Report about "real-time city roundtable"

Fabien wrote a comprehensive summary of his "Real-Time Cities Round Table". He basically gathered a good bunch of experts that influence the visions of real-time cities with whom they talk about "the issues, promises and implications inherent to their development".

The whole report is a valuable+pleasant read and I would only highlight the conclusion as it uncovers an interesting approach:

"The very diverse attendance at the round table clearly reveals that the real-time city touches many disciplines. Yet which trans/inter/undisciplinary skill sets will allow the researchers and practitioners present to understand how to shape the cities they intervene in? It could start by offering alternate hypotheses instead of ignoring the input of colleagues across the table. For instance, most of the research works discussed around the table are going beyond blindly pursuing technological possibilities. They take their source of get informed by social research to define the computational problems and potential solutions. To form a coherent research avenue, there is a need to go beyond bringing together researchers from different disciplines to work in multidisciplinary teams. It could languages of multiple disciplines"

Why do I blog this? because the table sets the agenda for interesting research projects I'd like to work on, and because the proposed approach in conclusion is refreshing.

Hand grasp and finder grip

Taken form Designing for People by Henry Dreyfuss (pictures found here):

Why do I blog this? just find intriguing to look at these anthropometric representation of hands (and the physical dimensions) and think about how they can be connected to the user experience of tangible interfaces (using gestures for example). How does the physical dimensions can count in the effort to create a relationship between a physical object, users and digital representations. Certainly good elements Julian, innit?

Stack overflow in urban computing?

Stack overflow?

Alternate controlers and musical interfaces

In The convergence of alternate controllers and musical interfaces in interactive entertainment, Tina Blaine examines the emergence and acceptance ofof alternate/breakthrough game controllers.

She starts off by describing how the game industry is seeking new ways to extend the “gamer” demographic or attract new players and that "many consumers are intimidated by traditional video game controller devices" (which was the rationale behind the Nintendo Wii but the paper is form 2005). She then focuses here review controllers for music applications. She shows how alternate controllers have achieved status as a critical component of gameplay, resulting in more fun user experience. Limiting her reasoning to music game controllers, she concludes that:

"In all of these systems encumbered or not, the players’ physical interactions appear to enhance the feeling of immersion in the games and distract from varying degrees of latency inherent in the responsiveness of the sesystems. Generally, the latency is less noticeable at easier levels of gameplay and doesn’t become problematic until faster execution at more advanced levels is required. Until studies inthis area are conducted, it remains a mystery as to whether or not players are content with controllers that lack complexity but are simply fun to play. (...) opportunities have arisen for third party developers to provide “unofficial” spin-off versions of controllers as accessories for games. These are often offered more inexpensively at the same or higher quality as the large developers, and bypass the need for consumers to purchase software in order to get an extra hardware device."

People interested in knowing more should read the paper and focus in particular on Table 1 that interestingly compares videogame toy devices (Beatmania, DDR...), the purposes of the controllers, the actions that can be performed, the effectiveness as well as the "musical expression intention".

Why do i blog this? collecting new material about gestural interactions for a research project. To some extent, the paper advocates for the benefits from having a "Convergence of Alternate Controllers and Musical Interfaces". It would be good to do the same analysis with sport/arcade game controllers (from power glove to the bodypad) and analyze the idiosyncrasies of each activities (physical or musical).

Blaine, T (2005). The Convergence of Alternate Controllers and Musical Interfaces in Interactive Entertainment. Proceedings of NIME 2005: 27-33

Overloaded Joystick

Definitely a fan of Antonin Fourneau’s Overloaded Joystick (here):

A short excerpt of the text written by Douglas-Edric Stanley about the artist and the exhibit shed some more light about it:

"When I look at some twenty-odd buttons of all sizes joyfully scattered about a controller, I can only read in it a boyish call to the gaming industry: “please someone, come and bring some joy back into this stick”. In this way, Antonin has stolen that ladybeard and placed it on top of his own, thereby redefining his own — very French, and very devilish — form of a wink, which is both innocent and sophisticated, all at the same time." (Douglas-Edric Stanley)

Various resources from a late sunday evening:

• Thoughts on Interaction Design compiled by Jon Kolko (.pdf, 2.5mb): "a text intended to contemplate the theory behind the field of Interaction Design in a new way. of elements (...) explore the semantic connections that live between technology and form which are brought to life when someone uses a product"
• The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research by Erik Stolterman in International Journal of Design (Vol 2, No 1, 2008): "The main argument is that this kind of interaction design research has not (always) been successful, and that the reason for this is that it has not been guided by a sufficient understanding of the nature of design practice"
• About Bill Buxton’s CHI2008 keynote: "Nothing that transforms our culture is brand new. It always takes twenty years. That means that anything that comes out in the next ten years that is amazing has already been around for ten years". Well the power of s-curve ;)

About distractions and work habits

There's this interesting post by Paul Graham on distractions and time sinks (tv-then-internet):

"Something that used to be safe, using the Internet, gradually became more and more dangerous. Some days I'd wake up, get a cup of tea and check the news, then check email, then check the news again, then answer a few emails, then suddenly notice it was almost lunchtime and I hadn't gotten any real work done. And this started to happen more and more often. (...) The problem is a hard one to solve because most people still need the Internet for some things."

So what to do?

"At first I tried rules. For example, I'd tell myself I was only going to use the Internet twice a day. But these schemes never worked for long. Eventually something would come up that required me to use it more than that. And then I'd gradually slip back into my old ways. (...) The key seems to be visibility. The biggest ingredient in most bad habits is denial. So you have to make it so that you can't merely slip into doing the thing you're trying to avoid. It has to set off alarms.

Maybe in the long term the right answer for dealing with Internet distractions will be software that watches and controls them. But in the meantime I've found a more drastic solution that definitely works: to set up a separate computer for using the Internet. (...) If you try this trick, you'll probably be struck by how different it feels when your computer is disconnected from the Internet. "

Why do I blog this? interesting hint about work practices. It reminds me of a friend working in a big aerospace company where no personal computers are connected to the Internet (for security reasons) and where people have to go to an Internet computer (yes, in 2008).

Although I agree with the time-sink problem and suffer from it myself, I am still wondering about the definition of "work" Graham have. There are indeed different definition of work: - need to be connected to newsfeeds. - looking for intelligence, reports, material, hints, stats, etc. This requires first-hand sources or second-hand sources, search engines, tagging systems... - ...

(Picture taken from my temporary office in a swiss train)

And there are of course different recombination of work allowed by networks: - look things up on the google even for crazy things such as checking grammar (google fight), looking for a reference in a paper, etc. - need to access definition (wikipedia or urban dictionary!) - share and work on documents: Google Docs/Spreadsheet for example - use of certain websites to "compute" things, for example, I have few urls like that one to compute statistic things on-lines - communicate with people using Skype/Google Talk, etc. - update agenda - find picture on Flickr to illustrate a talk

Of course, all of this results from the choice I made (with colleagues) to use on-line tools. Personally I find more efficient to split my time between different moments/activities and places:

1. browsing/having a glance at stuff (daily read of my RSS feeds, websites, quick glance at magazine at news shops every day...), generally after breakfast. This is about news, people blogging about their activities or what they are doing. It's then a sort of ambient awareness of lots of things.
2. selecting few "signals" and turning them into something more concrete (a blogpost, in delicious, a note in a .txt file that corresponds to a specific project, and email to myself or friends), generally while/after browsing (morning)
3. reading "seriously" (on paper or on the computer), generally in a disconnected place (like trains!)
4. talking to people (whenever), eating with people (whenever), chatting (generally in the afternoon)
5. be on the field (observations) or in a work meetings (mid-morning/afternoon)
6. analyzing data coming from the field or writing seriously on a document (in a disconnected place sometimes) or with email/browser switched off.

All of this separated by breaks (walking, jogging, dreaming, taking weird pictures).

"Kill switch"

An IEEE Spectrum article recently tackled the notion of "kill switch":

"According to a U.S. defense contractor who spoke on condition of anonymity, a “European chip maker” recently built into its microprocessors a kill switch that could be accessed remotely (...) If in the future the equipment fell into hostile hands, “the French wanted a way to disable that circuit,” he said. Spectrum could not confirm this account independently. (...) So what's the best way to kill a chip? No one agrees on the most likely scenario, and in fact, there seem to be as many potential avenues of attack as there are people working on the problem. But the threats most often mentioned fall into two categories: a kill switch or a backdoor. (...) A kill switch is any manipulation of the chip's software or hardware that would cause the chip to die outright (...) But other experts counter that such ideas ignore economic realities. "

Why do I blog this? well, nothing in mind in particular, it's just that the notion of "kill switch" is intriguing from a design/ux POV. What does that mean for designs? What does that mean for users? Are there any kill switch in consumer electronics? It also reminds me of secret levels/cheatcodes/hacks in videogames or hidden graphics in Disney movie.

GTA IV about urbanism

Anyone interested in the relationship between technologies and contemporary cities followed the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Tom Bramwell from Eurogamer recently interviewed Aaron Garbut from Rockstar. The following part sparked my interest:

"We never reproduce real world locations. We take interesting or representative elements and create something new from them. It's about taking inspiration from real places and producing something that captures the essence of it. We're trying to take our impression of New York and keep it as that, an impression, not a laboured reproduction. I think that gives it more flavour, more intensity and in an odd way makes it feel more real. I've seen it in other games that set out to rebuild a city street by street, not only do compromises get made that favour realism over fun but a lot of the life is lost and all that's left is a hollow representation of a real place. I'd rather have the right vibe than an accurate roadmap. (...) The cities are never built specifically with missions in mind. We always build the cities first and fit the missions and stories into them. There are a few reasons for that. One of the main ones is practical and it's more pronounced on a new engine. The basic rendering parts of an engine tend to come online a lot sooner. The mission designers need a scripting language, fairly evolved physics and vehicle handling, the weapon systems, AI etc before there is much they can play with. Whereas the artists have 3D software from day one and the game can start rendering that quickly so we can get on with building the city right from the start.

So we've always treated the cities like a real place. We build them, we pack them with interesting things and then we place the missions within them at a later date. Obviously once a mission is placed and working we will tweak the area to work better, but essentially the processes are fairly separate. That's not to say there isn't a deliberate intention to evoke emotional reaction as you say. It's just that if there is one it's happening during the placement and pacing of the missions. I think having this massive environment available first gives a lot of opportunity to play with the missions and find what works best."

(Excerpt from a GTA IV map)

Why do I blog this I find extremely interesting to see the spatial thinking behind the level design of GTA IV as described here. There are good parallels to draw between the game designers and urbanists as both of them have to build/transform an "environment" where "things will happen", filled with various sorts of agencies. The approach level designer take, as described by Garbut, is of course different. More specifically the purpose is not make a city efficient but instead about how to engage players in fun and free interactions. That said, I am sure that there are relevant ideas to pick up.

Carriers, privacy and location-based social networking services

LBS 360 has a good overview of European Mobile Mapping Trends summarized by Michael Fisher. The whole piece is about how Mobile Network Operator (MNO - or "carrier") perceive the field and will be likely to shape it in the near future. I was mostly intrigued by that part:

"Privacy issues, as you would expect, arise when offering most any location service and especially social networking related services. It would seem that offering FREE services raises skepticism instantly in some areas of Europe. This coupled with advertising and social networking appears to raise further concern. Many European government organizations have officially weighed in on the topic as a means to educate the public and declare rights associated with data protection and the power to audit organizations providing location-based services. In the case of network location-based services, this only applies to the carrier, as this technology only takes raw network data from the carrier and returns a more precise location back to the carrier.

Another major privacy matter looms on the horizon in Europe regarding intelligence that can be derived from mobile advertising; it is known as "behavioral tracking." Simply said, advertisers would benefit greatly from understanding not only what ads are most popular but where customers responded to these ads. For the most part, it's no different here than in the United States - addressing public concerns of privacy is a matter of education and documented disclaimers. "

Why do I blog this? although I don't know which data supports the various claims here but there are some good thoughts about people's perceptions related to privacy issues. In particular it's relevant to note that "free" services raise more eyebrows.

About an intriguing urban computing assemblage

The recent story of Google cars causing stir in Rome still makes me wondering about the perception of so-called "urban computing" and citizens. To put it shortly, the problem was basic: Google recently brought in black cars in Rome that take pictures for the Google Streetview project (yes at some point you have to physical artifacts taking PICTURES of streetviews, it's not just virtual). BernhardWarner for the timesonline hence reports the following people's reaction to these black cars:

"On cue, pedestrians shuffled off the street and into bars, out of sight of the offending vehicle, no doubt wondering if these are the new intrusions that must be endured after a sudden shift to the right. Your correspondent managed to snake through a queue of cars at a traffic light to get a better look at the vehicle that upset so many mid-afternoon espressos. (...) Just then the Google car swung left and I followed, in a very slow pursuit. The identical scene unfolded before me: Romans stumbling into shops and bars, hoping to be out of view of the camera's lens"

In a sense, they perceived it as "a new type of video surveillance vehicle". I won't enter into the details of the explanation provided by the timesonline (the election of a right-wing mayor... who wants to promote tough-on-crime platforms) but this situation seems certainly revealing of a troublesome relationship between technological assemblage.

The picture of the google cars in the Netherlands made by Lars van de Goor shows how the whole pack can be intimidating:

Why do I blog this? what I find interesting here is less the perception of a service (that can be articulated as "urban computing") but instead the sort of experience of the infrastructure needed to provide a service. A flock of all-similar black cars wandering around the city with huge camera-devices may indeed by an intriguing experience as it may came out from the blue. Will we see more of this sort of encounters in the city of the near future?

Btw, Mauro were in you in Rome? have you seen this?

Evolution of game controllers

Recently, I've been involved in a research project about game controllers, comparing different peripheral (gestural or not). This led me to investigate the evolution of game controller over time, a topic already addressed by others. For instance, Damien Lopez made this insightful mapping (.pdf) for both consoles and portable systems:

Lopez describes this map as a "a collection of small multiples of game controllers of the main gaming systems from the past 25 years (..,) normalized, and the hands are all approximately the same size as each other, and thus the controllers all to scale". His point was "to show the progression of controller design throughout the last quarter-century. With the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System, no more number pads were used on game controllers from that point on".

On Sock Master, there is also a tree-based representation that tries to connect all the current console controllers with their predecessors. What is interesting here is the notion of diachronic evolution as well as the connection between different "families".

Why do I blog this? working on the user experience of game controller for different research projects, this kind of representation are important as they map the existing peripherals as well as show how the possibilities evolved over time. It's overall interesting to note the relative stability in both portable and console shapes but the increasing complexity of controllers. Although sticks remains stable, the number of buttons increases. It would interesting to see how the user experience evolved over time too and see how it's related with the interface. I need to dig more these graphics and draw some implications about what that means.

Interview on Infonomia

Been interviewed recently by Alfons Cornella and Doris Obermair for spanish website Infonomia, the conversation is here. A short excerpt where I make my point (about the near future of urban computing) that the important thing is less about technology than human needs:

"¿Cuál es el futuro en este campo? Si hablamos de las ciudades del futuro, no debemos pensar en tecnología, sino en las necesidades humanas, en lo que la gente quiere en lugares específicos. ¿Quieren circular mejor, conocer a gente que comparte sus mismos intereses, o, por otro lado, simplemente quieren que se les deje en paz y estar inaccesibles? Se trata de ciudades basadas en los deseos de la gente, más que de ciudades donde la tecnología se lanza sin más y la gente no entiende lo que está pasando."

"Deer Blogger"/"Deer Tracking via e-mail"

Via, geolocated animals are now more and more common (after pigeon blogs back in 2006), the most recent example is this deer named Thor that blog his own position on Google Earth. What is interesting in this case is not the animal blogging meme (although it's yet another example) but the underlying process: a "Mail to Map/SMS-to-Map/Mail to Google Earth" process as described by the developer:

Also intriguing this "importance notice" by the guy who set up this whole thing:

"Important notice: since the displayed coordinates belongs to a live animal (currently a white-tailed Deer nicknamed Thor), by reading this page and looking at the map you are accepting terms of agreement: “do not harm the animal in anyway’. Actually it lives on private grounds or a preserve territory anyway."

Yes, people, remember: although it looks like a virtual environment, it's a real deer.

Why do I blog this? I like the "blogject tracking" via email dimension here.

Disinhibition with virtual partners, chatbot, and robots

Given that we spend more and more time communicating with non-humans, the topic of politeness with bots, robots, virtual characters, non-playable charcters in video games has always struck me as intriguing. Few months back, I mentioned the chatbot technology and call centres where "it will be also necessary to program chatbots to deal with verbal abuse"". The new issue of Interacting with Computers is about this topic: "Abuse and Misuse of Social Agents". Two papers I found interesting in that issue are:

"I Hate You: Disinhibition with Virtual Partners" by Sheryl Brahnam:

"This paper presents a descriptive lexical analysis of spontaneous conversations between users and the 2005 Loebner prize winning chatterbot, Jabberwacky. The study was motivated in part by the suspicion that evidence in support of the Media Equation, especially in the field of conversational agents, was supported by incomplete data; too often omitted in its purview is the occurrence of unsavoury user responses. Our study shows that conversations with Jabberwacky often bring about the expression of negative verbal disinhibition. We discovered that 10% of the total stems in the corpus reflected abusive language, and approximately 11% of the sample addressed hard-core sex. Users were often rude and violated the conversation maxims of manner, quantity, and relevance. Also particularly pronounced in the conversations was a persistent need of the user to define the speakers' identities (human vs. machine). Users were also curious to understand and test the cognitive capabilities of the chatterbot. Our analysis indicates that the Media Equation may need qualifying, that users treat computers that talk, less as they do people and more as they might treat something not quite an object yet not quite human."

and "Sometimes it's hard to be a robot: A call for action on the ethics of abusing artificial agents" by Blay Whitby:

"This is a call for informed debate on the ethical issues raised by the forthcoming widespread use of robots, particularly in domestic settings. Research shows that humans can sometimes become very abusive towards computers and robots particularly when they are seen as human-like and this raises important ethical issues. The designers of robotic systems need to take an ethical stance on at least three specific questions. Firstly is it acceptable to treat artefacts - particularly human-like artefacts - in ways that we would consider it morally unacceptable to treat humans? Second, if so, just how much sexual or violent 'abuse' of an artificial agent should we allow before we censure the behaviour of the abuser? Thirdly is it ethical for designers to attempt to 'design out' abusive behaviour by users? Conclusions on these and related issues should be used to modify professional codes as a matter of urgency."

Why do I blog this? this is not a research topic I investigate more than looking at few papers once in a while but I am quite fascinated by this sort of behavior and the design implications. Perhaps it's linked to my interest in the user experience of automation: when human agents are replaced by robots or chatbot, one can observe intriguing issues at stake for "users".

The next step, something that I would be very interested in observing, is to study when people kick, punch or break physical objects such as roomba, robots or vending machines. There is definitely something here that I'd be happy to investigate more deeply like... figuring out the reasons (role of context? bystanders? mood?), finding the consequences (broken? not yet?), the need to fix the device (oneself? with others?), the justification to others, etc.

I mean, EVERY device can be the target of this sort of behavior. I remember having a Commodore Amiga 500 which used to go "green screen" (the equivalent of Windows blue screen of death); to make it reboot, I use to raise it like 5 centimeters on the table and drop it. It worked pretty well on me (I had to to relieve some nervous steam) and the Amiga as well. I learnt recently that it allowed one of the chip which was not well inserted to be properly reinserted.

Vending machine proxy/broker

Right after reading Dan Hill's recent post about transport fare system this morning, I had to bring a friend to a tram stop here in Geneva and I had an interesting discussion with what I would call the local "vending machine proxy/broker". Transport ticket machines in Geneva are actually a bit complex: the interface is a pain (with buttons without any uses, two little screens, two slots to swipe a care), the pricing is also difficult to understand and to choose (for instance the zoning is not very well described and reflected in the interface). Plus: the ticket does not give back change (it gives you a sort of ticket that you can use to claim your money back at counters). We discussed that example during the LIFT08 workshop about design failures, talking how this situation leads to frustration and waste of time or money since lots of people choose to avoid paying.

That said, the most interesting phenomenon is the presence in some key tram/bus spots of "proxy ladies" who help people to buy a ticket. They generally take your change, ask you where you'd like to go and use their transport card to get the ticket. The thing is that when you buy a "cartabonus" card for X transport then you can get one free (as that lady explained me). They can then make a few amount of money using that trick and help angry or clueless Geneva visitors.

What's interesting here is that the lady is NOT an agent from the transport company. She's a freelance proxy to the machine, or "broker" with customers. The whole system itself generated this opportunity to make a little amount of money (incentive for the broker) AND help customers who definitely need a hand.

Why do I blog this? following closely what happen with "urban interface", I find this example fascinating, especially when you think about it was not planned by the machine designers, how it was a by-product of the bad design+pricing system. To me, that's a very important example to be understood if one wants to design relevant "urban computing" applications. The presence of a human helper is tremendously interesting here. Although this only happens in crowded transport spots (like the railway station), there are lessons to draw here about "urban interface" in contemporary cities.

Spending time with that lady is fantastic, especially if you consider that she speaks a sort of mix of french and portuguese AND she still manage to help people finding the right ticket to go to a specific zone. Furthermore, the whole transactions between some customers and the "proxy lady" are a very rich terrain to investigate people's mental representation of the city and how they can be translated into an interface (or a need to have a human face to help them!). Through a discussion with the customer, the proxy lady seems to help him/her transferring the representation of the wanted location (its image-ability) in the zoned map printed on the vending machine, and thus, to choose the right button to buy the correct ticket.

NewBraveWorld: ubicomp workshop in Brussels

People interested in locative media and ubicomp in the Brussel area (or in Europe!) might be willing to attends NewBraveWorld:

"An “Internet-of-Things” is under construction with technologies for unique digital identification (RFID), geolocation (GPS), embedded computing (ubiquitous or pervasive computing) and mobile networking (e.g. wifi, wimax, umts/3g). Places and objects become linked to digital media which can be everywhere people are.

Our digital life and social interactions are going to happen through tangible augmented objects and our physical environment will become the playground of new social and artistic behaviors, interventions, actions both in data and media spaces.

“New Brave World” proposes 4 workshops exploring the roles of artists, designers, media makers and creative scientists/developers in this context of the merge of digital and physical spaces."

The third workshop will be held on June 4-8 2008 produced by iMal with the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund. With the participation of Talkoo (Electronic Interventions in Urban Context) and the ubiquitous David Cuartielles:

"The Talkoo workshop intends to bring the practice of Electronic Interventionism teaming up with a community spirit for the realization of pieces to be set in the urban environment of the city center of Brussels. After a series of practical exercises with an introduction to Arduino, participants will look into the methods for carrying out interventions with electronic elements in urban locations. Divided into groups, participants will be the creators of electronic machines that will invade the city, provoking situations and stirring sensations in its inhabitants."

Date: from 4 to 8 June 2008 Fee: 100 EUR Maximum Participants: 15 Location: iMAL, Brussels

Detailled description and Registration Form here

"Lost futures" as traps

Still gathering stuff about "failed futures" for a project, I ran across this interview of Matt Jones by Adaptive Path peeps that is very insightful. Some excerpts I found relevant for my project:

"RF: You’ve mentioned the danger of “lost futures,” based on the success of a given device. One model becomes wildly popular, and other, more interesting ways of looking at the problem get cast aside… or at least ignored when they could be doing the most good.

MJ: Exactly - the gravity well of the iPhone is going to be hard for anyone developing innovative UIs to escape for the next few years. In hardware, you’re subject to the determinism of sourcing components.

RF: Our friends the cognitive anthropologists have warned us about the implications of subscribing to the wrong cognitive artifacts…

MJ: So everyone for the last 2/3 years has been offered the same touchscreen components more or less by a few suppliers. And we all (more or less) have similar dimensions we can work within in a touch UI.

RF: So thinking in hardware becomes even more constrained?

MJ: To an extent. UIs will not be so diverse in the next few years… inside a BigDeviceCo you’re going to find it hard to justify the investment in the out-there stuff (as always). But there’s still innovation a plenty to come, its just that for the next few years it’ll be all 16:9 touchscreens, I guess. And then… hopefully someone will Wii on their parade and breakthrough with something as different as the iPhone was to the existing crop of smartphones. That’s my hope anyway. And I think it might be in the area of physical/gestural interfaces, matched with ambient/visualisation tech to give us more natural ‘Everyware‘."

Why do I blog this? I am trying to collect material about what Jones calls "lost future" (in design+foresight), I quite like his stance here, not only about the example discussed (that 16:9 touchscreen device coming from Cupertino) but, rather, its possible consequence: how it eclipses other innovation. There are different consequences of failed futures, some are about traps like in this examples; others are about perpetuation of wrong ideas.

Social friction and urban computing

When Fabien and I had to find a title for our photo booklet "Sliding Friction: The Harmonious Jungle of Contemporary Cities", the notion of "friction" came up very easily in the conversation. Having read few books by Lefebvre in the last few years, it was certainly one of the reason for picking up that term. Digging my "Docs" folder on my laptop, I recently unburied a very good paper by Jensen & Lenskjoldabout similar issues. It's called "Designing for social friction: Exploring ubiquitous computing as means of cultural interventions in urban space".

Here's how they define this "social friction" (a notion they discuss using Lefebvre and De Certeau):

"Social friction is a fundamental aspect of everyday life. We use the term to denote the process, which separates different expressive behaviours and contexts from each other. Social friction is at play when people in the city act and express themselves in surprising and unconventional ways. When people challenge existing norms and leave marks and traces on their social and physical surroundings. (...) Social friction can also be described as the ‘rubbing of’ of people on each other. It is the kind of friction that occurs when people, who hold different backgrounds, understandings and experiences, meet on the bus or in the street and exchange opinions, stories or maybe just gestures and glances."

Now, what about "social friction" and ubiquitous/urban computing? The authors' point is that this notion is helpful "in the development and analysis of ubiquitous computing in relation to art and design". They articulate social friction a critical position, which could be applied as a strategy for design. Relying (or designing for) social friction is then seen as way to release new forms of social and cultural potentials. Which, is also related to Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of "art as a social interestice". Why do I blog this? my interest in urban computing and art practices led me to that paper, I quite like that notion of "social friction". Let's sleep on it.

Technical issues regarding location-based services

In an IEEE article called "Location-Based Services: Back to the Future", Paolo Bellavista, Axel Küpper, and Sumi Helal gives an interesting overview of the technical issues regarding location-based services. They take an intriguing viewpoint: projecting themselves in 2012 and backasting to discuss “What Was Wrong with First-Generation Location-Based Services?” (i.e. LBS of today). Starting with a brief history of how LBS evolved from Enhance 911 in the US to the explosion of projects which started around 2005. They then discuss this evolution of time, giving some hints about what they think the 2008-2012 axis can be:

The evolution they envision is made of 4 major changes:

"From reactive to proactive: Proactive LBSs, instead, are automatically initiated when a predefined event occurs—for example, if the user or a target (another designated person) approaches or leaves a certain point of interest or another target. Proactive LBSs demand much less user attention and interaction. (...) From self- to cross-referencing: Self-referencing LBSs are services in which the user and target coincide, while cross-referencing LBSs exploit the target location for service-provisioning of another user, thus requiring stronger privacy protection. (...) From single- to multitarget (the number of targets participating in an LBS session): In multitarget LBSs, the focus is more on interrelating the positions of several targets among each other. (...) From content-to application-oriented: the delivery of such dynamic applications is impromptu. In contrast to content-oriented LBSs, application-oriented LBSs provide a more powerful and richer interaction model, with autonomic installation and removal of dynamically needed components."

Why do I blog this? although I don't necessarily agree with all the points here, the articles gives an overview of the technical issues regarding LBS lately. Another comment I had after reading the paper is that all of this looks very cryptic from a UX POV.