So Nicolas opened a pandora box by mentioning in Chronotopic visualizations: representing traces of people in spatial environments that the collection and representation of traces left by people in space through technologies is gaining momentum in location-based computing. In the past, this type of research aimed at understanding mobility and travel behaviors or predicting them (e.g. John Krumm’s work on “Predestination”). However, the collection of mobility data is time consuming and requests non-negligible efforts in setting-up and deploying surveys infrastructures. The costs and privacy issues prevented such studies to move beyond the scope of transportation research (see Jean Wolf’s Applications of New Technologies in Travel Surveys for a survey). Now, the accessibility to affordable wireless sensors and the emergence of the geospatial web are generating new types of “digital footprints” left by people in space though technologies. My Tracing the Visitor’s Eye project is one example among many. For instance, Danyel Fisher developed Hotmap to visualize where in the world people look at when they use Windows Live Maps (see Imaging the City workshop and Fisher’s Hotmap looking at Geographic Attention.

Density of people “querying” Boston through Windows Live Maps. Courtesy of Danyel Fisher. Made with Hotmap

Now, as Nicolas questions, What types of affordances these new types of data/visualization create? First, they might be directed at professionals such as urban planners to build or refine their models, but also to any kind of industry that deploy services or infrastructures supporting mobility throughout a city. For instance, it might inform on the installation of Municipal Wi-Fi. A second line of investigation aims at feedback information back to the people in order to creating a control or feedback loop (i.e. a “mirror to ourselves”). This approach makes use of social navigation (”navigation towards a cluster of people or navigation because other people have looked at something“) to help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment. A few weeks ago in Rome, the MIT SENSEable City Lab closed the feedback loop as a first example of their Wikicity project. They aggregated various types data and visually mapped the density and movement of people, buses, taxis in real time throughout the whole of the Eternal City. “By revealing the pulse of the city, the project aimed to show how technology can provide the inhabitants with a better idea of their own city and can help adjust their behavior accordingly. In the context of the web, Mor Naaman translates the feedback loop into a “social media cycle” (see the slides of his presentation this week at Yahoo! Research Barcelona: How Flickr Helps us Make Sense of the World).

Crowds gathered outside Rome’s Museum of the High Middle Ages on September 8, 2007, to view a real-time display of population movement during the city’s Notte Bianca festival. (Courtesy of MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory). In the media: ‘Wiki City Rome’ to draw a map like no other, City life on the screen, Wikis, the Semantic Web head to the streets, Les cartographes du téléphone mobile

Last week at Picnic, Adam Greenfield gave a presentation “The City is Here for You to Use: Urban Form and Experience in the Age of Ambient Informatics” in which he discussed how everyware is already affecting cities. More specifically, he mentioned this new types of real-time information about cities and their pattern of use, visualized in new ways and that information can be made available locally on demand in a way that people can act upon.

Adam Greenfield at Picnic07 on visualizing the patterns of use of the city: Stamen Design’s cabspotting, crime and real estate mapping, map of cities with WiFi hotspot.

Current scenarios for the application of these real-time visualizations mainly aim at facilitating a quick search or decision making such as determining a jogging path that corresponds to a combined query, or pedestrians that may eventually turn to interactive maps to avoid the masses or catch a bus. Other scenarios that take advantage of the temporal and social aspects of the traces could emerge. Such as providing an interactive tourist map of Switzerland based on Flickr traces revealing Zermatt, Interlakend and Davos and obscuring the non-relevant geographical location. But then, what are the scenarios beyond that?

A map of Switzerland by tourists for tourists?

Scenarios based on digital footprints lefts by people in urban environments seem to rely on the structure (urban environment), the past/current usage (social, navigation, wayfinding) and the content (POI). An application should intersect these layers in a meaningful way. However, delivering a pure mirror of the reality might be hard to reach. In some cases a meaning emerges from incomplete data patched by data mining, filtering and visualization algorithms. Their choice impact the perception of the data, potentially bringing an objective angle of the content provider and modifying the behavior. This is when read/write urbanism flirts with captology (aka persuasive computing). In other words, do the traces or the algorithms used to treat them that influence the individuals/citizens? Moreover, as discussed this week with Infovis.net’s Juan Dünsteler, information visualization struggles between educating people in reading visualization and providing relevant metaphores. Therefore, the data presented and misunderstood can impact the decision making (Visualizing Geospatial Information Uncertainty: What We Know and What We Need to Know).

Relation to my thesis: A follow-up to Inferring Spatio-Temporal Activities in Urban Spaces, seeking inspiration for an upcoming infovis.net article and in preparation of a position paper for the Urban Mixed Realities: Technologies, Theories and Frontiers workshop.

The other day in Geneva I stumbled on this Obey Giant sticker placed in a public bathroom. Obey Giant is a street art campaign and an experiment in phenomenology by artist Shepard Fairey. Its sole purpose is to make people question their surroundings. Even though it might not designed to question ubicomp, the experiment is extremely relevant to the discourse on seams and invisibility created by technologies. Funnily, a couple of days before in Schipol I spotted a sign highlighting the every use of the infrastructure was recorded.

The infrastructure senses you: street art campaign (left), real-world case (right).

Relation to my thesis: Linking Andre the Giant to seamful design.

Last Friday at the Picnic conference, I participated to a panel on the The Near Future of Pervasive Media Experiences Bob Barker’d by Julian Bleecker. In my talk The design of everyday pervasive things, I discussed my observations on the deployment of the ubicomp of the present and then provided some thoughts on how it can affect the design of the “near future pervasive media experiences”. These observations are inspired by Donald Norman’s brilliant The design of everyday things. I translated the approach to critique and highlight the current issues in deploying pervasive, sensor-based environments.

Slides with notes - 1.7MB

From Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship by Clifford Nass and Scott Brave:

p. 155: The word of technology is inspired by the desire to do “better and better”. There has long been a tendency to define better in terms of a technology’s distance between its objective performance and the objective characteristics of the physical and social world that it models. The definition has led to the development of a set of principles that urge marketers to deploy the most advanced technology that are available at a given time. This strategy, which is blind to the physiology of users, has led to the creation of less usable systems in the name of “improvement”. […] Although interface builders should certainly cheer for each technological advance, mindful manifestation demands that, to paraphrase Alexander Pope, the proper judges of interfaces be users.

Nass and Brave provide warnings on the design principles that consider the “best” interfaces as the ones that are as “accurate” and “realistic” as possible. Indeed, frequently accuracy burdens people. For instance, the physical world is often less convenient to navigate than is its abstracted counterpart. They quote Henri Matisse who taught use that “Exactitude is not truth“: Sometimes a less accurate mirroring of the world can in fact be more effective.

In addition, the risk for using the most advanced technology is that the contrast highlights failure:

Consider users who encounter an interface in which one dimension is clearly superior to the other. Initially, they may simply feel uncomfortable at the incongruity. In a (potentially unconscious) search to resolve the discomfort, they realize that these two technological creations are very different in that one is high in quality while the other is low in quality. Having a clear category for contrast (quality), the brain accentuates the difference and labels on very low quality and one very high quality.
If human psychology were simple, this accentuation should not be important: very hight quality and very low quality should balance each other out in the same way that high and low would. Unfortunately, two cognitive biases prevent this from happening. First, negative experiences are more arousing, memorable, and noticeable thant the best part, leading to more negative overall judgments. Second, poor quality in a interface generally leads to unpredictability, which, especially in a task-oriented situation, is very worrisome. These biases lead to overly harsh judgments of interfaces of mixed quality.

Relation to my thesis: These thoughts (based on Nass and Brave’s experiments) go in the direction of my current work with the analysis of accuracy used to geo-reference photos in Flickr. One goal is to provide arguments for location-aware systems designers to reject the obsession with veridicality in all aspects of an interface because this goal is impossible in the near term and lead to high levels of user distress and failure.

The recently published “Space Time Play” edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz, Matthias Böttger explores the architectural history of computer games and the future of ludic space. The book covers describes the development of new typologies of space spaces that are emerging from the superimposition of the physical and the virtual and with 180 articles tries to answer the main question: “What are the parameters of these new spaces? To what practices and functional specifications do they give rise? What design strategies will come into operation because of them?”. It is devided in five levels:

1. Spatiotemporal history of the architecture of digital games: what spatial qualities and characteristics arise from computer games and what implications these could have for contemporary architecture
2. The ludic constructions of digital metropolises: the representation of the city in games and the city as metaphor for the virtual spatialization of social relations.
3. Ubiquitous games: What happens when the spaces and social interactions of computer games are superimposed over physical space?
4. Games as tools for design and planning processes: demonstrate how the ludic conquest of real and imagined gamespace becomes an instrument for the design of space-time
5. Critical reflection upon the cultural relevance of games today and in the future: Which gamespaces are desirable and which are not?

Relation to my thesis: Nicolas and I proudly contributed to this book with a small piece on the augmentation of Guy Debord’s “Dérive” with computational means. I am particularly interested in its 4th level, that is how pervasive games can be used as alibi to become instruments for the design of the city.

In the latest IEEE Pervasive Computing issue, Ezra Goldman builds on his work on the effects of ubiquitous wireless internet on locational usage to deliver his thoughts on the Role of Space in a Networked World. He mentions the confusion between mobility versus connectivity by arguing that we are likely as mobile today as we ever were. What’s different is that we’re more accessible and connected when we move around (quote from Mobile Communication and Society). This increased demands and expectations from others make us feel we need to be more connected. In consequence, it is our social relations and work duties that are becoming mobile as opposed to our physical body. Moreover, instead of making use freer, this makes us depend more on the physical spaces with a particular coupling of hardware, software, and infrastructure that enable us to stay connected. In a place were we can’t connect, we might feel a sense of uncertainty and isolation.

Relation to my thesis: Mobile and wireless technologies freed us from physical location but made us more dependent on the infrastructure that enable us to stay connected. Ezra poses the question as “are we gaining control and flexibility or becoming dependent on our own creations?”. In other words “Does ubiquitous Wi-Fi present an expansion of human habits or habitat for our technological devices”.

A couple of workshops I will send a position paper to:

Situating Sat Nav: Questioning the TomTom Effect, as part of the 2008 Association of American Geographers Annual Conference. 15-19 April 2008, Boston, USA.

Comprehensive in-car satellite navigation (Sat Nav) systems have rapidly become affordable and ‘must-have’ mass-market accessories, advertised on television and the focus of ‘scare’ stories in the tabloid press. With their driver’s-eye position, dynamic maps and an authoritative voice telling you where and when to turn, these archetypal geographical gizmos depend on the ‘magic’ locational power of a cluster of unseen satellites and the global reach of corporations marketing the latest consumer fad. Sat Nav offers technologically sophisticated spatial data models of the world, but the technology quickly sinks into taken-for-granted everyday driving practices, such that its social and political significance is hard to assess. The gadgets themselves take space on the dashboard and windscreens, but also make new senses of space for the driver, well beyond the car. What exactly is the nature of this TomTom effect?

I plan to discuss my work with taxi drivers within the context of my thesis. Deadline: September 30th

Urban Mixed Realities: Technologies, Theories and Frontiers, as part of CHI 2008. April 6th 2008, Florence, Italy

Mixed reality environments encompass a range of domains from pervasive games through to systems to support cultural heritage, and currently represent a growing area of research. However the growth in such systems has resulted in a need to further explore their situated and social nature, and how these aspects impact upon their use of such systems and alter the environment around them. Although there has already been a substantial amount of research into telepresence and sense of place much of this has focused on more traditional technologies such as purely virtual environments or mobile tour guides. In contrast urban mixed reality environments require a substantial change of research emphasis and in doing so must take into account the following shifts
* From virtual to mixed reality environments which mesh or augment places and times
* From psycho-physiological and “constructive perception” to understanding social action, interaction and meaning making
* From a focus on individual behavior to interaction in groups who are co-located and distributed
* From immaterial environments to those which combine real and virtual elements
* From a passive sense of place and presence, one where creation of place, meaning and engaging of all senses plays a critical role

I plan to discuss the work I plan to perform next year as a member of the SENSEable City Lab in the Wireless City project in Florence (e.g. (tourist) interaction issues within urban environments, social navigation, seamful design, evaluation methodology, urban spatio-temporal data analysis). Deadline: 17th October 2007

In the train of thoughts on Revealing the Presence of Infrastructure, their limits and their potential failures, Vale of Glamorgan (Wales) deployed visual signs warning drivers not to believe their GPS navigation system. After once peaceful villages were reduced to bedlam when heavy-goods lorries got stuck in tiny country lanes.

“The proliferation of satellite navigation aids used in heavy goods vehicles, and their over-reliance, especially by overseas drivers, has presented itself as a problem within the Vale of Glamorgan,” a spokesman for the council’s highways department said.

Source: BoingBoing

Relation to my thesis: observing of the current integration of sensor technologies in our everyday life in order to question the design of future ubiquitous systems. No surprise this new types of signs appear in the UK. It seems that the anglo-saxon “mind the gap” culture has a tendency to reveal limits and inconveniences of infrastructures while others take less pride in preventing ungraceful degradation. Is the same inclination noticeable with the ubicomp of the present? This type of sign seem to indicate so.

Meeting to discuss my DEA thesis. We agreed that the focal point of my research shifted from uncertainty to granularity of location information. The first is a problem to solve (while sometimes being an opportunity), the latter is a source for interaction. In my model of the social-technical gap in location aware computing, I intend to define their relations. I hypothesize that uncertainty appears when a location system does not match the granularity of information expected by a user. So I keep the work I have done so far on the reactions (uncertainty) to fluctuating location information, and focus more on the factors influencing people to tune the information. This is what I need to further investigate in my ethno study of the taxi drivers (e.g. the funnel metaphor to access information, their use of neighborhoods, landmarks, addresses). Similarly with my Flickr study I could include the analysis of the textual description (i.e. tags) to understand how the users describe the granularity (for example: city -> landmark). Results of complete studies from different contexts could already be a nice outcome to define key aspect of human interaction with location information granularity in a mobile context. It could open the door to the definition of sub-issues (psycho, social, cultural, gender, …) that would be mostly outside of the scope of my thesis. No decisions have been made on further studies (let’s see what the outcomes of the 2 current studies), but we certainly don’t lack of ideas. The concept of granularity of location information is nothing new. However, it is worth revisiting it since “we use things that did not exist previously”.

As for the DEA thesis, he shared my mixed feelings. I believe I have not achieved a good breadth-depth ratio, trying to cover too many aspects of my research domain. Then I lacked of energy to argument the choice (why a mention to privacy? -> uncertainty as opportunity + studies in spatial cloaking) and linkage of the key concepts. However, I think the breadth of this initial scope will help me in the long run. We discussed that chapter 3 (literature review) was not well self-contained. That is that I did not argue enough for the choice of the topics, the perspectives I chose to cover them, and their relevance to my work. The last section (Discussion) clearly revealed that lack of connection between the concepts described and the future work. I should rewrite that part by focusing and arguing the key elements of my framework and their relations.

Relation to my thesis: Still not quite in the narrow part of the funnel… but working on it.

Ticket machines are often the first systems tourists must interact with when they arrive in a city. They are the first interface of the city. They give that first impression of how much a visitors is expected and welcomed. Yet, some cities still fail at providing decent interfaces for tourist to get around. The Norwegian newspaper published an article on the tourists struggle with local transport in Oslo. Contrary to the content of the article, the problem does necessarily come from the language, but also on the design of the overall system such as providing spatial clues (e.g. map) of the transportation network in space or matching the name of the main stations/stops with designations collected from the surrounding attractions.

Nicolas gave examples on the bad design of Lausanne ticket machines and the better tentative in Geneva.

Ticket machines in Lausanne (left), Geneva (right). Photos courtesy of Nicolas Nova.

Relation to my thesis: One of my current project deals with enhancing the tourist experience of the city. There is a lot to learn form the confusion of tourist interacting with current systems to use a city infrastructure. It could prevent producing similar errors in the design mobile location-aware application.