Paper presented at CSCW 2004: Putting Systems into Place: A Study of Design Requirements for Location-Aware Community Systems by Samer Karam, Sukeshini A. Grandhi, Quentin Jones, Loren Terveen and Steve Whittaker. What's is funny here is that they look at supporting lcoation-awareness in different places through the comparison of 2 ways taken from the Harry Potter books: the Weasley clock, a people-centered approach that shows where each member of the Weasley family is at any one time; and the Marauder's map, a place-centered approach that shows a map of Hogwarth and the position of various people inside the school. (via sylvie noel)

A number of innovative location-aware community systems have emerged; however, work to date in this area lacks a firm foundation. To remedy this, we present a conceptual framework and a series of studies into how socially-defined places influence people’s information sharing and communication needs. The first study identified a relationship between people’s place-related activities and their information needs. The second study clarified the connection between social networks, places and people’s interaction and information preferences. A third study, in progress, aims to expand upon and quantitatively assess the validity of our initial findings. Our findings argue that system design must factor in users’ activities and social networks, alongside place.