DC Paper for Pervasive 2007 Accepted

My paper for the Pervasive 2007 Doctoral Colloquium has been accepted. It is an extended version of the CHI’07 submission.

Bridging the Social-Technical Gap in Location-Aware Computing

Abstract. Building ubiquitous applications that exploit location requires integrating underlying infrastructure for linking sensors with high-level representation of the measured space to support human activities. However, the real world constraints limit the efficiency of location technologies. The inherent spatial uncertainty embedded in mobile and location systems constantly challenges the coexistence of digital and physical spaces. Consequently, the technical mechanisms fail to match the highly flexible, nuanced, and contextual human spatial activities. These discrepancies generate a social-technical gap between what should be socially supported and what can be technically achieved. My research aims at exploring, and hopefully reducing this gap in the context of location-aware computing.

Relation to my thesis: I am pretty glad that people like Shwetak Patel (Supporting Location and Proximity-Based Studies in Natural Settings) and Leif Oppermann (Extending Authoring Tools for Location-Aware Applications with an Infrastructure Visualisation Layer) will also present their work. Hopefully Leif will also talk about his location based mobile phone game Love City. Pervasive 2007 will take place on May 13-16 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.