Manual check-in versus automatic positioning

The picture above shows the difference between asking where someone is with an SMS and getting this information automatically with a location-based software such as Aka-Aki. This was a big debate few years ago. A more recent debate concerns the manual check-in versus automatic positioning with mobile social software.

The whole argument about manual check-in on platforms such as Foursquare versus automatic positioning (on Google latitude for instance) is fascinating to me. While some pundits criticize the idea of letting people manually check-in, various empirical studies shows why automation can be problematic. It’s crazy how some people get grumpy and think that self-declarating one’s location is old-school and passé. Some examples below of academic work about this issue. Of course it’s not directly about current applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt or Latitude but it certainly gives some perspective.

Vihavainen, S., Oulasvirta, A., Sarvas, R. “I Can’t Lie Anymore” – The Implications of Location Automation for Mobile Social Applications. Proceedings of MobiQuitous 2009, IEEE Press.

The paper examines a sample of users of Jaiku, a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service bought by Google three years ago. Using this platform, the researchers investigated the appropriation of this service that automates disclosure and diffusion of location information. Here are some excerpts I found relevant in Vihavainen’s paper:

“Human factors research has shown that automation is a mixed blessing. It changes the role of the human in the loop with effects on understanding, errors, control, skill, vigilance, and ultimately trust and usefulness. We raise the issue that many current mobile applications involve mechanisms that surreptitiously collect and propagate location information among users and we provide results from the first systematic real world study of the matter.
(…)
The results reveal both “classic” human factors problems with the automation’s logic and novel issues related to the fact that location automation at times compromised their control of social situations. (…) The results convey that unsuitable automated features can preclude use in a group. While one group found automated features useful, and another was indifferent toward it, the third group stopped using the application almost entirely. (…) These differences highlight the importance of needs, activities, and structures of the intended user groups as factors for acceptance of automation.“

S. Benford, W. Seagar, M. Flintham, R. Anastasi, D. Rowland, J. Humble, D. Stanton, J. Bowers, N. Tandavanitj, M. Adams, J.R. Farr, A. Oldroyd, and J. Sutton. “The error of our ways: The experience of self- reported position in a location-based game”. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. (UbiComp 2004), Nottingham., pp. 70-87,

In this paper that is a bit older, the researchers studied how users of a collaborative location-based game employed self-reported positioning by manually reveal their positions to remote players by manipulating electronic maps. Results were the following:

“ It appears that remote participants are largely un- troubled by the relatively high positional error associated with self reports. Our analysis suggests that this may because mobile players declare themselves to be in plausible locations such as at common landmarks, ahead of themselves on their current trajectory (stating their intent) or behind themselves (confirming previously visited locations). These observations raise new requirements for the future development of automated positioning systems and also suggest that self- reported positioning may be a useful fallback when automated systems are un- available or too unreliable.“

Nova, N., Girardin, F., Molinari, G. & Dillenbourg, P. (2006): The Underwhelming Effects of Automatic Location-Awareness on Collaboration in a Pervasive Game, International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (May 9-12, 2006, Carry-le-Rouet, Provence, France).

Finally, this is also an issue I addressed in my Phd research concerning the automation of location-awareness, I also address these problems with a different angle. We also used a collaboration location-based game (a quite common platform for running field studies at the time) and uncovered that automating a process such as location-awareness is not always fruitful. Letting people send their own position appears to be more efficient than broadcasting mere location information:

“To some extent, not giving location-awareness information can be a way to support collaboration more effectively; since players may communicate more and better explain their activity and intents. Self- disclosure can hence be more effective since users could express both information about their intents relevant for the task context and their location. They could also send it whenever they want to express either their current or past positions or the intended places they are heading to. Another interesting benefit of letting the users express their position is to give them the control of privacy issues, one of the major issue related to LBS usage. They have indeed the choice to disclose information about their whereabouts, which is of tremendous importance to avoid the users’ perception of privacy invasion.“

Mobile social software norms

An interesting news on the Foursquare newsblog is about the “cheater code”, i.e. a way to catch users who check in from their couches to steal mayorships. Interestingly, it seemed to be one of the most requested feature by people.

Of course, it’s not that easy to implement and the solution that has been chosen… lies in using the phone’s GPS (or another way to get the user’s location) “to try to verify this“. What I find interesting here is that the ambition is deliberately low (hence the “try”). The reasons why they do so are simply that it’s hard:

“ We are seeing some issues where people should be getting points / badges / mayors but they’re not. This could be because the GPS location your phone gave us was slightly off or because the address / pushpin where we located the venue wasn’t quite right.“

Another valuable bit reveals a lot about the usage/norms about what is considered acceptable:

“Also worth noting that we’re fine with pre-checkins and post-checkins… you know, the checkins you send *before* you’re at a place (“I’ll be there in 10 mins!”) and the checkins you send us *after* you leave when you realize you forgot to check-in while you were there. (Trust us, we do it too to fill out our history pages!) The only difference now is that to unlock foursquare rewards – mayors, points, badges, etc – those checkins needs to be sent from that place.“

Why do I blog this? I am fascinated by this kind of elicitation as it uncovers norms and behavioral issues that people put in place when using location-based services. Preparing a field study about the usage of this platform, I find interesting to take this into account.

“you are here” updates

Recent encounters in London with other “you are here” signs”. The first one is interesting because it also add a “walking time” limit through a circle:

This other one is a bit old and intriguing as it does not use a textual “you are here” but replace it with an elegant pointing finger:

Why do I blog this? i simply continue the systematic list of “you are here” elements that i encounter. Can be handy when working on location-based services interfaces as examples of current practices.

mapenvelop: post it from the exact place

mapenvelop is a project by beste miray dogan that I like a lot: the inner walls of the envelope are blanketed by a Google map that indicates where the sender’s address is. As described by the designer “post it from the exact place”.

Why do I blog this an interesting low-tech approach to adding locational information to a message. A sort of locational information that adds subtlety in communication given that a map can be perceived as “richer” than a written address. It would be even more intriguing to have such envelopes for places you visit… you would buy a map of barcelona and pinpoint where you wrote the letter… so that your contact can be aware of where you thought about them. Surely something that is possible with digital communication through location-aware devices but that is even more curious on paper.

Co-presence in the 21st century

Two persons in the same place, as represented on the Foursquare interface. A depiction of co-presence mediated by technology.

Co-presence, as described by Zhao can refer to the sense of being together with other people in a remote or a shared virtual environment. To refer back to Goffman, it’s a form of human co-location in which individuals become “accessible, available, and subject to one another“.

The advent of location-based services lead to a new class of situation where people can b both physically copresent (what Zhao calls “Corporeal Copresence”) and located in electronic proximity (what Zhao calls “Corporeal Telecopresence”). Which is what happens with the Foursquare interface. The categories are then not mutually exclusive.

Why do I blog this? curiosity about what this kind of constraints can lead to, in terms of location-based services in a physically co-present context.

Earth Sandwich

Making an “Earth sandwich” is a curious practice found in Generation A by Douglas Coupland which was originally proposed by Ze Frank:

“I’d taken a slice of boring white bread from its bakery bag and had slapped it onto a small patch of yellow sandy dirt. I was standing up to photograph the slice of bread using my mobile phone. Why would you have been doing this? I hear you wonder. Excellent question. I was making an “Earth sandwich.” What is an Earth sandwich? Fair enough. It’s when you use online maps to locate the exact opposite place on the planet from you, and then hook up with someone close to that place. Then, after you mathematically figure out exact opposite GPS coordinates to within a thumbnail’s radius, you put a slice of bread on that spot, then connect via cellphone and simultaneously snap photos: two slices of bread with a planet between them. It’s an Internet thing. You make the sandwich, you post it, and maybe someone somewhere will see it, and once they’ve seen it, you’ve created art. Bingo.

Why do I blog this? this sort of ludic practice automatically found its way to my list of locative-technologies-repurposed-for-other-aims. Perhaps some sort of new and extreme ritual from the 21st Century (definitely the kind of ideas that Coupland document/describe/invent). Let’s wait for the iPhone app, I am pretty sure someone out there would be willing to develop it.

Such idea sounds weird but I am convinced there would be some curious possibilities in interaction design, a sort of long-distance location-awareness if you want. Much of the focus in human-computer interaction research and product development revolves around the notion that location-awareness makes sense at the urban level (or national). The granularity is generally low, A gets a message that B is nearby (neighborhood/in town) and acts accordingly.

However, the Earth sandwich practice/meme is interesting from the long-distance viewpoint. Are there situations (casual or professional) where it’s pertinent to know where others are? Should the granularity be different than current mobile social software? I guess so although I don’t really know a precise use case. Maybe diaspora and families spread across the globe may be curious about it.

New chapter about design issues in location-based games

“ Digital Cityscapes: Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces ” a book edited by Adriana de Souza e Silva and Daniel Sutko that deal with location-based games and urban informatics:

“The convergence of smartphones, GPS, the Internet, and social networks has given rise to a playful, educational, and social media known as location-based and hybrid reality games. The essays in this book investigate this new phenomenon and provide a broad overview of the emerging field of location-aware mobile games, highlighting critical, social scientific, and design approaches to these types of games, and drawing attention to the social and cultural implications of mobile technologies in contemporary society. With a comprehensive approach that includes theory, design, and education, this edited volume is one of the first scholarly works to engage the emerging area of multi-user location-based mobile games and hybrid reality games.“

The book features a chapter called “Framing the Issues for the Design of Location-Based Games
” written by Fabien and myself (at the time I was still at the Media and Design Lab at EPFL). It basically describes an
overview of the three main design issues we tackled in CatchBob!: the role played by physical features (physical world structure, staircases, etc), the importance of the technological infrastructure (namely, WiFi) and finally the user experience of mutual location-awareness.

Why do I blog this? this is the final paper about the CatchBob! project which occupied Fabien and I from 2004. A big part of the project was about the socio-cognitive influence of mutual location-awareness (which has been done when we were at CRAFT but the one described in this chapter has benefited from my stay at the Media and Design Lab. The discussion we had at the time (2007-2008) were more geared towards architecture and design and certainly shaped some ideas that we discuss.

On a different note, although the chapter and the book are about games, there is a lot to draw out of this specific domain. Urban informatics as a whole could benefit from the elements discussed there.

Upcoming piece about the asynchronous city

Julian Bleecker and myself are putting a final touch to a pamphlet entitled “A synchronicity: design fictions for asynchronous urban computing” in the Situated Technologies series. Here’s the blurb:

“Over the last five years the urban computing field has increasingly emphasized a so-called “real-time, database-enabled city.” Geospatial tracking, location-based services, and visualizations of urban activity tend to focus on the present and the ephemeral. There seems to be a conspicuous “arms” race towards more instantaneity and more temporal proximity between events, people, and places. In Situated Technologies Pamphlets 5, Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova invert this common perspective on data-enabled experiences and speculate on the existence of an “asynchronous” city, a place where the database, the wireless signal, the rfid tag, and the geospatial datum are not necessarily the guiding principles of the urban computing dream.“

Due for September 2009. A sort of updated version of near future laboratory thinking that builds upon various projects, discussions (and partly going beyond material from my french book). Stay tuned.

Granularity degrees of “nearby”

Travelling very often in different european cities, I am always curious about Easyjet place recommendation to observe what sort of advices they bring to the table and how they renew their propositions over time.

One of the feature that interest me is the “Escape” part, the quick description of how to go out of the city you just landed and what sort of magical things you can discover in the surroundings. I generally look at various cities (Paris, Lyon, Geneva, Lisbon, Milan, etc.) and am sometimes struck by the granularity of the “escape” range. Sometimes, most of the time I should say, the recommendation is to visit something nearby. The term “nearby” or “vicinity” is not stated, yet it’s the basic assumption of the “escape paragraph”. Like you’re in Paris and one recommend you a quick hop to Eurodisney, not my thing but it’s fair enough, it’s quite close in termes of mileage (kilometers for the metric readers).

However, there are sometimes exceptions. In the example shown form a recent Easyjet trip, the description of the city of Lyon is filled with “escape” notes about the possibility to visit Camargue. Surely a nice place that I explore from time to time, but definitely not perceived as “nearby” from the continental europe standpoint… given that you must at least drive 3 hours from Lyon to get there.

Why do I blog this? This is definitely no big deal but it strikes me as revealing to what extent representations of “nearby escape” can be perceived. There is clearly here a gap between the writer’s mental model and reader’s representations. Of course, there is not just one type of reader and it may matter to escape from Lyon and go to Camargue. What is at stake here, and it’s a must-have question for location-based services designers, is the notion of spatial granularity which needs to be taken care of. Let me reformulate it here: if you want to provide people (“consumers”) with location-based information about what is relevant in the vicinity, how can you make sure what is hidden behind the term “in the vicinity” or “nearby”?

Location-based audio file in Marseille

A subtle cue on the pavement that indicate that you should press “2″ on the audio-guide. An interesting location-based service which do not necessitate a GPS or any other positioning technology. In this case, it relies on people’s curiosity and will to spot this sort of red dot on the pavement.

Why do I blog this? apart from the general aesthetic of the cue, it’s interesting to contrast this sort of approach and a positioning technique. What are the pluses and minuses? What are the conditions under which it would be better to let people spot such cues (and hence be more active)?