In his presentation at Open Plan in 2005, Bill Gaver implicitly mentioned a few concepts I am currently focused on. First he presented the The Urban Pollution Monitoring Project that provides some sort of feedback loop to residents in providing resources to reason themselves about fluctuating pollution in the city space. The system providing information about the content, but also about the infrastructure providing the content (i.e. a sort of seamful design). Then he highlighted the notion of “over time” with a project by Richard’s Swinford’s use of GPS traces and their use of satellites to carve out the boundaries of the physical space. It shows that the model of the phisical world can be created in a bottom-up fashion (implicit digital traces) and reflect reflect “over time” of individual’s knowledge on the local space. In other words, there is a connection between the system produced and the places they inhabit that grows and can can be appreciated over time for instance in a game or to support social navigation. The data of this spatio-temporal use come from the technologies themselves or the experience of the people using them. OpenStreetMap (evolution in London and Great Britain), courier activity and cabspotting are clear examples of the former.

Realising the extensions of man by llistening to the user: model the neighborhood in 3D by using GPS and the satelites. The model gains in accuracy with the use of the system. Source: Richard’s Swinford. I guess it uses the same kind of data at the Anthony Steed’s GPS Availability Visualization.

Later in his talk, Bill mentioned Ben Hooker and Shona Kitchen project called Edge Town done in 2004 that aimed designing interfaces with the flows of electronic data that run through our cities so that “they can be experienced as an enriching complement to other, more ‘earthly’ phenomena”. I was fascinated by then (and still am) by their Sensor park aimed to be situated in tumultuous landscapes, such as directly underneath the airport’s final approach flight paths. The structure of the sensor park provides support for a host of screen-based and electromechanical displays, which offer numerical representations of the data collected from the sensors. This type of information would be provided to Edge Town resident and experienced for their week-end recreation.

Sensor park in the Edge Town project

Relation to my thesis: Tagging with concept names a 2-years old message… I got to know Bill Gaver from his Ambiguity as Resource for Design.

Today I gave a talk to my research group on the current state of my investigation. The presentation covered the topic of my DEA work, the early results of Tracing the visitor’s eye project and their implication for a field experiment taking advantage of digital footprints to support social navigation and seamful design. One personal goal of this presentation was to prepare my DEA defense in November and next week’s presentation of Understanding of tourist dynamics from explicitly disclosed location information at the 4th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography.

Towards Reducing the Social-Technical Gap in Location-Aware Computing (PDF)

Relation to my thesis: Trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The overall argumentation still lacks of coherence. I will need to make some choices and get rid of some themes to explore others profoundly. Most of all, my research questions are now outdated. I need to refine them. More on that later.

Relation to my thesis: The ubicomp of the present: situation provoked by the presence and absence of the “cloud of connectivity”.

Andy Hudson-Smith Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) published a new working paper out entitled ‘Digital Urban - The Visual City‘ in which he depicts the recent revolution in the production and distribution of digital artifacts which represent the visual city. Indeed, In the decrease in knowledge required to create and present geographical information is leading to a direct increase in the amount of information available. The emergence of georeferenced user-generarated data streams can by built into one Visual City with a personal flavor (i.e. Personal City):

In essence, we are but at the beginning of what will be a revolution in social, visual and informational data plotted geographically by general users. The rise of social networks provides us with the ability to look down on the city and view the activities that its citizens are involved in. This ability provides unique social data and an insight into how the citizens are thinking, working, and socialising.

Relation to my thesis: follow-up on Representing Spatio-Temporal Traces. What I find compelling about the emergence of the “personal city” is that the data do not come from the explicit annotation of the space, but rather from the residues of activities involving space (e.g. categorizing or sharing photos, communicating with a “subtle” location-awareness (twitter with a location attribute).

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.

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

Last week at Ubicomp, I briefly met Jo Vermeulen who pointed me to an article on written some 12 years ago by Agusting A. Araya examining and criticizing the proposals advanced by the ubicomp literature: Araya, A. A. (1995). Questioning ubiquitous computing. In ACM Conference on Computer Science, pages 230–237.

This papers sketches a framework for understanding modern technology (now commonly mistaken as being the mere application of modern science) to criticize the technological thinking forming the assumptions that determine the development of ubiquitous computing. It highlights the chain problems and technological fixes we are involved in (e.g. issues of privacy of information dealt with innovative technologies such as cryptography) to reach desirable goal of invisibly enhancing the world that already exists. Now assuming that the technological advances could be achieved, I keep two critiques that are still relevant to the current state of ubicomp research:

Driven by technology, rather than needs
Ubiquitous computing is conceived as being primarily - perhaps exclusively - driven by technology and its sources of inspiration are other technologies that have successfully penetrated everyday life. It is seen as the best possibility for “achieving the real potential of information technology”. Thus, ubicomp has little to do with human needs and much more with the unfolding of technology per se.

Acceptance taken for granted
The primary of the unfolding of technology over the satisfaction of humans needs, and the self-sufficiency of this unfolding are taken as absolute givens. Therefore, it does not really require a justification.

Relation to my thesis: This paper proved to be a rather timely reading (in continuation to train of thought started earlier this year at LIFT). From what I have seen in Innsbruck, these topics are still barely taken into consideration (to the mere exceptions to the talks of Barry Brown and Yvonne Rogers). Arayas’ quote “As the poser of technologies grows, it will become increasingly necessary to probe into the assumptions being made during their inception and into the possible consequences” is still very much contemporary.

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