Another follow-up from UBICOMP 2008, like the reference to Mark Weiser in the tour marketing materials that I wrote about yesterday, is a quick story about a tour I took in Seoul after the conference.

In Seoul there is an old palace surrounded by gardens called the Changdeokgung Palace. It is a bit like Central Park in New York in the way that it is surrounded by urban life, but remains peaceful and green in the middle of the bustle of the city.

To take a self-guided tour of the palace you get a map and a gadget from the guest services. It turns out that the gadget is like any museum audio tour you might have anywhere else, except that it is keyed off of GPS. As you walk around the grounds you cross into virtual zones which cause the tour guide to start speaking. The zones are detailed on the map and the device tells you which zone is currently playing. All in all a nice system.

Why does it work? Well for one, the tour is outside – required for commercial GPS units. Secondly the virtual zones are far enough apart that the resolution of GPS was adequate for the task
Was it seamless? Not exactly. There was a problem with orientation. You might find yourself in a courtyard and the voice would start talking about a detail in the architecture and you have no idea where to look. Also the lag in the GPS was noticeable as some zones wouldn’t trigger until you were in a different area. This caused me some confusion when I tried to find myself on the map believing I was in zone 1, but when I was really next door.

A simple upgrade would be to show pictures on the device in addition to the zones. But all said it was a nice deployment