| KAREN MARTIN |
LATEST PROJECTS PUBLICATIONS IN-PROGRESS |
BIO MR. WATSON |
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16/12/06About Me
A major challenge here is developing an appropriate methodology for exploring the relationships between the social and
spatial networks and locative technologies. Social theories, specific contexts of interactions and everyday experiences
are common starting points in designing social computing applications and services [e.g Paulos and Beckmann, 2006;
Boehner and Hancock, 2006]. The aim of social computing, "to incorporate understandings of the social world into
interactive systems," [Dourish, 2001] means that the traditional engineering-style, top-down approach of HCI and the
associated cognitive methodologies are less appropriate for the design and evaluation of projects with these aims.
While cognitive methodology regards individuals as making rational decisions and plans according to an abstract model
of the world, social computing requires an approach that is flexible and open enough to allow for the emergence of
social action and interaction.
To begin to untangle how social and spatial networks are related involves going beyond thinking of location as
geographical coordinates to more ambiguous and poetic understandings of context.
The spatial network of our built environment might be considered as a virtual community.
Virtual, that is, in the sense that from within the network there is the potential to connect with everywhere
else in the network. Another definition of virtual describes the community created by telecommunications
networks. In this case, virtuality is a result of members of the community being connected across space,
and sometimes time, by electronic connections. In the past few years many research projects have mapped
the activity of telecommunications networks onto the spatial, geographic network. However the configuration
and use of a spatial network is known to be subject to social factors in a complex way that is generally
neglected by these locative technologies. The question I will be exploring in this thesis is, what are the
articulation points between spatial, social and telecommunications networks? And how does a better
understanding of these relationships benefit the design of mobile or locative technologies?