The User Experience of Location-Awareness

Nicolas recently gave a talk at Geoware 2007 on the user experience of location-awareness. He covers some of the topic we have been discussing for some time. In his overview of the problems on the user acceptance of multi-user location-aware applications, he mentions the difficulty to reach a critical mass. Indeed, the hardware and software fragmentation challenge the creation of clusters. He refers to the Metcalfe Law as an example to explain the current lack of value of location-aware applications. In relation to that, I believe that Moore’ Crossing the Chasm can provide an additional perceptive to the problem. Moore believes that in a technology evolution life-cycle visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations. Therefore, location-aware applications such as Jaiku or Plazes are challenged to rephrase the integration of people’s practices and context to reach a cluster effect.

Besides the usual problems of privacy and limited user interfaces of mobile devices, Nicolas pointed out the misleading quest of seamlessness mainly due to the “roughness” of the world and its infrastructures (in extension to my talk at LIFT). Finally, inspired from both his and my research, he highlighted the difficulty in interpreting the information conveyed by location-aware applications. The problem is threefold. First, automatically giving a position is different that letting people explicitly disclosing their location (as revealing in Nicolas’ CachBob! experiments and in The Error of our Ways: The experience of Self- Reported Position in a Location-Based Game. A user intent is not captured by automated positioning systems. In contrast, explicitly self-reported positions (declarations) can be interpreted as deliberate acts of communication. Second, location information embeds different levels of granularity. As I suggest in my latest paper, Bridging the Social-Technical Gap in Location-Aware Computing as well as in Managing Multiples Spaces, it is a challenge to match the user’s expected granularity of location information with what can a positioning system (or an explicit act from another user) can deliver. I previously intended to model this mismatch. Finally, people have their unique perception of their environment. I became aware of this from Ian White’s talk at IDEA2006 on User-Centered Approach on Geodata and his experience in defining user-perceived neighborhoods. There must be research paper on this topic.

The now classic “infrastructures fail” slide

In response to these problems, Nicolas suggests 5 avenues that we can take as design opportunities to improve the user experience of location-aware application. First, we should think in terms of assistance and not automation (see D.D. Wood’s extensive work on clumsy automation). The idea is to augment awareness, not automate it. In other words, favor a reach presence rather than location. For example, Jaiku (or Plazes SMS) respects the intentionality of the message that is conveyed. By extension, a system should facilitate lies and disconnection. Inspired by Michel Faucault‘s metaphor around the Panopticon, people do not like the feeling to be seen without the ability to see. Second, in opposition to hiding imperfections and limitations, designers should provide the ability to users to perceive and appropriate them. Matthew Chalmers originated this thoughts around the theme of seamful design. Likewise, lately, Don Norman had thoughts on the relation between simplicity and perceived powerfulness. Third, as evoked by our common research papers on CatchBob! or in our article in GeoConnexion, and by Kevin Slavin location information is more than GIS information. That is, location is more than geographical coordinates. It also be whether a user is indoor/outdoor, whether the mobile device can hear a busy street. It is about rich information. A good example is Jabberwocky that allows to see the presence of familiar strangers in the vicinity, anonymized (fitting my Concepts That Go Against the Technological Tide in Social, Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing). Then, history matters: the asynchronous character of location-awareness have an added value and can be used to create conversations after the events (see our current train of thoughts around the usage of data generated by tech in urban environments). By extension, data collected by location-aware systems could reveal the invisible phenomenon (e.g. BioMapping, Real-time Rome, Participatory Urbanism) or create new connection between the physical environments and the digital worlds (see Julian’s talk at LIFT).

Relation to my thesis: This talk is an excellent summary of the many aspects of integration and usage of location-aware application both Nicolas and I have been discussing about. We should try to formalize all this into a Simpliquity white paper. Moreover, it provides food for thoughts to extract a publishable model of mutual location-awareness based on Nicolas’ thesis and my early outcomes.