Light Ethnography on Taxi Driver's use of GPS Navigation Systems

Barcelona taxi drivers invest in GPS navigation systems. In my trip from and to the airport, I enjoy doing some very light ethnography on their usage of this technology. I observed and talked with 4 taxi drivers

Adoption
The very experience driver (30 years of experience!) said it he knew his job enough without relying on a system. Besides, he knows the real places of interest that are not part of a navigation system (e.g. private club for lonely businessmen or tourists). In case of real problem he uses maps contained in 2 books with index of the streets

Use coverage
It seems that they mainly used the system outside of the city center, because:

• they have enough experience to know the city center
• the drivers are aware of the GPS problems in dense urban area,
• most importantly, they are bothered by the inaccurate driving directions. The driver plans the trip with experience and contextual information in mind (e.g. time of the day, traffic flow). The driver do not hesitate in contradicting the system “Look this is wrong, my road is better”. One driver is used to disactivate the driving direction, but keeps the location awareness.

However, the drivers are enthusiast about using the features of their navigation system in the suburbs and villages. “It changed my life” one said. Mainly because:

• they used to get lost in unknown area
• they receive bigger tips for being faster!
• they can now answer the “do you know any hotel” question in unknown areas.
• they can answer to request such as “could you stop at a pharmacy on the way”
• they get out of unknown place the fastest way

Uncertainty
Since the drivers switch off the navigation system within the city, they do not experience big problem due to positioning. However, their experience make them overrule the suggested roads. Moreover they mention cases of getting lost because the destination was not on the map. On said “in that case I use my cell phone to call the destination (e.g. hotel, meeting place, training center) and get driving directions. One driver had his system notifying (with a strong thick siren) all the proximate fixed radars. It proved to be really annoying in the city because of the many false alarms generated by radars on proximate streets that are not part of the path. However, the driver seems to create an awareness of the radars: “look on that street (pointing to a parallel street), in that direction (pointing to the reverse direction) there are 3 one after the other… Two is for the speed, another for the belt”.

System configuration
A driver had to stop to program the destination, the same way he would have looked on a map.

System update
One driver relied on his daughter to update his system: “I used to own an Amstrad, now things are going to fast”. Another mentioned p2p as the source of updates: “do you know eMule?”

Relation to my thesis: In the future I should try to focus more on the aspects of uncertainty that GPS navigation system reduced and increased.