“Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather thanunderstanding, that influences behavior.” -Marshall McLuhan
Abstract
In this paper I present a broad stroke of the significant design philosophies that have served as lattice
for the research and design of a group project in the MSc Interaction Design program at Chalmers
University of Technology. It builds on the work of computational composites (Vallgårda 2009),
wherein the information material our group works with in this project is specifically social media and
location. Working with this material, our work attempts to weave new expressions and interactions
across multi-scale user experiences.
The Concept
The project, Social Locale, can be thought of as an ambient social layer sitting on top of any LBS
(Location Based Service), social media provider, and physical location (see Figure 1). When active, a
user will walk into a public space (e.g., a mall, cafe, pub, retail shop, etc.) where an existing flat panel
display will show anyone currently “checked in” at that location. In the vernacular of social media, a
“check in” is a ping a user makes, usually via a mobile device, to register their location. It's the
equivalent of saying "I'm here." This location data can be expressed either as GPS coordinates
(57.707036,11.938024), a street address (Teknikgatan 1), or a more human friendly place name (Norra
Cafe).
There are currently a handful of LBS applications (e.g., foursquare, gowalla, facebook, loopt, whrrl,
eightbit.me, etc.). They all offer a range of features and goals for the user, but all afford the ability to
capture location and update a social graph. While some technologies do exist to automate the process
of updating one's location via a mobile device, most have not been commercialized. Therefore, the
act of checking in is, by default, opt in. You cannot check in to a location without your knowledge or
without someone in your social graph, in the case of facebook, checking you in as part of their update.
Currently, users interested in participating in a LBS can select according to their interest: shopping,
exploring (finding new places), or simply updating their social graph. All of the major services
expose publicly available APIs to facilitate sharing of data and new applications in order to drive
usage of their particular geo-location database. Social Locale is not a replacement for any of these
services and, instead, seeks to aggregate all of them into a single real-time feed that can then target an
individual flat panel display in a given public space.
When a user walks into a public space and sees a Social Locale networked display, they are indirectly
prompted to check in. There are core users who will check in simply to update their social graph,
regardless of what other incentives are offered. In this concept though, there is now an ambient social
awareness in play. The user’s environment suddenly becomes richer with only a minimal amount of
information of the people with whom they are sharing both time and space with.
With over 500M users, facebook has clearly demonstrated that social media has critical mass. And
with millions of users, LBS applications, while arguably still in the “early adopter” stage, are catching
on in popularity and enabling a myriad of new interactions. These in and of themselves are
interesting, but the Social Locale concept is to couple this to the millions of currently passive flat
panel displays that haunt the malls, pubs, cafes, shops, and other public spaces of Europe and the U.S.
One can envision an entirely new dimension to the social graph where serendipity can be facilitated
and new connections formed. More subtly though, there will be an awareness of presence reflecting
from individuals to the display.
Figure 1 - Social Locale Concept Diagram
Design Materials: Emplaced Media & Ambient Social Awareness
Current social media, and LBS media to a certain extent, occur in a virtual space independent of a physical location (note: I acknowledge this may seem contradictory but checking in via facebook, foursquare, etc. creates content for my social graph that is typically consumed by others via the cloud, not at my location). As an example, when one checks in using facebook, the event is created, shared, and consumed in the cloud via other mobile and computer screens. There isn't anything specific to the physical location that changes or is affected by this action. This is true of all the existing LBS applications. Even though there may be dynamic, real-time data being created and shared it still requires the user to interact with this data via the small screen of their mobile device; or, a larger less convenient laptop or computer. In this way, the current services are really not socially aware or Emplaced.
“When multiple people are involved in a single experience in a single location and a single
environment, it is an environmental experience” (Kuniavsky 2010, p. 172).
The media model envisioned for Social Locale is both emplaced and ambient in its social awareness. The physical location's display is targeted, which shows all of the current users who are checked into that location at that time. This is an environmental display, often at a height and size that can be seen by many people at the same time. When a user checks in a variety of metadata can often be found in this event: profile photo, user name, age, nationality, recent activity, service provider, time, phone type, and any status they have within their respective system (e.g., badges, mayorships, etc.). Our product aggregates and normalizes this metadata in order to transform it for a public display. It creates an ad-hoc community of weak ties purely through the content. Typically there will not be any direct relationships between the people checked in, although there is an affordance for that case. It is the combination of LBS metadata and the user generated social media materials that we are using to generate ambient social awareness, which Kuniavsky observes as potentially leading to social networking among people with weak ties (Kuniavsky 2010, p. 183). This information can be expressed symbolically, such as abstract shapes and infographics that grow and shrink, or change color. To help with shaping these abstract design materials, I have been using the Fogg Behavior Model (Fogg 2009) to act as somewhat of a grounding for the design work and prototyping. Additionally, a lot of insight was borrowed from the work of Churchill et al. and their Plasma Poster, particularly with regards to Churchill’s thorough exploration of “emplaced media” (Kuniavsky 2010, p. 203).
Design Material: Multi-Scale User Experience
Smart Things description of a multi-scale user experience:
“A tiny thing and an enormous thing are rendered identical when seen from the perspective of a data packet. Thus, many experiences need to gracefully encompass different levels of granularity. Multi-scale user experience design is the process of defining how digitally mediated activities move between multiple scales and how participants act at each scale” (Kuniavsky 2010, p. 179).
Figure 2 - Typical fast-food restaurant with a large flat panel display
The Social Locale project, at a practical level, requires a deep understanding of how all of these various screens, applications, data, and contexts work together to create continuity in the user’s experience of the system. We must ask ourselves what the user’s mental model of checking in via one service and then viewing a piece of their social graph on a public display is? In what ways can this experience transcend the small, smartphone screen size, to the large, flat panel display screen size?
“Still, at times proximity is a rather good measure of relevance. We tend to place important
objects near us or near the place we are going to use them” (Redström 2001, p. 56).
It is proximity that is unique to Social Locale when compared other services, and one of the reasons our aim is not to recreate the massive geo-location databases needed to drive these services. Our technique allows for the targeting of a specific screen at that location, by any smartphone capable of running any of the existing location services. Socially though, this allows for an individual to broadcast to a crowd currently within her vicinity. Certainly close enough to see reactions and/or employ other channels of non-digital communication (voice, tactile, and so forth). So one should not just limit the scope of their thinking to the implementation details of a multi-scale user experience, but also what it infers for the user. What opportunities or hazards can it create? What is the value?
Figure 3 - Typical LBS screens
Design Considerations
I have already mentioned a number of design considerations; however, the overarching framework that has been employed to structure the project has been Design Elasticity. Aoki, P. & Tang, J. (2009, p. 17-26) argue in Media Space 20+ Years of Mediated Life that “the impact of media spaces have always included social responses and implications as well.” As a designer, I see not the digital artifact as the ultimate product but the social experience enabled by it as the end product. Although Aoki et al. studied media spaces and focused primarily on what we would term “video conferencing” and other video sharing technologies, I have found it useful to adapt their principle of Design Elasticity for emplaced social media.
Briefly, this is comprised of relationships (audience), experience, temporality, and setting persistence (Aoki, P. & Tang, J. 2009, p. 19-20). While this topic deserves much more discussion than what is allotted by the format of this paper, these four pillars of design elasticity provide a framework for evaluating the end result of the digital artifact; i.e., the user’s experience. It allows for reflection around balancing privacy and exploring via active engagement; user behavior in an asynchronous media environment where users can be drawn in when comfortable and just as easily draw themselves out when they wish; and motivating continued exploration through environmental changes on the user’s behavior. It is via this framework that I have attempted to model and reflect on user behavior, and how our team could produce digital artifacts (visual, time, and location based) that would open up the possibilities for the types of user engagement we are seeking to facilitate. It’s instructional to reference Fogg, again, who coined the term “Captology” as the study of computers as persuasive technologies and presents many foundational ideas (e.g., “macrosuasion vs microsuasion”) for framing the motivation of the user behavior one is seeking.
Also instrumental in consideration of the design, is Kuniavsky’s three sections of digital information as a material: capabilities, possibilities, and constraints (Kuniavsky, M. 2010, p. 57). This allowed us to create boundaries in our work to conceive of the material. Again, there are many other aspects to this area that can be expanded upon.
Figure 4 - Evolution of the public display screen design
Figure 5 - Beta Design: Social Locale public display screen
Future Areas for Research
Some future areas that seem interesting for more work (but have not yet been addressed) include:
Establishing metrics of use
Privacy and identity
Real-time predictive algorithms
Use of geo-spatial data and asynchronous conversation modes
The topic of metrics is an interesting one, as it raises important questions of how to measure social engagement and “success”. It also could allow us to establish a baseline from which to understand how to tune the system to reflect better the needs and desires of the users. Privacy and identity are informed greatly by the elasticity of relationships, but is worthy of an entire paper on its own. There are likely many unintended consequences of opening up this public social media channel that we cannot be aware of at this point in the project, but will certainly be fascinating to watch unfold. More importantly though, what tools and interactions will be needed to foster a balance between privacy and engagement? And finally, predictive algorithms and geo-spatial data are system aspects that will open it up to greater possibilities; such as, delivering just-in-time media based on context and/or user behavior (not to mention retailer promotional goals). The inclusion of geo-spatial data from a multitude of sources could potentially drive unique and compelling real-time and asynchronous interactions (e.g., a micro-climate forecast for the neighborhood you’re in, or a strata of layered multimedia from users who engaged the system before you).
While these future areas of research do not represent an exhaustive list, it does reflect future areas that can directly impact our understanding of design for ambient social awareness and multi-scale user experiences.
References
Aoki, P. & Tang, J. 2009, “Section 1: The Social Space”, Media Space 20+ Years of Mediated Life, pp. 17-26.
Churchill, E. & Nelson, L. 2006, “From Media Spaces to Emplaced Media: Digital Poster Boards and Community Connectedness”, paper presented at the Media Spaces Workshop at CSCW 2006, Banff, Canada, November.
Fogg, B. 2003, “How to Motivate & Persuade Users”, paper presented at CHI 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, April.
Fogg, B. 2009, “A Behavior Model for Persuasive Design”, paper presented at Persuasive ’09, Claremont, California, April.
Kuniavsky, M. 2010, Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design, Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers, Burlington, MA.
Redström, J. 2001, “Designing Everyday Computational Things”, PhD thesis, Göteborg University, Sweden.
Vallgårda, A., 2009 “Computational Composites: Understanding the Materiality of Computational Technology”, PhD thesis, IT University of Copenhagen.
