Research
I came up with this: Mutual Modeling: process by which an individual (i) picks up facts he/she estimates to be MANIFEST and RELEVANT in his/her cognitive environment (with regard to the partners’ intents), (ii) builds a representation (more or less formal) about the partners’ intents.
A very nice paper: Benford, S., Seagar, W., Flintham, M., Anastasi, R., Rowland, D., Humble, J., Stanton, D., Bowers, J., Tandavanitj, N., Adams, M., Farr, J. R., Oldroyd, A., and Sutton, J. (2004). The error of our ways: The experience of self-reported position in a location-based game. In Proceedings of the the 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. (UbiComp 2004), pages 70–87, Nottingham.
The use of positioning systems is an important but problematic aspect of ‘context aware’ applications. Through focusing on location-based games, we introduce the approach of self-reported positioning in which players explicitly and implicitly reveal their positions by manipulating electronic maps. A study of a game that piloted this approach demonstrates that self-reported positioning can be a reliable low-tech alternative to automated systems such as GPS. We contrast the strategies used by humans to generate position updates – reporting at landmarks and junctions and ahead and behind themselves – with automated approaches, drawing out implications for how we think of positioning error and design positioning systems.
Interesting because it deals with uncertainty about how LBS report people's location
When our steps merge meaningfully with the urban spaceOn perception and expression when walking in town, a paper (in french) about urban walking.
This study takes a micro-sociological look at how pedestrians walk around towns. The aim is to highlight the various ways in which city-dwellers gain access to public places and the practical and perceptive dimensions that this accessibility calls upon. From our point of view urban mobility is based on a process by which pedestrians bond with their surroundings: mobility involves the perceptible environment of the public urban space, the perception of the pedestrian and the ability of his or her body to express itself. It is consequently necessary to characterise and describe precisely the ambient atmospheres in which such activities develop, the forms of motive action and perceptive attention they generate, and ultimately the types of relationship with the city that they bring about. Drawing on recurrent observation and description of public behaviour in the city of Grenoble this work proposes six perceptible figures of urban accessibility. Each one reflects the individual rationales of pedestrians and the special role of sensory perception in the choice of one's route across town.
A place to be? ACE 2005:
The field of computer entertainment technology has aroused great interest recently amongst researchers and developers in both academic and industrial / business fields as it is duly recognized as showing high promise of bringing on exciting new forms of human computer interaction. Now deemed deserving of both serious academic research, as well as major industry and business uptake, techniques used in computer entertainment are also seen to translate into advances in research work ranging from industrial training, collaborative work, novel interfaces, novel multimedia, network computing and ubiquitous computing. The purpose of this conference is to bring together academic and industry researchers, as well as computer entertainment developers and practitioners, to address and advance the research and development issues related to computer entertainment.Prospective authors are now invited to submit Papers/Posters/Demos electronically via the conference website: http://www.ace2005.org by 15th February 2005
I found a very well positioned company called Acies. This seems really appealing, the core business of this company is research promotion and management consulting:
Leader in Research Promotion and Management Consulting, ACIES contributes to the development of research by promoting its knowledge and results, and so generates value at economic, scientific and societal levels. Through its two activities "Research Tax Credit" and "European Research Projects", ACIES assists the key players in Research and Innovation in setting up and managing their projects, optimising and securing their financing. ACIES’ customers can be split into 3 categories: major industrial groups, innovative SME-SMIs, top research organisations and universities.
...might be interesting to work for this kind of company.
On January, 20th, there's going to be a seminar about call-centers activity analysis. It will be held (in french) at Telecom Paris .
* Josiane Boutet (Université de Paris 7) et Christiane Legris (EDF/GRETS) : "L'activité de travail et le travail du langage dans les centres d'appels EDF" * Lorenza Mondada (Laboratoire ICAR, Université de Lyon II) : "Modes d'alignement et de désalignement dans les appels téléphoniques à un call centre" * Christian Licoppe (GET-ENST, département EGSH) et Marc Relieu (Laboratoire TECH/SUSI France Telecom R&D) : "Techno-conversations : rendre observables les compétences des téléopérateurs dans une hotline d'assistance technique internet" * Emmanuel Kessous et Alexandre Mallard (Laboratoire TECH/SUSI France Telecom R&D) : "Les appuis conventionnels de la relation marchande : la vente médiatisée par le téléphone dans un centre de télémarketing"
B.Brown, I.McColl, M.Chalmers, A.Galani, C.Randell, and A.Steed (2003). Lessons from the lighthouse: Collaboration in a shared mixed reality system. In Proceedings of the CHI 2003 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 577–584, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. ACM Press: NY.
These findings have implications for non-museum settings, in particular how location awareness is a powerful resource for collaboration. (...) Shared awareness of location also allowed users to quickly move to their friends. Participants used this to quickly find what their friends were looking at and then move so as to look at the same thing. (...) Location awareness allowed participants to talk about and use each other’s context and navigation (...) Awareness of location also meant that users could better understand what their co-visitors were looking at; each could simply look at the map or 3D display, and see which exhibits the others were viewing. Location awareness might be similarly useful for other collaborative settings where current activity can be inferred from location
It's close to what I study in my research.
In CatchBob, we are interested in an activity (depicted on the figure below) that fits 4 constraints:
Apart from military stuff, are there any other activities that fits those constraints?
Jerome came up with the interesting idea of having a mobile monday-like meeting on a regular basis in Switerzland. The idea is pretty cool. Such meeting could deal with lots of concepts. I tried to sketch a list (it's actually broad):
A another poitn would be to do something a bit more different than what the french people from mobilités.net does (so that there is no overlap). A mobiel monday would be interesting if it's free, not to crowded and not too small. Perhaps the event might also be structured with concrete activities and not just chitchat...
Lately I read lots of paper by Jesper Kjledskov. The guy wrote interesting stuff about the evaluation of mobile computing devices. One of his best paper is a meta-review of the techniques employed to do so:Kjeldskov J. and Graham C. (2003) A Review of MobileHCI Research Methods. In Proceedings of the 5th International Mobile HCI 2003 conference, Udine, Italy. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, pp. 317-335.
- One researcher read and classified the 102 selected research papers in relation to their method and purpose
- A second researcher blindly read and classified 20 randomly selected papers
- Due to disparities, all papers were then discussed one by one in collaboration between the researchers, resulting in a final classification
This reveals a tendency towards environment independent research and artificial setting research… at the expense of natural setting research. This reveals a tendency towards building systems based on trial and error, evaluating systems in controlled environments (if at all) … at the expense of studying real use of systems.Little research addresses the question of what is useful and what is percieved problematic from a user perspective. It seems assumed that we already know what systems to build and what problems to overcome (given the youth of the research field, this can hardly be true/The prevalent focus on applied research makes it difficult to set aside this assumption/On the contrary, it could be stated that mobile HCI in particular requires research addressing this issue). It seems also assumed that teal world studies are not very important (building and evaluating systems on the basis of applied research and laboratory experiments results in very concrete conclusions about specific solutions/Such conclusions can be difficult to generalize). Finally, methodology matters very little
The author then proposes different research avenue:
- Field and case studies for informing engineering through exploration of real use contexts
- Survey research for studying use of mobile technology in the hands of a large segment
- Action Research for developing knowledge through practice and intervention
- Basic research for developing theoretical understanding of the studied phenomena
Personally, my research is oriented towards the last point: it's basic research about how peope use location awareness information for group coordination in joint activities.
Just few notes taken while dreaming: Location Awareness in Mobile Collaboration
I really appreciate the concept of "field experiment" described by Goodman, Brewster and Gray (2004) in their paper Using Field Experiments to Evaluate Mobile Guides.
Field experiments are quantitative experimental evaluations that are carried out in the field, drawing from aspects of both qualitative field studies and lab experiments. To start with, field experiments have advantages over expert evaluations (such as heuristic evaluations and checklists) because they involve real users. This is particularly important when studying novel, variable and less understood situations, such as those involved in mobile devices. Secondly, there are various reasons for preferring field situations to laboratory settings. Principally, the difference between use in a laboratory setting, even when mobile conditions are simulated, and use in the real world can be quite startling. This is particularly true for devices such as mobile guides that rely heavily on the surrounding environment. Aspects such as lighting levels, weather, the effects of walking, the appearance of landmarks in real life and the effectiveness of location-sensing systems can have unpredictable effects on the usability and effectiveness of a device. The only way to really see how the device will work in practice is to use it in practice. In addition, field experiments have various advantages over more qualitative and ethnographic field studies. Although such field studies do have some advantages, it can be hard to use them to obtain an objective evaluation of a device, determine its performance or gain hard evidence comparing one device or method with another. Field experiments offer one way to overcome these disadvantages while still utilizing the advantages of a field setting. They are also quicker than carrying out a fullblown ethnographic field study and can gauge the responses of a greater number of participants.
It's closely related to the notion of "quasi-experiment" developed by T.D. Cook, D.T. Campbell, Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues in Field Settings, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1979.
J.Kjeldskov and M.B.Skov (2003) Creating Realistic Laboratory Settings: Comparative Studies of Three Think-Aloud Usability Evaluations of a Mobile System, Proceedings of the 9th IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, Interact 2003.
The authors adresse the topic of mobile devices usability using 'realistic laboratory settings'. They advocate for the use of lab settings because of various constraints like "mobile systems for highly specialized use contexts such as e.g. safety-critical or hazardous environments may prohibit exploratory usability evaluations since errors involving risks for people and equipment cannot be tolerated".
They exemplifiy this issue by presenting the work they carried out to evaluate a mobile device used for coordination on large container vessels. They used 3 different experimental settings:
- in a standard usability laboratory (mockup...mirror/camera...) with non domain subjects
- in a standard usability laboratory (mockup...mirror/camera...) with domain subjects
- in an 'advanced lab' (room with ship simulator) with domain subjects
They identified different usability problems in those 3 settings:
Even though it seems interesting (with regard to the number of problems that emerged), it is a bit crazy to notice that the authors evaluate a MOBILE device in a NON-MOBILE situation! They cite this limit at the end of the paper but I do think it's a real drawback that should not be left as a side critic!
How to get the most out of conferences:
- Conversations are more valuable than the sessions
- Coming up with a plan: Go through the guidebook with a pen, and mark anything that looks interesting. If you find things that sound cool but vague, flip open the proceedings and check them out. If it looks like something better captured in a paper, then it's probably not worth going to. Circle all of the sessions that look interesting, and if two or more occur at the same time, flag the one you want to go to first. Then during the actual conference, go to the first session you’ve marked. Have a plan to bail after 15 minutes if you’re bored. Odds are it’s not going to get better. Go to the next session in that timeslot that interested you. Repeat the same thought process. Worst case, you can always return to one of the other sessions. The result is that you maximize your time spent in sessions you will actually enjoy, and minimize your time spent bored, hoping things will get better. If you run out of sessions to go to, head over to the trade show area if there is one. During sessions is a good time to introduce yourself to the various people manning the different booths. I’ve had some of my best conference experiences in conversations that started this way.
- After hours conference socializing. Often, people spend most of their time at these events with people they already know, or the people they came to the conference with. If you are attending the conference alone, these events can feel very cliquish and elitist. I don’t think anyone intends for this to be so, but often nothing is set up to minimize or inhibit this social tendency.
If you can manage it, you want to try to have met enough people in the workshops and other sessions in the previous day, that you can wander around at the social, and say hi to people. If you made some decent connections, you’ll be able to jump in on some conversations about meet more people. If you have a few drinks, and can get into the right mindset, you can have a lot of fun bouncing around between different groups.
- Don’t use the conference bag, or lug around all the crap they give you. First, it makes you a mark as a tourist to carry the conference bag around outside the conference. Second, traveling in packs of people all using the same bag, all wearing name tags, makes you look kinda like a cult member. You rarely need to lug around all of the stuff they give you (I recommend droping off the proceedings at my hotel room as soon as I get it). Instead bring a light bag, with enough room for the small conference handbook/schedule, some paper, a pen, maybe something to eat, and some business cards. Travel light. You’ll feel much better at the end of the day if you haven’t been carrying 15 lbs of stuff all day. Don't bring your laptop so you can read your email. Go talk to someone instead.
Andrew Dillon wrote an interesting paper about shape and information space in Journal of the American Society for Information Science: Spatial-Semantics: How Users Derive Shape from Information Space
The ability to perceive structure in abstract information spaces is crucial to navigation and search performance. Dillon's article distinguishes the role of spatial and semantic cues and explains why this conceptualization may lead to new insights into existing and emerging data. Dillon also introduces the concept of shape as the structural component of the working model of an information space. This is most apparent in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) but is less obvious or conceptualized in abstract information environments. Dillon's article delineates the argument between top-down versus bottom-up approaches with a range of empirical evidence found in the literature.
Kjeldskov J. and Stage J. (2004) "New Techniques for Usability Evaluation of Mobile Systems". International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS) Elsevier, 60(2004):599-620.
Usability evaluation of systems for mobile computers and devices is an emerging area of research. This paper presents and evaluates six techniques for evaluating the usability of mobile computer systems in laboratory settings. The purpose of these techniques is to facilitate systematic data collection in a controlled environment and support the identification of usability problems that are experienced in mobile use. The proposed techniques involve various aspects of physical motion combined with either needs for navigation in physical space or division of attention. The six techniques are evaluated through two usability experiments where walking in a pedestrian street was used as a reference. Each of the proposed techniques had some similarities to testing in the pedestrian street, but none of them turned out to be completely comparable to that form of field-evaluation. Seating the test subjects at a table supported identification of significantly more usability problems than any of the other proposed techniques. However a large number of the additional problems identified using this technique were categorized as cosmetic. When increasing the amount of physical activity, the test subjects also experienced a significantly increased subjective workload.
J. Kjeldskov, M.B. Skov, B.S. Als and R.T. Høegh (2004)Is it Worth the Hassle? Exploring the Added Value of Evaluating the Usability of Context-Aware Mobile Systems in the Field(.pdf):
Evaluating the usability of mobile systems raises new concerns and questions, challenging methods for both lab and field evaluations. A recent literature study showed that most mobile HCI research projects apply lab-based evaluations. Nevertheless, several researchers argue in favour of field evaluations as mobile systems are highly context-dependent. However, field-based usability studies are difficult to conduct, time consuming and the added value is unknown. Contributing to this discussion, this paper compares the results produced by a laboratory- and a field-based evaluation of the same context-aware mobile system on their ability to identify usability problems. Six test subjects used the mobile system in a laboratory while another six used the system in the field. The results show that the added value of conducting usability evaluations in the field is very little and that recreating central aspects of the use context in a laboratory setting enables the identification of the same usability problem list.
Antony Townsend's take about locative media and its effects on urbanism. Really interesting. Thomas also point us to other claims.
a clear understanding of the implications of locative media, good or bad, is unlikely to emerge soon from research and observation. The problem is simply too complex for easy answers. These technologies are being deployed in a highly decentralized manner by a wide variety of actors. On top of this is layered a mosaic filter of cultures and subcultures absorbing these new innovations at different rates and appropriating them for their own needs.One way of bringing some structure to this debate which I have employed lately is to place this moment of indecision about locative media into a historical context, looking back to previous technological transformations of the urban landscape. (...) Yet like the automobile, locative media are likely to boost demand for mobility and the energy consumption required to achieve it. While efficiencies will surely be realized in supply chains and other bulk distribution services, it may all be offset by increased movement of individuals engaged in spatial arbitrage to gain an advantage in social or professional transactions. (...)
Thus there are two equally possible scenarios &– that locative media are the trigger for an unsustainable explosion in personal mobility in the world&’s great cities, or that they are the key to unlock knowledge that will help us achieve a sustainable global urban system.
Today we had the first catchbob experiment; it worked pretty well; the group completed the game in 13 minutes (It might be too easy, maybe we should have a mobile Bob). Thanks to the self-confrontation at the end of the game, we noticed interesting things, like the way they infer stuff from location information. It sounds promising!The video is here (mov, 4Mb).
I was amazingly interested by the report about GeoNotes usage: P.Persson and P.Fagerberg (2002). Geonotes: a real-use study of a public location-aware community system (.pdf). Technical Report SICS-T2002/27-SE, SICS, University of Goteborg, Sweden. This is going to be the next issue with locative media: how people will cheat and how designers will take this into account!
Although not confirmed, 2 labels appeared to be faked ("England" and "centralen" [normally designating a metro station far from Kista]).