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Eventity: Online Platform for City Event and Tourism Information

Conference Paper · October 2018

DOI: 10.1145/3267305.3274160

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 Eventity: Online Platform for City Event
and Tourism Information

Jiraphat Kengphanich Santi Phithakkitnukoon* Abstract

Dept of Computer Engineering Dept of Computer Engineering, This paper presents an online platform for visualizing
Faculty of Engineering and Excellence Center in and analyzing city event and tourism information,
Chiang Mai University, Thailand Infrastructure Technology and called Eventity. The tool allows the user to interact with
[email protected] the information by selecting the view the information
Transportation Engineering
(ExCITE) within a selected period. It visualizes both contextual
Janjira Buatip
Faculty of Engineering and geographical information. It displays past, on-
Dept of Computer Engineering,
Chiang Mai University, Thailand going, and up-coming events. It assists the user in
Faculty of Engineering
[email protected] analyzing the information with heatmap and statistics
Chiang Mai University, Thailand
modules. The tool has been evaluated the real users
[email protected] *Corresponding author and nicely received as a useful tool. Eventity can be
useful for general users with its assistive viewing and
planning functionalities, as well we urban planners with
its analysis feature.

Author Keywords
Peer-to-peer public transit; on-demand public transit;
mobile app; shared public transit system.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are ACM Classification Keywords
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g.,
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. HCI): Miscellaneous;
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific
permission and/or a fee. Request permissions Introduction
from [email protected]. We’re currently experiencing a fast-growing
UbiComp/ISWC'18 Adjunct , October 8–12, 2018, Singapore urbanization. Today, more than half of the global
© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. population now living in cities. By 2050, world
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5190-4/17/09…$15.00
population is projected to reach 9.7 billion from which
https://doi.org/10.1145/3123024.3124413
68% will be living in cities [8]. Urbanization is quickly Event is a temporary attraction unlike a tourist
transforming places globally. Improving urban destination, which is an attraction permanently
environments for the well-being of the increasing attached to the location e.g., temple, park, and
number of urban citizens is becoming one of the most monument. As such, an event creates temporary
important challenges of the 21st century. City is people flows and mobility that need dynamic planning.
composed of different functional regions e.g., Social events data is therefore important as an
residential areas, business districts, and educational information source for both urban planners and
areas, which support different needs of people’s urban citizens. There are some data services available for
living and serve as a valuable organizing method for obtaining social events information. Facebook provides
framing detailed knowledge of a metropolitan. People the Graph API1 that allows the user to request for social
travel between these regions for different purposes, events information, however it only provides social
which creates urban mobility patterns that characterize events information related to the requesting user but
the area [7]. Commuting trips may happen in a not all events available in the city. The user also needs
weekday’s morning when people travel from residence to log in to request the information. Another service
area to their workplaces. Several trips to shopping area source is Allevents.in2, which is a website that allows
may happen in the evening or weekend. Different the user to inquiry for social events information in cities
functional regions can thereby influence people’s worldwide. However, there still lacks of geographical
mobility with different functional elements, such as representation of the data which can further describe
markets, schools, banks, attractions, and so on. the events in greater detail – especially, in geographical
sense.
Besides the city functional regions, social event is one
of the influential factors for people’s mobility [2] in The work presented in this paper thus aims at filling in
addition to social influence [6] and weather effect [4]. this gap by developing a web platform called Eventity,
Different types of event can draw different magnitudes which pulls together and visualizes social event
and directions of the crowd and mobility. A sports event information with both contextual and geographical
may draw a different crowd compared to a music event details, as well as basic statistics for preliminary
and vice versa. Understanding the event’s type and analysis of events. Unlike existing apps, such as
location can be useful to estimate mobility and crowd ZipEvent, EventBank, and EventDex, which are event
levels for better informed urban planning and design. information management apps that mostly benefits
From the citizen’s point of view, knowing information event organizers in managing registration, collecting
regarding the on-going or up-coming social events can payments, printing badges, and so on, Eventity
help with their awareness of the events, planning and provides information regarding past, on-going, up-
scheduling around the events e.g., attending the event,
1
avoiding traffic due to the event, and so on. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-
api/reference/event/
2
https://allevents.in
coming events in the city for any users (i.e., no log-in events and tourist destinations (i.e., temporary and
or registration needed) who can be urban planners or permanent, respectively) that can subsequently
urban citizens. The information is provided over a web generate occasional and routine people flows and
platform for easy access. The user can view all past, mobility patterns in the city.
present, and future events or select to view particular
event types and dates along, which can be useful for Tourist destination data is obtained from the Thailand
event planning and analysis such as social event Department of Tourism via their Tourist Attraction API3.
tracking [9] and evolution [1]. The system makes requests for all tourist destinations’
information in the area, which each includes name,
System Overview geolocation, and short description. The current version
Eventity has been developed to provide an access to of their API does not allow images of tourist destination
social event and tourist attraction information both to be requested yet. Therefore, no images of tourist
contextual and geographical details for general users, destinations are included in this version of our
as well as planning functionality and basic statistics for developed Eventity.
preliminary analysis. The system overview is shown in
Fig. 1 where the core system connects to two data The other data source is Allevents.in from which social
sources via APIs; social events and tourist attractions. event information is gathered via their API4. Event
The system processes and visualizes the data on a web related information such as name, dates, and images
platform. In this present development, Chiang Mai city are obtained and processed in our system. The request
is used as a case study. is made according to the event’s dates i.e., date is an
input along with the requesting location (i.e., Chiang
Mai city).

The data received from both sources are stored in a

cloud-hosted database for later use. Our system uses
the Firebase Realtime Database5, which is NoSQL cloud
database in which data is stored as JSON and
synchronized in realtime with our Eventity web
application.

Figure 1: System overview of Eventity.

3
http://www.tourism.go.th
Data Sources 4
https://allevents.in/pages/api
Eventity system uses data from two main sources. The
5
https://firebase.google.com
system incorporates both types of attraction; social
 Web Interface and Functionalities are eight different types of event available in
Eventity provides an easy access to its social event and our system including business, meetup,
tourist attraction information through its web interface. concert, sports, music, workshop, party, and
The user can simply visit the Eventity web site. Our other.
developed prototype is available at https://eventity- 6. Submit button: The user needs to click on this
8b10d.firebaseapp.com. button to process the request.
7. Blue marker for an event that will take place in
A snapshot of the Eventity web interface is shown in the future. The user can click on the marker to
Fig. 2 where there are mainly 15 elements to be view a brief description and related photo of
described as follows. the event (an example is shown in Fig. 5).
8. Green marker for an on-going event that is
1. Home page button: The user clicks to return to currently taking place. The user can also click
the home page or to refresh the current page. to view a brief description and related photo.
2. Heatmap module: The user clicks to view 9. Red marker for a past event that has already
searched/filtered result in a heatmap i.e., took place. The user can also click to view a
shading map representing geographical brief description and related photo.
distribution of resulting social events/tourist 10. Purple marker for a tourist attraction. The user
destinations (as shown in Fig. 3). can also click to view a brief description of the
3. Statistics: The use can choose to view basic attraction. However, as previously mentioned,
stats about the social events in the city i.e., photo is not available yet due to Thailand
the accumulated numbers of events per type, Department of Tourism’s current API limitation.
per day of the week, and per month over An example is shown in Fig. 6.
selected dates. An example is shown in Fig. 4. 11. Marker legend.
These bar charts are drawn using Chart.js6, 12. Event list: The user can click on this button to
which enables responsive and interactive view a list of on-going and up-coming events.
charts. The user can move the mouse over the 13. Attraction list: The can click on this button to
chart to see corresponding details. These basic view a list of tourist attractions.
stats can facilitate preliminary analysis of the 14. Information display panel: Information on each
pattern and trend of social events in the city. item on the selected list is displayed in this
4. Selected dates: The user can choose to view panel.
the events that take place during the selected 15. Add-to-Calendar button: The user can add the
dates. event into his/her Google Calendar by clicking
5. Categories: The user can choose to view all on this button of each event.
social events or specific type of events. There

6
https://www.chartjs.org
 Figure 5: User can click on the event marker to view a brief
description and related photo of the event.
Figure 2: Snapshot of the Eventity web interface.

Figure 4: Snapshot of the

Statistics module. It shows the
accumulated number of events
per event type, across days of
the week, and months over the
selected period.

Figure 6: User can click on the tourist attraction marker to

Figure 3: Snapshot of the Heatmap module.
view a brief description of the event.

Demo
For demonstration purposes, a video clip showing how
Entity works is available here:
https://youtu.be/eCx148zH-hc
User Experience Study occupations. Each participant was asked to give a
To evaluate the developed Eventity, we put it into the rating of agreement level to the four statement where
test by the real users by conducting a user experience the rating score is a 5-likert scale where 1 means the
study. Each user was asked to use Eventity and then
lowest level of agreement and 5 means the highest
asked to answer a questionnaire (shown in Fig. 7). The
survey questionnaire was designed base the Theory of level of agreement.
Four Elements of User Experience [3], which askes to
the user to rate their level of agreement with four Overall, the users perceived our Eventity system as
different statements concerning the user experience being useful with the average rating of 4.12, followed
with the system that include: by being easy to start using (3.94), being easy to use
1. It is useful. (3.82), and lastly being fun and engaging (3.22), as
2. It is easy to use. shown in Fig. 8. The overall result acknowledges that
3. It is easy to start using. the users feel that the system is useful but not fun and
4. It is fun and engaging. engaging, which is sensible as the Eventity is developed
to focus on providing social event and attraction
information suitable for planning and preliminary
analysis but not providing fun-and-engaging feature
that is lacking but important element as well. This
suggests that our future development should
emphasize on improving the fun and engaging element
that may include adding or adjusting functionalities and
features such as designing more attractive graphics,
infusing gamification, and social networking
functionality, which can potentially make the system
more attractive and being more fun and engaging to
the users.

Based on the conversation with the users and the

suggestions and comments given by the users in the
questionnaire, most of the users thought that Eventity
is useful. One of the comments was “It’s useful for me.
I don’t know if there are any other websites that
provide this kind of service. I can definitely use it.”.
Another comment was “It’s useful and convenient. But
Figure 7: Questionnaire for the user experience study.
it needs to improve on its appearance. It should have
more interactive and attractive graphics.“
There are 50 participants in total that include 21 males
and 29 females, which is a mixture of ages and
 5 5.00 4.28
4.12 3.90 3.93 4 3.90
3.82 3.94 3.67
4.00 3.333.14
4 3.22
3.00
3
2.00
2 1.00

1 0.00
It is useful It is easy to use It is easy to It is fun and
0 start using engaging
It is useful It is easy to It is easy to It is fun and
use start using engaging Male Female

Figure 8: Overall result of the user experience study.

Figure 9: Result of the user experience study when grouped
by gender.
When separate the users by gender, the result (Fig. 9)
shows that female users rated (4.28 and 3.93) higher
than male users (3.90 and 3.67) for the “it is useful” We further grouped the users by age range: less than
and “it is easy to use” statements respectively, while 20 years old, 20-29 years old, 30-39 years old, 40-49
male users rated (4.00 and 3.33) higher than female years old, 50-59 years old, and more than 60 years old.
users for the “it is easy to start using” and “it is fun and The result is shown in Fig. 10. The aspect of the system
engaging” statements. This seems to suggest that being useful and easy to use each was rated the
females feel that the Eventity is more useful and easy highest by the users in the 40-49 age group at the
to use than males, which may be due to the fact that same average rating of 4.67 for both. The lowest rating
females are better in multitasking than males [5] or was given by the youngsters (less than 20 years old) at
perhaps females are more organized than males so 3.50 and 3.67 for being useful and easy to use,
such tool that supports productivity is more of their respectively. This seems to make a lot of sense as the
interest and usage. Eventity is probably more of interest to young
professionals to middle age users who are mostly tight
From the conversation with the participating users, one up with work and need tools that can help with
of the comments from a female was “I like it. It’s planning and scheduling for social events. Urban
useful. It’s easy to use just like any other websites that planners, who can benefit from the use of Eventity, are
I used before. But it looks like unfinished website. It also in this age range. Users who are in 30-49 age
will look better with some graphic makeup.” groups felt that the system was easy to start using with
their high ratings; 4.36 and 4.33. Interestingly, the
senior users (over 60) had the highest rating among
other age groups (3.75) for the system being fun and
engaging. One of the senior users said “I enjoy using it. useful but I think the tool must improve its features to
I get to see what’s going on in the city and what people attract people to use it. First, the date selector is
are interested in from these displayed event difficulty to use. The user should be able to turn on and
information. I can play with it for a long time.”. This off the markers on the map. The user should be able to
seems to interestingly suggest that the Eventity can be click Enter which should have the same effect with
not only the event planning helper but also city clicking Submit button. It’s annoying to have to click
newspaper for some users. Submit button every time to process the request rather
than just pressing Enter on the keyboard. Also, it would
4.67 4.67 be great for the Statistics part to allow the user to do
5 4.27 4.25 4.27 4.25 4.364.33
4.12 3.88 3.833.73 4 more than observing the amount of events in different
3.5 3.67 3.64 3.75
4 3.33 categories.” This comment is valuable and it allows us
3 3
3 to pin point particular functionalities that need
2
improvement in our future development.

1 4.5 4.67
0 0 0 0 5.00 4.33 4.38
3.924 3.85 4 43.85 44.15 3.83
0 3.73
4.00 3.33 3.67 3.38
It is useful It is easy to use It is easy to start It is fun and 3 3
using engaging 3.00 2.5

<20 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 >60 2.00

1.00

Figure 10: Result of the user experience study when grouped 0.00
by age. It is useful It is easy to use It is easy to start It is fun and
using engaging

When grouped by occupation, the result is shown in Students Academics Office workers Urban planners Others
Fig. 11. Users were students, academic staff, officers,
urban planners, and others. Expectedly, urban planners
gave the highest rating for Eventity being useful (4.50) Figure 11: Result of the user experience study when grouped
while students on the other hand gave the lowest rating by occupation.
(3.92), which seems to align with the age-group result
for young users (less than 20). Office workers felt that The results from our user experience study help inform
the system is easy to start using with the highest rating our future design and development, which should
of 4.67 among other groups. Surprisingly, academics emphasize on improving the “fund and engaging”
felt that the system is not quite easy to use with the aspect along with appearance and analysis
lowest rating of 3.00 among other groups. One of the functionality.
comments from academics was “It seems to be quite
 Conclusion geography of taste: Analyzing cell-phone mobility
This paper presents the development of web-based and social events. Lecture Notes in Computer
platform for accessing city’s social event and tourist Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in
attraction information, namely Eventity. To our Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in
knowledge, Eventity is the first web-based service that Bioinformatics).
provides interactive visualization of city’s social event 3. Frank Guo. 2012. More than asability: The four
and tourist attraction information both contextually as elements of user experience, part IV. 11, 1–14.
well we geographically. It allows the user to view social Retrieved from
events and their statistics within a selected period. It http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/04/
displays past, on-going, and up-coming events. It more-than-usability-the-four-elements-of-user-
shows the accumulated number of events per event experience-part-i.php.
type, daily, and monthly as well as heatmap for 4. T. Horanont, S. Phithakkitnukoon, T.W. Leong, Y.
preliminary analysis of social events, such as spatial Sekimoto, and R. Shibasaki. 2013. Weather effects
distributions, patterns, and trends. A user experience on the patterns of people’s everyday activities: A
study was conducted to evaluate the system. Overall, study using GPS traces of mobile phone users.
the results show that the users feel that the system is PLoS ONE 8, 12.
useful and there is a need to improve on fun and 5. Charlene M. Kalenkoski and Gigi Foster. 2016. Are
engaging aspect of the system. Comments from study women better than men at multitasking household
participants were constructive and taken into account production activities? In The Economics of
for our future development of Eventity. We believe that Multitasking. .
Eventity is a useful tool for general users who want to 6. S. Phithakkitnukoon, Z. Smoreda, and P. Olivier.
keep track with and planning around the social events, 2012. Socio-geography of human mobility: A study
as well as urban planners who can benefit from using it using longitudinal mobile phone data. PLoS ONE 7,
as a preliminary analysis tool. 6.
7. Neil A Powe. 2006. Understanding urban attitudes
Acknowledgements towards country towns: considering their potential
We would like to thank the Thailand Department of as visitor attractions. Journal of Retail and Leisure
Tourism for providing us the tourist destination data. Property.
8. Population Department United Nations, Department
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