GeoNotes: a real-use study of a public location-aware community system

Notes taken on GeoNotes:

GeoNotes is a location aware community system, similar to graffiti, post-id notes, toilet scribble, public notes boards and posters.

Design-rationales
- endorsing an open information space. Allowing users to direct notes to certain users was discarded. The aim is not for personal messaging system but rather a publishing system, tapping into metaphors of public note boards and newsgroups, rather than e-mail. Not possible to read/write notes from remote position, the connection between the note and its spatial context context would be endagered.
- GeoNotes allowed a broad range of play with identity and anonymity
- Comment could only be read and authored from inside the note, ensuring the right conext for the comment. Multiple comments were displayed in temporal order, similar to chat and virtual community systems.
- Content could be searched with a traditional word-based search engine. In addition, meta-data attached to each note were made available to users
- Without a verbal description of the position, the note would still be incomprehensible to its readers. GeoNotes users were free to define the position. This place-label system allowed authors to be quite creative in connecting notes with space, potentially giving another motivation for authoring.

Research questions
The focus was not so much on traditional usability issues, but rather on the experience of the system.
- Why users authored notes, and if the design triggered more or differet motivation.
- How GeoNotes information space related to physical space.
- How did users access, find and navigate notes
- How did users conceptualize thisnew kind of system.

Method and procedure
- 400 potential users (engineering students) with semi-mobile terminals (W-LAN enabled laptops)
- Each access point in the network acted as a GeoNotes location
- Encourage students to download, install and use GeoNotes by arranging an evening reception at the commencement of the test period
- 2 type of data collected: usage of the system (time clients were connected, sorting, searching, notes read, number of friends) and all the notes, comments, signatures and place label of the system.
- Most popular places seemed to be lecture rooms, corridors, lab-rooms and library.

Results

Motivation for authoring
- 182 notes plus 101 comments left in 1 month (below the authors’ expecation). Analisis into categories: Test, Meta-notes, Expressiveness, Information, Commenting notes, Drama, Chat, Situation chat, Talk-to-me chat
- Not enough users and time to heave the vicious circle of all community system: little data, activity and presence in the system scares away users who might have contributed.
- GeoNotes’ playful signature system seems to have tapped into thes humorous and somewhat subversive motivation
- Chat between co-present users created a parallel world, which may or may not relate to actual situation in which it takes place (similar to sending secret notes in a classroom). Location-based chat may also have been attractive to users sinci it enabled chat wih people outside the normal circle of ICQ friends

GeoNotes and space
- The defined spaces became the user’s view of space, not the authors’. However, the heavy dominance of room and corridor labels was a bit surprising since the freedom of the place label system enables quite particular description.

Accessing and finding notes
- While only 115 searches and 20 queries were created during the test period, the sorting functions were used in the thousands
- Several interviewees suggested a notification pop-up whenever a new note was added

Conceptual metaphors
- The majority of subjects did not report frustration
- Most subjects raised concerns about allowing remote authoring and reading in future versions of GeoNotes
- some users got the feeling for location-based information and services, understanding its merits vis-a-vis global-access information systems.

Summary
- The results of this study have implications on how location-aware community systems should be designed in the future.
- Location-based chat with acquaintances and strangers emerged as an important motivator, indicating the need to support meaningful comment and threaded discussions, in addition to anonymous signatures. Some form of place label system is indispensable since it perfors a number of functions.
- Rooms seemed to be more important than buildings and objects