if you want to interact with it or not If you don't want to interact with it, you can just walk past it and nothing happens But if you do need local information You can look on your smartphone and then find whatever information is available there So you might wonder location-based services. We already have GPS but if you have it on switched on on your smartphone all the time it drains your battery and also it doesn't work indoors and It is also for some cases not precise enough. So if you have a Bus stop timetable prototype that I will show later It might be important to know on which side of the street is the person currently standing at Okay, but what about QR codes QR codes are a nice way to Like that you don't have to type a URL in your smartphone but also it's quite a hassle to scan the QR code you have to be really close and also You have to focus the camera and also I have never met anyone who likes QR code yet So technical facts in Beacons are based on the Bluetooth standard More precisely on Bluetooth low energy. So what that means is that In it has a lower range then classical blue Bluetooth and also lower throughput So it's not for sending data back and forth, but it's just good for triggering notifications and A beacon costs around 10 to 50 dollars and the range is 10 to 30 depending on what kind of beacon you have up to 50 meters and It doesn't rain your smartphone battery if you have it switched on all the time So there are currently two major players on the market The I beacon standard has been around since 2013 It's controlled by Apple and it targets iOS devices and The Eddy stone standard which has been released only three weeks ago is From Google it's so open source code and it targets all operating systems and When we look at the beacon payload, so what kind of signal the beacon sends out then It's I beacon from a broader perspective. It's a UU ID that's been send out and the Eddy stone beacons They send out UU ID a URL and telemetry data Telemetry data is for example for if you want to check the status of your beacon like how much battery power is left on it and What else that means? I will show on the next slide. So if you have an I beacon it will Broadcast UU ID and that UU ID is programmed to open up an app on your smartphone So as soon as you have within range of an I beacon it opens up an app That's been programmed for and then there is some sort of interaction that is meant to happen then and If you have an Eddy stone beacon It will also be possible. It is also possible to wake up an app on iOS devices but also on Android and The scenario that I have been working with and that has been available Earlier not just three weeks ago is that beacons broadcast the URL so Basically any smartphone can receive in a URL and then it just opens up in your browser That's the vision for now And you have to have an app installed that scans The environment for the beacon signal, but it's meant to be built into a browser So how does that look like in my studies that build a Bus stop prototype, so it's pretty simple scenario It just imagine you're standing at a bus stop where there's no digital information displays We have this this information displays we see in how many minutes the next bus leaves, but it's not there every at every bus stop so I Had a beacon like this You can push a button on it and then you can save a URL with your smartphone on it and Then it Yeah, and Then You will as soon as you are within range of the bus stop you can switch on your smartphone screen and Then you will see a notification like this one saying departures from the bus stop that you are currently at and this is the physical web app or some sort of other app that is Scanning the environment and that now shows up this notification, but it's a silent notification So you don't see it unless you switch on your screen and Then you can click on it and Then you end up Within the app that just shows the URL again like I said in the future. It's supposed to open up directly in the browser and Then you just see a very simple web app That's just a normal web app like any else Sinatra app that pulls some information from public API about When the next bus will will leave So what I have here is like a make use of the current time and the current Place I'm at and show the the information that is that could be Important at that moment at that place Okay, so bus stop seems to be a good case to use beacons for what else is there? So first of retail is of course interested in it. They want to send you discounts as soon as you enter their store Also museums you can make Some sort of game like indoor navigation thing to make the whole museum experience much more fun and Also make information more accessible of course Airports I built another prototype That as soon as you enter an airport you see a list of all all the parting flights And then you can click on it and then you can subscribe to updates on your flight So you get a push notification as soon as the status of your flight changes then restaurants, so You could walk into a restaurant then have the menu on your smartphone immediately you can click on it order your food Get enough notification as soon as it's it's ready instead of having these physical buzzers that you know Also Guiding so you could walk up to a hiking trail and then just have the map available for the trail you want to hike on and also bike or car rental for example When you're in a foreign city you could just walk up to a car to go or bike Subscribe to the service and off you go So for my master thesis I did some user experience evaluation with these prototypes and so What I did was I had the two prototypes that I talked about the bus stop and the airport and I also had another video of someone that Was buying a snack from a vending machine by like the same technology clicking on the phone ordering a snack so what my participants did was they compared it to other things that are already available like for example a bus app or Printed timetabled brochure or airport information displays and what they came up with was that they described the prototypes as Very up-to-date personal working instantly and easy to use But they also noticed of course that they were highly dependent on their devices and They did the energy and they were also quite Skeptical when payment was involved So is this all relevant today, or what's the status of it? so it's pretty much prototyping status, I would say and I found some numbers sweet southern beacons at the end of 2014 and 4.5 million by the end of 2018 but if that's gonna happen nobody knows and And But what I can say is that The Edison standard is only available for three weeks now And now it's possible to target all operating system and not just IOS devices And also the chrome team have sneaked their way into iOS. So if you have the Chrome today widget You can activate it that it scans for beacons So it's one step towards not having an app installed and making it available for everyone So that has been released a week ago. So there's a lot of movement in it and Excited to see what's gonna happen in the future So 50 minutes on our match So if you have any more questions, you're welcome to ask me and I also carry some beacons with me So if you want to if you can install an app and then find out what's there Thank you So my question is do you think that like beacons really are a web technology or not? Sorry Well, it depends You can have beacons to open up apps then it is just not web development obviously But the Eddystone beacons they just send out the URL and what you build with it is totally just web technology so and I think that's the more exciting Thing about beacons because that's gonna work with everything and you don't need to have an app installed and Like you don't have to you probably don't have an app installed of your airport or something And you still might too want to use some services like get updates on your flight Yeah, and I understand The one thing that I've been wondering about is like beacons are really good because they're like personal and instant but The average load time of like a mobile web page is anywhere between five seconds and eight seconds so Do you feel that like the future of beacons is and like the worldwide web or like more in integrating them into apps Well, I can't say in which direction if it's gonna be more popular in combination with apps or with the web I don't really know so We'll see what's gonna happen. I suppose Okay, cool. Thank you Hi, I have the impression that we will have a similar problem to fishing males with beacons So if there's an official Vending machine or bus stop beacon and I put my rogue beacon Close to it. I can make people believe that they're talking to the bus company. Have you looked into that? No, not yet I'm wondering if beacons take off and they're very popular and you're at a shopping mall and there's like 200 beacons within 50 meters Um, how does that work from a HCI standpoint? I haven't tried it out yet. So It will be interesting to study and For us like if everybody installs his or her own app then Google has some some sort of Sorting already so it sorts up the the thing that is most closed source it on top so you have some sort of Yeah sorting already. So Yeah, that's all I can say So For the the ones that interact with apps you actually have to install an app before your phone will kind of like contact a beacon, right? Because like I was wondering how does it work when you have the URL thing like do you actually have to Allow it to contact your phone and open a website or something or will it just do it on its own because like Well for now you have to have an app installed or you have the Chrome today widget on iOS and it also You have to actively click on it So it it it if you have the app installed it scans the environment But it doesn't doesn't notify you actively It just shows that there is some information and if you decide not to click on it You don't do it and it's also it's made secure At least the Eddy stone from what I have read and then it doesn't track you so Yeah, and did I answer the question? Yeah, so is there do you already know or have you tried that like if you if it contacts you by sending you in URL URL, how does that work? Like is it just gonna give you a notification of what I would like and I would like to open this website or Does it just open the browser or? Or do you just need this Google today? You have to click on it and to actively open it and the browser All right, and it is meant to to be that it is built into Chrome So that if you have Chrome installed it would start showing this notification But I'm sure you would also be able to switch that off like on the Chrome today widget you have to have you have to confirm that you want to have this this physical web thing Active so you have to actively say yes, I want my phone to scan the environment. Okay. Thank you So what's the payload that can go into the URL so how large can the URL be? For now the URL needs to be really short and So what I did was I had pretty long URL and then I also had the parameter which said that what location I'm currently at and then I just put it into a URL shortener and then saved it on the beacon so it is limited Thank you, and thank you Micah