GeoNotes: Social and Navigational Aspects of Location-Based Information Systems

GeoNotes: Social and Navigational Aspects of Location-Based Information Systems by F. Espinoza, P. Persson, A. Sandin, H. Nystrom, E. Cacciatore, and M. Bylund.

In this paper, the creators of the spatial annotation application GeoNotes, argue that location-based systems must allow users to participate as content providers in order to achieve a social and dynamic information space. The focus is on how we can allow the user to regulate the tradeoff between curiosity about spatial annotations and the disturbance. On the one hand we allow all users to participate in creating the information space. On the other, we support navigation by collecting and aggregating users’ usage of the system, and distribute this data to other users in some refined form. They say that mass spatial annotation will need to face the same design challenges as the Web at its beginning. In the same way as the World Wide Web user eventually needed a wide range of navigation support (e.g. search engines, collaborative filters, indexes, navigation bars, and “web-tips”), so will users of location-based information systems.