[Locative Media] Location Based Services scenarios

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Have a glance at some location-based services scenarios in geo-community. It's a bit rusty and cliché, but it appears to be a good summary of what was expected in 2001. Applying LBS to people alwas tend to lead to safety applications. I think it's a pity, there would be more interesting scenarios (not only with game). Mobile learning would be a nice direction.

GeoModeTM (www.geomode.com) or miniature GPS technology can be imbedded into items of clothing and footwear to support child-tracking services i.e. “Tell me if my child strays beyond the neighbourhood.” (...) Other similar personal and commercial examples of people tracking, where the person being tracked provides tracking permission, can improve customer service and public safety.

[Research] Mixed reality and location awareness

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B.Brown, I.McColl, M.Chalmers, A.Galani, C.Randell, and A.Steed (2003). Lessons from the lighthouse: Collaboration in a shared mixed reality system. In Proceedings of the CHI 2003 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 577–584, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. ACM Press: NY.

These findings have implications for non-museum settings, in particular how location awareness is a powerful resource for collaboration. (...) Shared awareness of location also allowed users to quickly move to their friends. Participants used this to quickly find what their friends were looking at and then move so as to look at the same thing. (...) Location awareness allowed participants to talk about and use each other’s context and navigation (...) Awareness of location also meant that users could better understand what their co-visitors were looking at; each could simply look at the map or 3D display, and see which exhibits the others were viewing. Location awareness might be similarly useful for other collaborative settings where current activity can be inferred from location

It's close to what I study in my research.

[Research] CatchBob constraints

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In CatchBob, we are interested in an activity (depicted on the figure below) that fits 4 constraints:

  1. space constraints: the activity occurs on the field, people are highly mobile
  2. time constraint: the activity does not last very long: few hours maximum
  3. organizational constraint: decentralized team (with no operators at a upper level in a control room)
  4. communication constraint? no audio communication (noise in the background…)

Apart from military stuff, are there any other activities that fits those constraints?

[Mobile] A mobile monday in switzerland

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Jerome came up with the interesting idea of having a mobile monday-like meeting on a regular basis in Switerzland. The idea is pretty cool. Such meeting could deal with lots of concepts. I tried to sketch a list (it's actually broad): A another poitn would be to do something a bit more different than what the french people from mobilités.net does (so that there is no overlap). A mobiel monday would be interesting if it's free, not to crowded and not too small. Perhaps the event might also be structured with concrete activities and not just chitchat...

[Research] A meta-review of mobile computing evaluation techniques

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Lately I read lots of paper by Jesper Kjledskov. The guy wrote interesting stuff about the evaluation of mobile computing devices. One of his best paper is a meta-review of the techniques employed to do so:Kjeldskov J. and Graham C. (2003) A Review of MobileHCI Research Methods. In Proceedings of the 5th International Mobile HCI 2003 conference, Udine, Italy. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, pp. 317-335.

  1. One researcher read and classified the 102 selected research papers in relation to their method and purpose
  2. A second researcher blindly read and classified 20 randomly selected papers
  3. Due to disparities, all papers were then discussed one by one in collaboration between the researchers, resulting in a final classification

This reveals a tendency towards environment independent research and artificial setting research… at the expense of natural setting research. This reveals a tendency towards building systems based on trial and error, evaluating systems in controlled environments (if at all) … at the expense of studying real use of systems.Little research addresses the question of what is useful and what is percieved problematic from a user perspective. It seems assumed that we already know what systems to build and what problems to overcome (given the youth of the research field, this can hardly be true/The prevalent focus on applied research makes it difficult to set aside this assumption/On the contrary, it could be stated that mobile HCI in particular requires research addressing this issue). It seems also assumed that teal world studies are not very important (building and evaluating systems on the basis of applied research and laboratory experiments results in very concrete conclusions about specific solutions/Such conclusions can be difficult to generalize). Finally, methodology matters very little

The author then proposes different research avenue:

  1. Field and case studies for informing engineering through exploration of real use contexts
  2. Survey research for studying use of mobile technology in the hands of a large segment
  3. Action Research for developing knowledge through practice and intervention
  4. Basic research for developing theoretical understanding of the studied phenomena

Personally, my research is oriented towards the last point: it's basic research about how peope use location awareness information for group coordination in joint activities.

[Future] Street level innovation

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One session at Doors of Perception 8 will "look at the street as a site of innovation. Sixty percent of the population in many Asian cities lives in shantytowns: what can we learn from how they innovate to survive? We'll hear about migrants' lives in Chinese cities, and compare New Delhi street life with the ways that New York is trying to breathe life back into its over-sanitised streets. The British story of Up-My-Street.com will help us appreciate how hard it is to add service quality to locality."

[Space and Place] Motility: a new capital

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Commuting from Lausanne to Geneva as usual, I read a very nice paper by Vincent Kauffman about the concept of motility:

this construct describes the potential and actual capacity of goods, information, or people to be mobile both geographically and socially. Three major features of motility – access, competence, and appropriation – are introduced. In this text, we focus on conceptual and theoretical contributions of motility. In addition, we suggest a number of possible empirical investigations.

Kaufmann, V., Bergma, M, and Joye D. (2004) Motility: mobility as capital, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 28, No 4, pp. 745-756

[Research] Location and activity

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Just few notes taken while dreaming: Location Awareness in Mobile Collaboration

  1. some activities are carried out by different persons at different locations
  2. location of others, tools, material, resources is meaningful for the participants
  3. participants can know that partner A is at location X and partner B at location Y (question here: how?)
  4. THE QUESTION (I have to investigate): what do A infer from B's position?

[Research] Field Experiments: between field study and lab experiment

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I really appreciate the concept of "field experiment" described by Goodman, Brewster and Gray (2004) in their paper Using Field Experiments to Evaluate Mobile Guides.

Field experiments are quantitative experimental evaluations that are carried out in the field, drawing from aspects of both qualitative field studies and lab experiments. To start with, field experiments have advantages over expert evaluations (such as heuristic evaluations and checklists) because they involve real users. This is particularly important when studying novel, variable and less understood situations, such as those involved in mobile devices. Secondly, there are various reasons for preferring field situations to laboratory settings. Principally, the difference between use in a laboratory setting, even when mobile conditions are simulated, and use in the real world can be quite startling. This is particularly true for devices such as mobile guides that rely heavily on the surrounding environment. Aspects such as lighting levels, weather, the effects of walking, the appearance of landmarks in real life and the effectiveness of location-sensing systems can have unpredictable effects on the usability and effectiveness of a device. The only way to really see how the device will work in practice is to use it in practice. In addition, field experiments have various advantages over more qualitative and ethnographic field studies. Although such field studies do have some advantages, it can be hard to use them to obtain an objective evaluation of a device, determine its performance or gain hard evidence comparing one device or method with another. Field experiments offer one way to overcome these disadvantages while still utilizing the advantages of a field setting. They are also quicker than carrying out a fullblown ethnographic field study and can gauge the responses of a greater number of participants.

It's closely related to the notion of "quasi-experiment" developed by T.D. Cook, D.T. Campbell, Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues in Field Settings, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1979.

[Research] Workload Evaluation

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I am considering using the NASA Task Load Index (NASA TLX) to get some insights about our tool in CatchBob!. It's not the core aspect of my research but it might give us some insights about the subjective perception of the workload.

The NASA TLX is a multi-dimensional rating scale for operators to report their mental workload. It uses six dimensions of workload to provide diagnostic information about the nature and relative contribution of each dimension in influencing overall operator workload. Operators rate the contribution made by each of six dimensions of workload to identify the intensity of the perceived workload. The dimensions are 'Mental demands', 'Physical demands', 'Temporal demands', 'Performance', 'Effort' and 'Frustration'.

[Research] Lab experiment to evaluate mobile computing

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J.Kjeldskov and M.B.Skov (2003) Creating Realistic Laboratory Settings: Comparative Studies of Three Think-Aloud Usability Evaluations of a Mobile System, Proceedings of the 9th IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, Interact 2003.
The authors adresse the topic of mobile devices usability using 'realistic laboratory settings'. They advocate for the use of lab settings because of various constraints like "mobile systems for highly specialized use contexts such as e.g. safety-critical or hazardous environments may prohibit exploratory usability evaluations since errors involving risks for people and equipment cannot be tolerated". They exemplifiy this issue by presenting the work they carried out to evaluate a mobile device used for coordination on large container vessels. They used 3 different experimental settings: - in a standard usability laboratory (mockup...mirror/camera...) with non domain subjects - in a standard usability laboratory (mockup...mirror/camera...) with domain subjects - in an 'advanced lab' (room with ship simulator) with domain subjects

They identified different usability problems in those 3 settings: Even though it seems interesting (with regard to the number of problems that emerged), it is a bit crazy to notice that the authors evaluate a MOBILE device in a NON-MOBILE situation! They cite this limit at the end of the paper but I do think it's a real drawback that should not be left as a side critic!

[Research] Conference tips

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How to get the most out of conferences:

  1. Conversations are more valuable than the sessions
  2. Coming up with a plan: Go through the guidebook with a pen, and mark anything that looks interesting. If you find things that sound cool but vague, flip open the proceedings and check them out. If it looks like something better captured in a paper, then it's probably not worth going to. Circle all of the sessions that look interesting, and if two or more occur at the same time, flag the one you want to go to first. Then during the actual conference, go to the first session you’ve marked. Have a plan to bail after 15 minutes if you’re bored. Odds are it’s not going to get better. Go to the next session in that timeslot that interested you. Repeat the same thought process. Worst case, you can always return to one of the other sessions. The result is that you maximize your time spent in sessions you will actually enjoy, and minimize your time spent bored, hoping things will get better. If you run out of sessions to go to, head over to the trade show area if there is one. During sessions is a good time to introduce yourself to the various people manning the different booths. I’ve had some of my best conference experiences in conversations that started this way.
  3. After hours conference socializing. Often, people spend most of their time at these events with people they already know, or the people they came to the conference with. If you are attending the conference alone, these events can feel very cliquish and elitist. I don’t think anyone intends for this to be so, but often nothing is set up to minimize or inhibit this social tendency.

    If you can manage it, you want to try to have met enough people in the workshops and other sessions in the previous day, that you can wander around at the social, and say hi to people. If you made some decent connections, you’ll be able to jump in on some conversations about meet more people. If you have a few drinks, and can get into the right mindset, you can have a lot of fun bouncing around between different groups.

  4. Don’t use the conference bag, or lug around all the crap they give you. First, it makes you a mark as a tourist to carry the conference bag around outside the conference. Second, traveling in packs of people all using the same bag, all wearing name tags, makes you look kinda like a cult member. You rarely need to lug around all of the stuff they give you (I recommend droping off the proceedings at my hotel room as soon as I get it). Instead bring a light bag, with enough room for the small conference handbook/schedule, some paper, a pen, maybe something to eat, and some business cards. Travel light. You’ll feel much better at the end of the day if you haven’t been carrying 15 lbs of stuff all day. Don't bring your laptop so you can read your email. Go talk to someone instead.

[Space and Place] Refuge wear: city outfi of the future?

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Refuge Wear is a project by Lucs Orta. She designed a kind-of urban armour:

In 1992, Lucy Orta began making a series of drawings entitled Refuge Wear as a response to situations of human distress and unsuitable social environments. She then fabricated a series of these temporary shelters that transformed into items of clothing and transport bags and gave them the generic term Body Architecture. The first in the series was named Habitent: a portable habitat catering for minimum personal comfort and mobility for the inhabitant. Further Refuge Wear prototypes were fabricated as personal environments in response to social condition and could convert according to need, necessity or urgency. Refuge Wear became synonymous for clothes and shelter in extreme conditions; they provided vital mobility and waterproof shelter for the Kurd refugee population; temporary protection and shelter for natural disasters such as the Kobe earthquake; mobile sleeping bags for the homeless; and immediate practical aids such as water reserves, integrated medical supplies and burial bags in an attempt to ameliorate the horrific hygiene problems of the Rwanda crisis (1994/95).


[Research] How virtual environment users derive shape from information space.

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Andrew Dillon wrote an interesting paper about shape and information space in Journal of the American Society for Information Science: Spatial-Semantics: How Users Derive Shape from Information Space

The ability to perceive structure in abstract information spaces is crucial to navigation and search performance. Dillon's article distinguishes the role of spatial and semantic cues and explains why this conceptualization may lead to new insights into existing and emerging data. Dillon also introduces the concept of shape as the structural component of the working model of an information space. This is most apparent in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) but is less obvious or conceptualized in abstract information environments. Dillon's article delineates the argument between top-down versus bottom-up approaches with a range of empirical evidence found in the literature.