[Research] Self-confrontation to the replay in our experiments

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In our experiments, we are using a self-confrontation to the replay of the game. Players are shown the path they took and I ask them few questions ranging from very open at the beginning to more specific at the end. The point is to get information about they inferred the partners strategies. As you can see, our methodology is a kind of field experiment. The self confrontation here is not meant to rebuild all the activity as in an explicitation interview.

  1. Open questions at the beginning
    1. how was it? did you enjoy it?
    2. how did you coordinate? what was your strategy?
    3. did you understand what your partners wanted to do/where they wanted to go?
    4. was there any conflictual moments? how was it solved? what was the outcome?
    5. any moment where you were lost?
  2. Replay (5-6 times)
    1. what happened here?
    2. ask A if he/she understood what B was doing at that time
    3. ask B if what A said is right
  3. Summary – synthesis
    1. how did you knew the partner’s strategy?
    2. how did you use the tool (drawings…)

[Research] Analysing behavior toward maps

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Brown, B. and E. Laurier (2005) Designing electronic maps: an ethnographic approach (.pdf). To appear in: L. Meng, A. Zipf, T. Reichenbacher (Eds.), Map-based mobile services – Theories, Methods and Implementations. Springer Verlag

While ethnographic methods are an established tool for requirements analysis in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), they have seldom been used for the design of electronic map systems. This chapter presents an ethnographic study of city tourists’ practices that draws out a number of implications for designing map technologies. We describe how tourists work together in groups, collaborate around maps and guidebooks, and both ‘pre-’ and ‘postvisit’ places. These findings have been used in the design of the ‘george square’ system which allows tourists to collaborate around an electronic map at a distance.

I particulary appreciate the definition of a map as a collaborative artifact. From an observatory poitn of view, it's always fun to see people collaborate from the beginning (unfolding the map), the core of the task (finding something on the map) and the end (folding the map). Thsi ritual is fantastic! Besides, this paper is useful since it analyses how people collaboratively make senses of maps. This then gives ideas about how designing locative applications based on maps.

[Locative Media] Map Hacks has a blog

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For all the folks like me who are waiting the Mapping Hacks book by Jo Walsh and Eric Schuyler, there is a blog about it.

"GPS units are nearly everywhere, integrated into cars and even mobile phones. With this collection of mostly free techniques, you can create and share useful digital mapping services of your own. Find the best sources of public geographic data, collect your own data, and integrate that information into the maps you make. Learn to use maps in weblogs, photo galleries, interactive applications , and more."

[Research] Mauro\'s project

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There is now a webpage for Mauro's project:

Communication has suffered from the clearing of spatial references since the invention of the telephone or the radio. Nevertheless, spatial informations are used all the time by the agents-in-relation to reconstitute the context of the messages exchange. The effect is an economy of the whole interchange process. The aim of this research is to understand by which mechanisms this happen. Particularly, the focus will be on the shared knowledge construction. Subsequently, and as a proof technique, a formalisation attempt will frame these possibly uncovered processes into an algorithm. The goal will be to replicate, to some extent, human reasoning and sustain communication exchange when applied to real time interaction. An implementation of this algorithm will be applied, tested and refined in a geographical messaging system developed by an English firm called Proboscis.

[Weird] Student Internship about algorithm to find fake watch websites

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Incredible internship proposal: The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry ("Fédération horlogère suisse") needs some tools and methodologies to find web sites proposing fake watches. (It this link does not work, use the one in the google cache).

Project 5: Hunt fake watches The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry ("Fédération horlogère suisse") needs some tools and methodologies to find web sites proposing fake watches. Once these sites have been located, it is necessary to find all possible informations (isp, country, operating system of the server, registrar of the domain name, etc) that would help to bring an actions against the owner of the web site.

[Research] Thoughts about task design

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Discussion with thomas about task design in experiment:

My question ALWAYS is: Can you abstract from the task? What are are the measures? What are external instruments that - for instance - measure personality, states, an traits, etc. In short: It depends how well the study is conducted. Next to that there are also some methodological issue. What measures, how do you measure, code, etc

[Research] A great research group

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Just found this: Monkey Methods which appearrs to be of tremendous interest:

Monkey Methods Research Group is an experimental playground for cool technology that matters to people. Our latest project is a BitTorrent search engine, which we're working on along with a couple other ideas. And what exactly is the method of a monkey?They play with things, like trying to use bananas as guns or phones. At least this is what we did in elementary school.
Our goal is to explore the emerging relationship between people and interactive media Practically speaking, we are a small research group made up of folks from different backgrounds, working on fun projects that explore the way that technology is weaving itself into our daily lives. We call it "futuristic play."

They also have a blog.

[Research] Pervasive Computing in Sports

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I ran across this call for paper: Pervasive Computing in Sports. Submission Deadline: 14 February 2005.

IEEE Pervasive Computing invites articles relating to the use of pervasive computing in sports to enhance the sport (or game) and/or experiences for players, spectators, and/or judges. We hope to span a wide range of sports including single-player, multi-player, and large team sports as well as activities ranging from track and field to indoor team sports to racing. We especially welcome papers that bridge multiple aspects of a system, report on the challenges of integration and deployment, and report on usage experience

[Research] Lecture about how the physical environment supports social and collaborative processes

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Just finished my slides for tomorrow's lecture. I will talk about how the physical environment supports social and collaborative processes. The handout is here. It is basically a pdf files that shows some illustrations of what constitutes a fragment of the literature review of my phd thesis. The picture I used comes from various applications like Uncle Roy All Around You, Can You See Me Now?, Urban Tapestries, Jabberwocky...For those who speak french and who have a broadband connection, the mp3 of the lecture is online here (55Mb!).

Il s'agit d'un cours sur les technologies mobiles (géolocalisation) et comment l'espace physique modifie/permet/contraint/facilite les interactions sociales et la résolution de problèmes.

[Tech] The Virtual Raft Project

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The Virtual Raft Project by Bill Tomlinson and others.

The Virtual Raft Project is a multidisciplinary undertaking seeking to create communities of believable autonomous characters that inhabit heterogeneous networks of computational devices. In particular, the project is interested in allowing the characters to break the plane of the traditional desktop screen. To this end, we have designed an interactive installation featuring a novel tangible paradigm for interacting with the characters. This paradigm involves the use of a mobile device, such as a Tablet PC or handheld computer, as a “virtual raft” by which a character may be transported among several virtual worlds. By enabling the character on the raft to react in real time to the raft’s motion in real space, this installation encourages participants to become physically engaged with virtual characters. We believe that this physical engagement can lead to an increase in the believability of the characters.

[Space and Place] History of the traffic light invention

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Howdy! Fascinating facts about the inventionof the Traffic Light :

The world’s first traffic light came into being before the automobile was in use, and traffic consisted only of pedestrians, buggies, and wagons. Installed at an intersection in London in 1868, it was a revolving lantern with red and green signals. Red meant "stop" and green meant "caution." The lantern, illuminated by gas, was turned by means of a lever at its base so that the appropriate light faced traffic. On January 2, 1869, this crude traffic light exploded, injuring the policeman who was operating it. (...) The inventor sold the rights to his traffic signal to the General Electric Corporation for $40,000

[Space and Place] A glimpse of african architecture

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A pictural website about african architecture I found while looking for stuff about social use of space. The first snapshot depicts a Gurunsi concession that acts as a panopticon. The second and the third one shows a yoruba compound ("archetype of the iconography of form in what constitutes conceptually the phenomenal transparency: emblematic figure embedded in the plane").

[Research] A nice research blog

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I just came across the blog of Philip Jeffrey. I already read few papers by him about social behavior in virtual space but I was not aware he had a blog. It seems that he noew move (like I did) in the field of context-aware computing. Unfortunately, the blog is not update since november...

My idea is to do an ethnographic study of students use of space as a place. I could then combine this with an experiment study (p values) that test this empirically. Both studies would complement each other as I look at how people extend themselves into their environment and use technology and artefacts with the environment to perceive space as a place.

[Space and Place] RIP Medialab Europe

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The MediaLab Europe seems to be dying because its principal stakeholders - the Irish Government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - have not reached agreement on a new funding model for the organisation. Here is an analysis of why it failed.

Like many interdisciplinary approaches to science, especially when art is involed, MLE's research sometimes lacked scientific rigour, it lacked good evaluation and was too far out of the context of previous research (...) MLE's overheads, that is, their expenditure on each researcher on top of the person's salary, were way over 100 percent, as you can roughly guess by counting researchers and looking at spending figures. A lot of MLE's money went into selling the research, not producing results.

[Future] An ethnographer in the Silicon Valley

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I just read a nice book by Marc Abélès: Les Nouveaux Riches Un ethnologue dans la Silicon Valley. It's in french. The author is a french ethnographer who reports us his study of dot.comers in the Silicon Valley who turns themselves from the "stingy valley attitude" to philanthropy. The most interesting part in this book is not the accounting of how those people live but the way they give meaning to gift plus the definition of venture philanthropy (i.e. the use of a business framework in philanthropy).

[Locative Media] Pervasive and Locative Arts Network

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The programme of the Pervasive and Locative Arts Network seems pretty impressive. I think I'm gonna attend the event to meet people from this community.

Speakers include Duncan Campbell, Anne Galloway, Matthew Chalmers, Matt Adams, Bill Gaver, Eyal Weizman, Sally Jane Norman, Giles Lane, Usman Haque, Franz Wunschel, Richard Hull, Jo Walsh, Teri Rueb, Minna Tarkka, Tapio Makela, RIXC, Pete Gomes, Saul Albert, Susan Kennard, Michael Longford, Steve Benford, Drew Hemment, Ben Russell