The GEMS's main idea is based on a client platform for the mobile device, which supports a finite set of GUI templates, i.e. visual forms that dictate the layout of the mobile phone screen. The set of GUI templates contains different kinds of menu lists, text editors and input forms, and text layouts. A mobile application for this client platform is a graph of GUI template instances, where each GUI template instance is a reference to a predefined visual form plus text and references to preloaded texts and graphics that are used to fill in the visual form.
The proliferation of mobile applications for smartphones has been based on the presence of a data connection between those devices and the Internet. Therefore, users of entry level mobile phones as well as users who cannot afford a data plan are excluded from the current dynamics of mobile applications consumption. A possible approach to include those users is the usage of SMS as the communication channel. Although SMS is widely supported by carriers and extremely popular among users, it is not trivial to replace the data connection capabilities with SMS. This work addresses this issue with an integrated solution composed by a client platform and a server-side system. This solution enables GUI-based mobile applications to be transferred over a short number of concatenated SMSs. It also presents components for the creation, deployment and distribution of mobile applications. In order to attest the relevance of such solution, an experiment was conducted and its results indicate a substantial level of acceptance by target group.
This paper describes the concept and the technological solution used in MobileDeck, a content request and delivery system designed for emerging markets, which uses SMS as the main communications channel. MobileDeck consists of a mobile application with a graphical user interface dynamically integrated with a content providing server. The effectiveness of this system as a way to enhance the end-user experience is demonstrated by the results of two different studies.
