Finding the There There: theory and praxis of location-aware systems design

Finding the There
There
Theory and Praxis of Location-Aware Systems
Design
Thomas Wendt
Surrounding Signiﬁers
@thomas_wendt
thomas@srsg.co
srsg.co

Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signiﬁers @thomas_wendt
Thomas Wendt
UX Strategist and Researcher
Founder of Surrounding Signiﬁers, a
strategy and design consultancy
Background in continental philosophy,
psychology, and literary theory

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Seining_salmon.jpg

http://img103.fansshare.com/pic12/w/non-celebrity/
800/8520_jean_baudrillard.jpg
“We live in a world where
there is more and more
information, and less and
less meaning.”
Jean Baudrillard

Data is complicated.

Context is complex.

• Question the ways we currently think about
location.
• Illustrate the complexity of location context.
• Start establishing some theoretical models.
Why are we here?

Context
Embodiment
Space
Place
Praxis

Context Layers
situation
environment
cognition
emotion

But what does “context” mean?

Context ≠ Sensors

1. The parts of a discourse that surround a word or
passage and can throw light on its meaning
2. The interrelated conditions in which something
exists or occurs.
Webster says

“The notion of “context” has been adapted to
computing from its original use referring to
language, which is reﬂected in the structure of the
word itself: con (with) text. In using language we
produce a text, either written or oral, intended to be
interpreted by one or more other people. That text is
not an encapsulated representation of an intended
meaning, but rather is a cue that allows the
anticipated audience to construct an appropriate
meaning.”
Winograd says
Terry Winograd

“Context is an operational term: Something is
context because of the way it is used in
interpretation, not due to its inherent properties.”
Winograd says
Terry Winograd

http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/http://fanart.tv/fanart/music/382f1005-
e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2/albumcover/all-eyez-on-
Context creates meaning

Text
http://www.deviantart.com/download/281824001/reading_book_by_srnnrgz-
d4nsgsh.jpg
Context shapes experience

Context is always of something
http://www.movpins.com/big/
MV5BMTg4NDY3MDc1N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzIzNDMzNQ/still-of-tom-cruise-

Context is never static
https://www.google.com/url?
sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=qpWnd3U5dLkNYM&t

Text
https://www.cbsoutdoor.com/PhotoGallery/Subway%20Corridor_New
%20York_Retail.JPG
Architecture for everyday life

Text
http://fogsmoviereviews.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2012/11/
blue_velvet_frank_booth_jeffrey_beaumont_dennis_hopper_kyle_maclachlan.png
Context is all we know

The body presents a problem.

1) We’re thrown into
the world.
2) We interact with
objects.
3) We cope.

Smooth Coping
User is in the midst of a seamless
experience, acting-through, without
distinction between self and object.

Section Title
http://img.tjskl.org.cn/nimg/44/9f/
5592a0632b61a239fbc95349e778-0x0-1/

Surrounding Signiﬁers srsg.co | @thomas_wendt | thomas@srsg.co
http://cdn.dottech.org/media/2013/02/nexus4.png

Theoretical knowledge, disconnected
from here and now. World presents itself
as an obstacle.
Intentionality

Smooth Coping
Intentionality

Coping
Intentionality

Intentionality
Coping

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wxrYOHd_MKA/T9d3EJi8LXI/AAAAAAAAAB8/
TzmCg7Htk9k/s1600/andyclark.jpg
“Intelligence and understanding
are rooted not in the presence
and manipulation of explicit,
language-like data structures, but
in something more earthy: the
tuning of basic responses to a real
world that enables an embodied
organism to sense, act, and
survive.” Andy Clark

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wxrYOHd_MKA/T9d3EJi8LXI/AAAAAAAAAB8/
TzmCg7Htk9k/s1600/andyclark.jpg
“Embodiment is the property of
our engagement with the world
that allows us to make it
meaningful.” Paul Dourish

Text
http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/adesignaday/ﬁles/2009/06/
dadcard2-03.jpg
Moravec’s Paradox
“High order” tasks are easy to program.
“Low order” tasks are difﬁcult to program.

http://www.cnmeonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IBM-
Watson.jpg
Cognition

http://asimo.honda.com/ASIMO_DCTM/News/images/highres/
02_ASIMO_Climbing_Stairs_2.jpg
Cognition in context

http://www.far-ﬂungﬁtness.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/
freeimage-1325989.jpg
Proprioception

http://www.antiquemaps.com/uk/mzoom/29900.jpg
Disembodied navigation

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?
q=tbn:ANd9GcTsGdgmZIXGdJ4xsc5Vv3EYuGeIbju5OXkMdBq5caUonl7UME
Embodied navigation

Proprioception
Our phones sense our
bodily orientation and
act accordingly.

Hyperception
Ambient perception.
Our new subconscious
relation to the world.

Henri Lefevre
“The living organism has neither
meaning nor existence when
considered in isolation from its
extensions, from the space that it
reaches and produces.”
Henri Lefevre

http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/4/39690.jpg
Modernist Tension

http://img103.fansshare.com/pic12/w/non-celebrity/
800/8520_jean_baudrillard.jpg
"What we have forgotten in
modernity [...] is that force comes
from subtraction, power from
absence. [W]e are immersed in the
opposite illusion, the disenchanted
illusion of the proliferation of
screens and images. Now, the
image can no longer imagine the
real, because it is the real."
Jean Baudrillard

http://thisisthestoryof.ﬁles.wordpress.com/2012/08/nyc-central-park-aerial-
photo.jpg
“Space is not a thing, but
rather a set of relations
between things.”Henri Lefebvre

http://www.extravaganzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Andy-Warhol-
Diamond-Dust-Shoes-1980.jpg
Postmodern textualization

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQSXOkeST8J6dCjUmZVh6qWylDh3hRcHBYXiSo-J_RGaeL9Mycrvg, https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?
q=tbn:ANd9GcSB_dncvweNPE7bBIp1BTQ0NUA3QvJ5e9ieHKYdWRmNu5MD2b8Ncg, https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRGwwS8pGUtqNyqxFwlSHz5RsPGIng2Bbri5Lh3cvZ-MMvp_Gyu, https://encrypted-
tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQAlnTusCSAQf1OPI1a-EevqQTm_Eu9_Dvv_xfJM8x31uUNbH-1, https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTkLTzM2hE6_hhYZMezbQTepRJqv7txpPaZBjqIC_907LGM11WXAA, https://
encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTt056KrYKfU-ob1pocGDCy824wz2QkFt-DxtuQZ3MMSl6BZXUB, https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTcaD_JLBUFz51mTtgvbcZBgWt5XVgyEdx_SnKhBWeltrcxzeax,
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPS41FufOwxOBaSvhCSyj8m-ow0eorFzlKrQsetKnh1Gz5WCv2, https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNp3krLDMnJnmjN3Zfg2PDHts0i0ANt6OvWSMWnvh0-
wRUb-BlRA

Text
http://i.imgur.com/Gyzht.jpg
"Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the
mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory,
a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by
models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal […] The
desert of the real itself."
Jean Baudrillard

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqauptxLYL1qfrkx1o1_1280.jpg
Disappear here

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/experts/portraits/111602247.jpg
“The mobile interface
offers us a distinctly ﬂuid
relationship between
space and
representations of space
[...] The interaction
between these spaces
continues to become
mutually constructive.”
Jason Farman

Ears
Eyes
Skin

Ears
Eyes
Skin
Orientation

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/experts/portraits/111602247.jpg
"We have thus moved beyond the
theorization of our mobile devices
as a type of prosthetic to our
bodies—an extension of ourselves
out into the material world—but
instead have to conceive of our
devices as absolutely integral to
the very foundations of embodied
space in the digital age."
Jason Farman

Static map interactions

Idea Representation Action Physical Space
Static map interactions

“The map is not the territory”Alfred Korzybski

Idea ActionPotentiality
Representation Representation
Physical Space
Mobile map interactions

Data is complicated.
Context is complex.

Text
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5r6XAsLDivJ5hi8RxzgFDJtky9RY9V3JHZtQI2Fr2iKMNjTbx24JoiWM
"A schizophrenic out for a
walk is a better model than a
neurotic lying on the analyst's
couch." Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

WORLD
Unfocused Existence
Decision-oriented
Inﬂuenced by Microworlds
MICROWORLD
Focused Existence
Task-oriented
Inﬂuenced by World

Intentionality
Smooth
Coping
World
Microworld

Fragments
Sense of self is focused on many
concerns at once.

Connections
Context is found in the
interconnections between self,
world, and microworlds.

Differences
Meaning emerges out of the
differences between self, world,
and microworld.

Layers
Many experiences are layered upon
each other.
emotion
cognition situation

Physical Space
intentionality
coping
intentionality
smooth
coping
coping
smooth
coping

Physical Space
virtual
virtual
virtual physical
virtual
physical

Surrounding Signiﬁers srsg.co | @thomas_wendt | thomas@srsg.cohttp://purple.fr/ﬁlestorage/magazines/21/galleries/234/A_MCQUEEN_2_0965.jpg
We need more models

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ggm6VG5Pzow/Tgbfk7qUGMI/AAAAAAAATWw/
K_dyeWw2C6I/s1600/scaffolding.jpg
We’re starting to rebuild

http://img103.fansshare.com/pic12/w/non-celebrity/800/8520_jean_baudrillard.jpg
We’re like babies...
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?
q=tbn:ANd9GcT1w4o80VnUC5wngejOh43euMjQIknvXe-e2kbIBcmljUXbmSeGCQ

http://asimo.honda.com/ASIMO_DCTM/News/images/highres/
02_ASIMO_Climbing_Stairs_2.jpg
Learning to walk

Thanks!
Thomas Wendt
Surrounding Signiﬁers
@thomas_wendt
thomas@srsg.co
srsg.co

Finding the There There: theory and praxis of location-aware systems design

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Andere mochten auch

Andere mochten auch (15)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Finding the There There: theory and praxis of location-aware systems design