Usability Improvements for WLAN Access

  • Kristiina Karvonen
  • Janne Lindqvist
Conference paper
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 4550)

Abstract

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have become commonplace addition to the normal environments surrounding us. Based on IEEE 802.11 technology, WLANs can now be found in the working place, at homes, and in many cities’ central district area as open or commercial services. These access points in the public areas are called “hotspots”. They provide Internet access in various types of public places such as shopping districts, cafés, airports, and shops. As the hotspots are being used by a growing user base that is also quite heterogeneous, their usability is becoming evermore important. As hotspots can be accessed by a number of devices differing in their capabilities, size, and user interfaces, achieving good usability in accessing the services is not straightforward. This paper reports a user study and usability analysis on WLAN access to discover user’s needs and suggest enhancements to fight the usability problems in WLAN access.

Keywords

WLAN Usability user interface design security accessibility authentication 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  • Kristiina Karvonen
    • 1
  • Janne Lindqvist
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Helsinki University or Technology, P.O. Box 5400, 02015 TKKFinland

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