I imported into Google Earth the “only” 2782 airports (out of 9300 entries) with IATA code contained in the Global Airport database. I am not getting used to the trick of converting coordinates into decimal-degrees values.
Last Night, was the launch of the Barcelona chapter of Mobile Monday Barcelona co-founded and organized by the unique Rudy de Waele. MobileMonday CEO Jari Tammisto introduced the concept of the event. Jari has been in the mobile industry (managerial position at the finnish national operator) for a long time and admitted he did all the mistakes that could have been done, including believing in pagers as main device for communication and investing in city-wide networks thinking GSM would fail.
The evening’s topic was about mobile marketing & advertising.
Ricardo Baeza-Yates Director of Yahoo! Research Barcelona presented the open research and their vision called FUSE (for Find, Use, Share, and Expand), that is using search to fuse a myriad of services and applications, all of which center on knowledge and its application. Yahoo! bases its search strategy on the Wisdom of the Crowd, by delivering relevant content based on links, tags and search queries. However one challenge is to have people tagging content. On of their experiment is called ESP Game, a game in which players compete to tag images and therefore introduce knowledge while playing. Then Ricardo mentioned the specificities of mobile search: queries have more variaty, less time is spent on the results and (surprisingly to me) more words are used in the query.
Russell Buckley (MobHappy and AdMob) drew on the lessons of 6 years of Mobile advertising, he looked at successes and failures. His global messages is that “Mobile Advertising works if done correctly”. Russell went on analyzing the failures of the push-based mobile marketing/advertising model, the so-called “Starbucks myth” (i.e. Bluetooth messages generated when people pass nearby a coffee place). Indeed, the mobile industry has yet not really started finding relevant ways to use proximity and space as triggers for interaction. Somehow in response to that Ana Caralt, CEO of McCann Interactive Spain, described a successful advertisement campaign in which a billboard invited people to connect to it via Bluetooth to download content. I tend to believe that “ubiquitous companies” have the opportunity to engage people to interact using their infrastructures.
Relation to my thesis: Russell Buckley’s talk was very relevant in highlighting the difficult balance between pervasiveness and intrusiveness (e.g. being present and not annoying, finding the right timing, the right added-value and the right way to interact) mobile marketing campaigns must deal with. Same goes with the design of ubiquitous environments
Designed by Alain Bellet (interaction designer, University of Art and Design, Lausanne), LocoSound is a flux audio experience that is synchronized with the landscape viewed from a train window. A location system, based on GPS, matches in real-time the music with the landscape. In the train wagon, the audience can tune into a radio frequency to become part of an audio visual experience that is based on:
The experience is therefore not linear but rather an interactive and responsive, taking into account the singular experience of a particular train ride.
Relation to my thesis: Unexpected events are often remove from location-based application for the sake of seamlessness. In LocoSound, the system responses and plays with the unexpected and the non-linearity of the real-world. I am an informal member of this project. Challenges include finding the best location on a wagon for a GPS device to get proper fixes and transmit it to a nearby notebook.
Hiroyuki Tarumi, Yuko Tsurumi, Kazuya Matsubara, Yusuke Hayashi, Yuki Mizukubo, Makoto Yoshida, Fusako Kusunoki: KOTOHIRAGU NAVIGATOR: An Open Experiment of Location-Aware Service for Popular Mobile Phones. LoCA 2006: 48-63
A fuzzy paper on the design and deployment of a mobile location-based sightseeing system that mixed the real environment with virtual creatures. The outcome that this system is better accepted by young people and that there is a generation gap towards it is not really convincing (I see a strong bias on the interface). Anyway, the authors mention at several occasions the impact of location accuracy on their system and the users:
Another problem was the GPS inaccuracies. As we just used the raw location data obtained from the gpsOne system, we sometimes had GPS errors of more than 10m, which confused users to find agents or buildings in the virtual world.
Therefore they design a GPS error compensation (unfortunately not described in details)
After the January’s experiment, we conducted another experiment recruiting ten student subjects. We developed five location compensation algorithms and input real location data obtained by popular GPS-phones to each algorithm. Using modified location data output from each algorithm, simulated virtual scenes were computed and shown to the subjects. The algorithms were map-matching, moving-average, avoiding big jumps, etc. We have found that we need the strongest algorithm, map-matching, for our purpose of virtual world navigation.
[...]
Despite the imperfectness of compensation, we can still say that the service quality has been much improved compared to the January’s system.
On of their outcome is to suggest that “Subjects are always requiring more accurate location-based system”. However:
In order to understand the bad effects of GPS inaccuracy on the service, we have calculated correlation coefficients of the evaluation data. All absolute values of coefficients are less than 0.4. This shows that subjects recognized the GPS inaccuracy as an independent problem from the system’s value.
On a light note, the authors provide a picture of the “worst place for GPS”
Relation to my thesis: GPS inaccuracy remained a problem even after the integration of a GPS error compensation mechanism. The user recognized it as a different problem, not part of the information service quality.
Rudström, Åsa and Höök, Kristina and Svensson, Martin (2005) Social positioning: Designing the Seams between Social, Physical and Digital Space. In: 1st International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, at HCII 2005, 24-27 July 2005, Las Vegas, USA.
Another paper argumenting for seamful design (exposing the connections, gaps, overlays and mismatches within and between physical, digital and social space. The authors introduce social positioning as an alternative and a complement to the current strive for seamless connectedness and exact positioning in physical space.
Digital space is often viewed as a model of physical space, where every piece of digital information can and should be tied to a specific physical location. Such a view is unnecessarily restricted. The digital medium allows for the construction of parallel digital spaces, for time travel and personal views. In addition, there are other aspects of the physical that can be considered for positioning. Instead of positioning a user in relation to her geographical coordinates we opt for a position that relates her to other inhabitants of the space.
They make similar critisim than me on the quest for seamlessness and perfect positioning (I would call rather call it the quest for appropriate positioning):
Most developers and researchers of mobile services make the assumption that users should never have to worry
about when and how they are connected to the digital space – they should always be seamlessly connected. To strive for such perfection is probably a powerful vehicle for the mobile industry. But reality is and will continue to be less than perfect. Pursuing seamlessness at any cost might not only be an impossible goal to reach but possibly even be harmful. If led to believe in continuous connectedness, users will be annoyed, frustrated or confused when faced with anomalies.
Relation to my thesis: I too challenge the two current trends in mobile research and industry of striving for seamless, continuous connection, and for perfect positioning. I always mention the mismatches between the physical and digital without taking into account the social space. Mainly because I have not focused on collaborative issues yet. The answer to whether exposing the seams allows a better understanding of the resulting combines space has still not been answered yet. This paper argues for the exposition of seams to users for better functionality and to make sense of the digital space that is layered on top of physical and social spaces. Some studies in geographical information visualization showed some drawbacks displaying uncertainties (it can discredit the whole system).
Benford, S., Schnädelbach, H., Koleva, B., Anastasi, R., Greenhalgh, C., Rodden, T., Green, J., Ghali, A., Pridmore, T., Gaver, B., Boucher, A., Walker, B., Pennington, S., Schmidt, A., Gellersen, H., and Steed, A. 2005. Expected, sensed, and desired: A framework for designing sensing-based interaction. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 12, 1 (Mar. 2005), 3-30
Nowadays, there are 4 trends/challenges that drive interfaces, namely the growth of sensor-based interaction, the diversification of physical forms, increasing mobility, and focus on playful engaging and creative application. The authors believe that interface designer will increasingly have to wrestle with matching physical form to the capabilities of sensors and the shifting requirements of applications. The introduce a framework inspired by their initial experiences to encourage designer to tackle this issue by analyzing expected, sensed and desired movements.
Example of sensed and not expected: GPS can sense when a PDA is raised several hundreds of meters above the ground (e.g. if the user is hang-gliding) or is moving faster than walking speed (running of in a vehicle). Not sensed but desired would be indoor positioning. Sensed and not expected/desired could be jitters in positioning.
Relation to my thesis: I am interested on how users react and interact with sensing systems. Sensors are no longer separate components of a pervasive system, they form an integral part. However, they often suffer from considerable inaccuracy over space and time (GPS, video tracking) and lead to a much higher level of uncertainty in the interaction (unlike traditional devices for direct interaction such as the mouse or keyboard). I tend to have a holistic approach to design location-aware, ubiquitous systems (linking the core, to the interface, to the user, and the core to the user with a machine learning perspective). The framework proposed by Benford et al. can help moving towards more detailed design specification of location-aware systems.
The University of San Diego History department offers antigue Birdseye Maps of american cities. I think that nowadays we use isometric projections techniques to create similar angle of view.
Relation to my thesis: People’s perception of space vs the measured space
Kristi Potter‘s references on Uncertainty Visualization and Uncertainty Data.
The Cone of Uncertainty is a concept from the field of evolutionary and adaptive planning in software development estimations.
Due to early requirements change and other factors, there is an initial phase of high uncertainty, which drops as time passes and information accumulates. This has been called the cone of uncertainty
with evolutionary and adaptive planning it is not the case that estimates and schedules are forever unbounded or unknown. Yet, due to early requirements change and other factors, there is an initial phase of high uncertainty, which drops as time passes and information accumulates. This has been called the cone of uncertainty by McConnell in Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art.
The iterative response to this uncertainty is to defer an expectation of semi-reliable estimates for cost, effort or schedule until a few iterations have passed. Perhaps 10% to 20% into a project.
Relation to my thesis: finding ways to represent uncertainty
From Anthony Thousend’s Telecom-cities google group, a collection of articles about the deployment of muni WiFi in the US. The articles mention some of the challenges in deploying city-wide WiFi networks and matching citizen’s expectations.
Tempe, AZ wireless network has been up and running since the end of February, and city workers seem to be its biggest fans. However, indoor coverage has been a main issue and some cities hope on the release of a device that consumers can buy to amplify the signal indoors. Outdoor access also has its challenges. To improve spotty coverage, companies and cities are is still filling in dead spots. This leads to this kind of everyday life situation:
“It told me I have no connectivity,” said Hobbs, pecking at his laptop computer. Sitting next to him, Hobbs’ friend Josh Bahner suggested the network doesn’t even exist. “I live down the street, and I know for a fact that I can’t get a signal there,” he said.
but also can be the source of poorly missing the citizens (users)’ expectations
“For cities that are promising their taxpayers they are going to have broadband Internet in the next year or two, I would say all of them are going to prove disappointing,” Lin said. Spotty coverage, fluctuating bandwidth and poor indoor connections are all problems. “It just won’t be considered what most people would find to be a good grade of service.”
More in the CNet’s Local WiFi bet.
Relation to my thesis: examples of patch network coverage and real-world connectivity issues due to physical, technological and economical constraints mismatching with users’ expectations.
Related to:
The High Expectations on Wi-Fi Coverage
Deficient WiFi Awareness Sign
