btw I am back on board

I spent a week in Mauritius but now I am fully powered back on P&V...

France Telecom\'s journal of social software

French multinational France Telecom now has a very relevant blog about social software and digital communities: affinity. Few posts at the moment but it sounds promising.

Affinity is a journal of research, innovation and ideas in the emerging field of social software. Jointly written by Wanadoo, Orange and France Telecom R&D, we intend to coalesce France Telecom's expertise in digital communities and social software. We believe that the recent vibrancy of innovation around digital communities, social software, social media and digital identity is transforming what it means to be a telecommunications provider in the 21st century.

For France Telecom's consumer businesses, Orange and Wanadoo, social software represents a nexus of mobility and broadband, entertainment and communication that will help us to transform telecommunications from standards, networks and protocols, to conversations, relationships and a essential mediating Life Services.

Why do I blog this? Even though I know few folks at France Telecom (in France mostly), it's always tough to know what they are up to. This blog is a nice footpint about their activities in the domain of social software. I hope they could expand to broader topic like location-based services or multimodal interactions (I know they do lots of stuff about it lately).

A virtual colloquium about spatial cognition

Barbara Tversky ( from Stanford University) is going to hold a virtual colloquium about spatial cognition on Friday, February 25, 2005, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. EST. It is about 'Multiple Mental Spaces'

We engage in spatial cognition from the first moments of life: where to look, where to reach, where to go. Each of these acts entails a different space and different set of behaviors; the behaviors become fine-tuned through experience. In contrast, talk about space does not directly access this knowledge; instead, it seems to be mediated by cognitive constructions that are only schematically based on this knowledge and that may introduce systematic bias and error.

Why do I blog this? Barbara Tversky is one of the most important researcher with regard to spatial cognition and mental models of space. Most of her work is headed towards the space of the body (Morrison and Tversky, 2004), the space around the body (Franklin and Tversky, 1990; Bryant, Franklin, and Tversky, 1992; Tversky, Kim, and Cohen, 1999), the space of navigation (e.g., Tversky, 2000), the spaces created by people to augment their cognition (e.g., Tversky, 2001) like diagrams, language, gesture and other behaviors.

Discussion about location awareness\' definition

Mauro posted a definition of 'location awareness' on his blog last week. He defines it as "A continuous availability of the spatial positions of the agents involved in the interaction for the agents themselves.". Since I am dealing a lot with this fuzzy notion on awareness, I would like to comment a bit on that. Technically speaking, theories about 'awareness' are not so cognitive psychology oriented, it's more related to HCI or CSCW concerns (even though some cognitive sciences researchers now work on that notion). Dourish and Belloti (1992) have given one of the best-known definitions for awareness: “awareness is an understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for your own activity”. Drawing on this, location awareness would be "the understanding of the others' position" which of course as Giles supposed (in a comment of Mauro's post) imply some cognitive processes to be activated.

Moreover, Gutwin and Greenberg (1999a) state that awareness:

• Is knowledge about a state of the work environment in a limited portion of time and space.
• Provides knowledge about changes in that environment.
• Is maintained by all the interactions between the team-mates and the environment.
• Is a part of an activity (completing a task, working on something…). Maintaining awareness is not the purpose of an activity. Awareness is used to complete a task.

The definition goes further here since they state that awareness is about having a constant flow of information (perceived and updated). Another interesting point is that awareness of others is not maintained for the sake of it but is a part of an activity (at least it's a presence indicator).

I would say that awareness it just limited to the perception plus the updated of information; about others' position if we talk about location awareness. Then other cognitive processes are implied like inferences ("A is here then I infer that..."), communication... Of course, location-positioning being technologies allow people to improve their location awareness. The problem is that we don't know yet how it impacts the way they collaborate, which is ultimately the topic of my phd thesis...

I tried to elaborate more on the location awareness dimensions in a previous post. Here is a figure about this (I know it's ugly):

Anne Galloway\'s comments about OPEN PLAN

At OPEN PLAN, anne galloway mentioned that she felt like being the only person coming fom social sciences attending the locative media event. She is indeed an anthropologist/ethnographer. As a cognitive psychogist, that is also something I can feel. Among all the discussions we attended, there seems to be some missing dimensions like what she is concerned with or even how those technologies modifies some group processes (in terms of social or socio-cognitive concerns for instance). In one of her recent post, she makes a brief summary of her thoughts. I just picked up her conclusion, which I find relevant:

in the end, I don't think that it's productive to talk about artists any more than it makes sense to treat all academics, corporate or government researchers as if they were the same. Clearly, we all share an equal ability and responsibility in keeping potential collaborations open and just, and this is no time to crush the diversity of cultures at hand.

Swedish interactive lab PLAY becomes RE:FORM

Th swedish interactive lab PLAY now becomes RE:FORM.

The Interactive Institute's RE:FORM studio investigates technology as design material. While the typical notion of 'form' is physical shape, we believe that in considering computation as a design material, concepts of form must be fundamentally re-interpreted since time, flow, and energy and other dynamic elements become central in the interaction with computational things. In our research, we develop both methodological foundations and practical examples, exposing the experiential, social, and design implications of new technologies.

Why do I blog this? This lab is one of the most interesting in Scandinva, forpeople concern with interaction design.

IM users typology

A strikingly relevant and simple typology IM users by Danah Boyd. She makes an interesting discussion between IM as a presence versus a communication tool.

I have a round-the-clock presence on AIM, even if frequently idle. I share this round-the-clockness with some of my buddies - people who always appear to be on, although sometimes idle. There are other buddies who pop up whenever they're on their computer (often 9-5). Then, there are those who pop up very occasionally. (...) The thing about members of this latter category is that they *always* want to talk when they come online. This makes sense - they're appearing online only to talk, not to share presence. They are seeing IM as a communication tool first and foremost. (...) Interestingly, it is this group that complains the most about how they can never get anything done when IM is on. I try really hard not to respond in a snarky voice that i can never get anything done when they're on. They get upset when i don't have time to talk, arguing that i shouldn't be online if i don't want to talk. (...) let's go back to the people who come online just to talk. The problem with this group is that they're unintentionally exerting power. They are declaring their free time by logging on and they're assuming that i am signaling the same thing. (...) I don't spend a lot of time conversing on IM (...) The problem with IM is that the always-on'rs have gotten far more comfortable with the technology than those who still see it as a communication tool, not just a desirable presence tool.

Why do I blog this? I exactly feel the same and it's definitely a problem! From a socio-cognitive point of view, it's of tremendous interest. As a matter of fact, mediated communication oblige people to make inference about others' activity or availability. Each of us has rules about how it should work with IM (for instant some thinks that if the conversant does not want to talk he should get offline). And sometimes the mismatch between each others' rules is bad and cause various problem liek frustration, anger or misunderstandings. Another point already raised by Catherine Cramton about email is how do we deal with silence. How can we interprete silence: what means an absence of answer.

About Catherine Cramton, have a glance at "The mutual knowledge problem and its consequences for dispersed collaboration" (.pdf) which appeared in Organization Science in 2001

Video Games Places/Archetypes

In a slide by Steffen Waltz, I found a very nice list of place often referred to as game archetypes & rhetorical figures:

Arena - Board / Stadium - Bridge - Castle - Cave - Caroussel - Cellar - Chamber - Church - Colosseum - Control room - Dungeon - Elevator - Factory - Forest - Fortress - Garage - Garden - Hide-out - Hinderance - High Rise - Island - Jail - Kindergarden - Laboratory - Labyrinth - Level - Machine room - Ménagerie - Miniature -Museum - Naval - Panopticon- Panzer - Park -Planets -Playground - Plaza - Sandpit - Sky -Space ship / -station -Submarine -Supermarket -Theatre- Underworld - Utopia / Impossible Arch - Vehicle - Zoney

Paper about ubiquitous computing examination in natural settings

Salembier, P., Kahn, J., Calvet, G., Zouinar, M. & Relieu, M.(2005). “Just follow me”. Examining the use of a multimodal mobile device in natural settings (.pdf). In Proceedings of the HCI International Conference, July 22-27, Las Vegas. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This paper describes a method and a piece of equipment for capturing data about the use of a mobile multimodal device in natural settings . The equipment includes an instrument worn by the user to capture his or her perspective while moving, a means of capturing a wider view of the context and a multimodal data logger.

Why do I blog this? I already mentioned what this team does (here and here). Their methodology is pretty well thought, relying on various sources of information to capture what's happening on the field. The self-confrontation of the players to their interaction in various context is of relevant interest. I am looking forward to read more about the results. Besides, the tool they use to code the interaction looks promising.

Mobile learning is so mobile sometimes

Ran across this Mobile Learning Labs website. It's impressive! It is a "fully equipped Technology Learning Centre available for training whenever you need it, wherever you need it".

Our mobile labs are completely self contained, with their own power, climate control and broadband access. Labs can be delivered to any location with road access, and can be located in the space required to park two full-size cars. Put an end to day-long learnathons.

I cannot believe it!

About independent research

I think I already mentioned here my interest towards independent researchers or non-institutional researchers (here or here). When it comes about this very topic, appears the needs for resources, as described by rashmi:

in recent years, the internet has enabled the rise of a new type of internet enabled, independent researcher. I first realized this during my last year at Berkeley - that I could now do the same research on my own. Between subscriptions to a few academic journals, Google and a few trips to Berkeley/Stanford library, I can have access to everything I had while at Brown University or UC Berkeley. I would probably not have left the safe cocoon of academia if not for this realization.

After-PLAN notes by Marc Tuters

Just skimmed through Marc Tuters's follow up to open plan. Marc gives a great summary of what has being said + some other comments about his chat with conference-goers; which is nice since it adds some stuff to the huge amount of material I gathered from there. I particularly agree with his take about current locative media projects:

A common criticism that arose in my discussions with other conference-goers regarded the perceived lack of diversity amongst Locative Media projects. While a few visionary art works generated some buzz (...), the field of Locative Media that emerged from this discourse-driven event seemed best expressed by two particular projects: Urban Tapestries and Blast Theory.

How to move further from both the 'post-it' thing and the participants tracking?
Besides, Marc now runs Locative Media News on this MUSE platform.

Self-service technologies, in which human interaction seems a relic of the past

A very relevant column in the International Herald Tribune about "self-service technologies", this recent trend in service consumption. It deals with the potential damage to customer relationships. Of course, the author mentions automated phone system which are often a pain ("nine out of 10 consumers expressed anger over aspects of these systems").

If you want a boarding pass issued for a flight, you do it yourself. If you want to check out food at the supermarket, you do it yourself. Even if you want to buy toys, jeans, furniture, or best sellers, you find them and order them on the Web - yourself.

The world today is one of self-service technologies, in which human interaction seems a relic of the past. (...) The money a person can save by using self service varies widely. (...) But although the idea behind self service is to increase convenience for consumers - and to cut costs for businesses - the systems are not always all they are cracked up to be.(...) Also troublesome for those who may not care to use self-service technologies, like the elderly, is that discounts may be given to those consumers who do use them (...) "We preach to our customers that self service is just one channel to consider but not an exclusive one," Smith [managing director of Kynetix, a London-based consultancy that helps businesses adopt self-service technologies] said. "You have to have simple ways for consumers to get what they want, and that doesn't always mean self service." When it comes to the future, Smith predicts a more "proactive" type of self-service world. "You'll have a profile with an organization - perhaps a bank or an airline - and they'll notify you proactively about things you need to know about, whether it's a flight delay or an investment gone below a certain threshold," he said. "More and more, timely and important information will be pushed at you. "It's a way of the companies getting to you before you can get to them," he said. "And I believe this is the future."

Douglas Coupland about meanings, patterns and combinations

I like this quote taken from "Miss Wyoming" by Douglas Coupland:

"That's what Vanessa does for a living," Ryan said. "At RAND. She finds meanings and patterns. Combinations" "What's your speciality?" asked John. "Like Ryan said, I'm a finder" "A finder?" "Just what it sounds like. Ever since I was a kid, if something got lost, people came to me to find it for them. I'm able to locate things. I ask questions. I look at data. I make connections. And then I find what's lost.

Why do I blog this? I find that Coupland just found the right word to express this feeling I already had.

Turn you cell phone into a portable scanner

According to NYT, researchers at Xerox Research Center Europe (located in Grenoble, France) are working on the means to transform the diminutive camera in your cellphone into a portable document scanner.

"When we give it to test users, they appreciate it easily," said Christopher Dance, senior scientist and image processing manager for Xerox Research Center Europe. "Even the simplest of applications, just sharing the documents and storing the documents you have captured. You could even handwrite a message and send it to someone's phone." (...) Xerox researchers believe the technology will be useful for just about anyone with a job that requires research in the field. The theory is that someone attending a trade show or conference, for example, could capture and store pertinent documents in their cellphone.

What is even more interesting is:

Xerox researchers are also working on complementary technology for cataloging these and other digital images. Although it's part of a different research project that hasn't come to fruition, the technology will sort through and group images using histograms, which chart the pixels associated with a particular part of a digital photograph. In some instances, text descriptions will be tied to these histograms.

About ETH World

I recently discovered ETH World:

is a strategic program to establish a virtual space for communication and cooperation independent of time and place. The program aims to make this space widely used and accessible to all stakeholders of ETH Zurich. ETH World supports all members of ETH in their core business - teaching, learning, research and the associated management tasks. The program enables new forms of networking and cooperation with business, industry and society.

ETH World contributes to realizing the vision of a university of the future and thereby strengthens the international competitiveness of ETH Zurich.

I digged a bit on this website and came across a very interestinf report about study tour (.pdf):

In November 2004, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) organized a study trip to leading universities and research labs in the USA and Canada to learn about best practices in the use of information and telecommunication technologies (ICT) to support teaching, learning, research and services.

A phenomenon called pseudo-A.D.D.

A paper in the NYT about the ever-present and enticing potential distractions while seated at a computer.

"It's so hard, because of the incredible possibilities we have that we've never had before, such as the Internet," said John Ratey, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who specializes in attention problems. Dr. Ratey said that in deference to those who live with clinically diagnosed attention deficit disorder, he calls this phenomenon pseudo-A.D.D.

A growing number of computer scientists and psychologists are studying the problem of diminished attention. And some are beginning to work on solutions. (...) When scrolling up and down a document on a computer screen, for instance, he said, some software causes the page to jump. It's an invitation to distraction, in that it requires the eye to reacquaint itself with the document in order to continue reading. To help people understand the importance of avoiding these kinds of jumpy interactions, Dr. Bederson showed that smooth scrolling was not only easier on the eye, but reduced the number of mistakes people make when, say, reading a document aloud. (...) "It's in human nature to wonder whether you've got new mail," said Alon Halevy, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington who specializes in data management systems and artificial intelligence. "I don't think anything else is as compelling to divert attention." Dr. Halevy and others talk about making e-mail intelligent so that it knows when to interrupt the user.

Why do I blog this? It's clearly because I am a victim of this pseudo-ADD thing! It reminds me a previous post I posted here about cognitive attractors and the Cognitive Overflow Syndrome (“COS”: too many things to do, not enough time, etc). This is related to the work of Saadi LAHLOU at EDF Research and Development.

On a slightly different note, I just came across this: Marc Eisenstadt's take about the reality behind talk of 'email overload', by taking a look at some real numbers based on his own archive of all emails received over the past 12 years. Quite relevant! It's more about asynchronous attention (do you remenber the email you received 10 years ago? well at that time I only has so few that I could remember some but...)

Discussion with my phd advisor about data analysis

We talked about the CatchBob data analysis. We're going to use both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Note: we have to be careful to balance the number of Bob's location: there should be the same number of Bob at 'la coupole' as in 'faculte d'informatique'

1. about the tabletPC screenshots: their map annotations (from the 3 players): we came up with the following coding scheme to analyse the map annotation: - content: position/direction/signal strength(proximity sensor)/strategy(stay calm)/off-task notes/acknowledgement/content-free acknowledgement - mode: textual (+numbers)/graphical - position on the map: site-specific/non site specific - intent/pragmatics: announcement/request

Let's have a quantification of each messages: - number of messages per player/group - number of messages per category per player/group check if there are still position request in the condition "with location awareness tool". It if it's the case, it might be an indicator that this query and the answer are not only related to the position but also to something higher in terms of intent modeling...

2. Path drawings: I have the path of each participant (thanks to client+server logfiles) + their drawing (A drew is path and the path of B and C)

Calculate the number of errors about A's path: path drawn by A/real path by A - places where they have not been - place they were but forgot to draw PLUS: real path by A/A's path drawn by B and real path by A/A's path drawn by C The tricky thing here is to define what is an error, we need some criteria like: - distance (higher than the maximum size of epfl corridors) - no visibility between the two representations - door/wall/glass - walking back just a while is not an error

Then: we can compute the number of errors A did about B: E(A,B) as well the number of errors A did about C: E(A,C) Thanks to this errors evaluation we have an relevant evaluation: the quality of the spatial representation that A had about B and C: an indication of Spatial Mutual Modeling MM(A-BC)= [E(A,B)/E(A,A)] + [E(A,C)/E(A,A)] (we use the error about A own's position as a weight here that indicate the accuracy of his representation of space).

3. Self-confrontation to the replay tool look for explicit stuff like: “I understood that you/he/she/they wanted to…", “I did not get that you/he/she/they", “you/he/she/they did not understand that…": - critical incidents ('I thought you were doing this') - 'best practices' (good modeling)

then we can have a catalogue/typology of mutual modeling acts -> transcript just those moment. That will be good to illustrate + to find new variables we did not think about...

Future gaming: the control scheme rather than graphics/sound

There is a relevant interview of Richard Mrks ingame spy. He's one of the creator of the Eye Toy.

Game interfaces often get the shaft. Developers invest tons in graphics or sound or physics, but nobody ever invests tons of time into the control scheme. Often people don't even really think about it. Game controllers are ubiquitous. You push a button, and stuff happens. But the interface is literally a player's connection to the game: it's where the action happens.

And after a couple decades of stagnation (game pads are basically the same as they were for the NES, save for more buttons) we're finally on the verge of some crazy new technologies for how people interact with games. The Eye-Toy is leading the way, proving that there's an opportunity for new concepts to hit mainstream.(...) Marks started firing up demos and showing what new technology was on the horizon: Head Tracking (...) Future Cameras and "Per-Pixel Distance Measurement, (...) New Interfaces for Handheld: Adding a camera to a handheld can open up tons of possibilities. Dr. Marks, who used the PSP in all his examples, is particularly excited about the idea of using a handheld as a "lens" to view the world. In other words, stick a camera on top of the PSP facing out, then look "through" it (at your screen) at the real world but with digital stuff overlaid on top of it.

Why do I blog this? I always thought the game designers should get rid of the standard game controller (or at least try to innovate a bit about it). There are some nice things showing up here, but I still tend to think it's too technology-oriented, they really need some end-user perspective.

Re-assembling and analysing spatial information

Patrick pointed us on StarLight, a 'visible information visualization system'.

Starlight represents the first attempt to marry a variety of different types of "conventional" (and novel) information visualization capabilities into a single, integrated, information system capable of supporting a wide range of analytical functions. Further, Starlight visualization tools employ a common XML-based information model capable of effectively capturing multiple types of relationships that may exist among information of disparate kinds. Together, these features enable the concurrent visual analysis of a wide variety of information types. The result is a system capable of both accelerating and improving comprehension of the contents of large, complex information collections.

There is a very interesting example about national security. The system allows to reassemble information about real-world political and military situations into a useful "picture" of a situation. Starlight enables intelligence analysts to integrate a wide variety of spatial and non-spatial information types so that they can be jointly analyzed. It shows nice images that exemplify how this is carried out. Why do I blog this? Clearly, as for the GPS, the army is far ahead in locative media design/use (we already talked about this at open plan in Eyal Weizman's talk about the israelian army).