Research Talk delivered at the Troyes University of Technology, France

1. Place and Placemaking in Human-
Centred Computing
Luigina Ciolfi
Presenting at UTT, 16th October 2014

3. • Understanding interaction in the physical world is not just
about physical movement and location…What other issues
need to be examined?
• Furthermore, how can we conceptualise the physical world in
a way that captures the relationship between people,
activities and the environment?
• Exploring conceptualisations of space and spatiality:
attempting to map a vast body of research across disciplines

4. • From philosophy, to anthropology, psychology and
architecture, space and spatiality have been described and
theorized upon in a variety of ways
• Key issue: the physical environment is more than a
geometrical extension. How we interact with it and within it is
not just about physical accommodation, nor simply
inhabitation
• Situatedness of human experience: elements of the
environment are not simply a physical support, or triggers for
behaviour, rather they are essential elements of the structure
of values and meanings we attribute to situations and events
Ciolfi, L. (2013), “Space and Place in Digital Technology Research: A Theoretical Overview”, The SAGE
Handbook of Digital Technology Research, London: SAGE

5. • Tendency in certain HCI research to de-couple behaviours and
activities from the spatialised context where they occur.
• How do people interact with and experience technology that is part
of the environment they inhabit?
• How do we understand the emergent experience within augmented
environments? How do we bring all these aspects of experience
together
• Adopting Place as an underlying notion: need for a notion to
encompass embodied experience in the physical world

6. • Place as the notion of the physical world as it is lived and
experienced by people
• “Space is the opportunity; place is the understood reality.
Physically, a place is a space which is invested with
understandings of behavioral appropriateness, cultural
expectations, and so forth. We are located in “space”, but we
act in “place”. Furthermore, “places” are spaces that are
valued. The distinction is rather like that between a “house”
and a “home”; a house might keep out the wind and the rain,
but a home is where we live.” (Harrison and Dourish, 1996)

7. Why does place matter for HCI?
We are always emplaced, the physical world matters to us
as a lived thing. Technology is increasingly diffused into it,
and into the artefacts that populate it.
Focus on people’s interactions with and experience of
technology that are connected to the environment they
inhabit and that shape and are shaped by it.
View of experience of technology as situated. Importance
to clarify “place” conceptually.

8. Articulation of place
(Ciolfi, 2003; Ciolfi and Bannon, 2005; Ciolfi, 2013)
Influence from Phenomenology and phenomenological
geography
Defining place as an emergent, embodied, multi-layered
experience of the physical environment alongside four
dimensions:
Personal: identity, memory, emotion
Cultural: community, history, knowledge
Social: collaborative, interactional, interpersonal
Physical: sensory, accommodation, perception

9. Place is about experience
“To live in a place means to experience it, to be aware of it
in the bones as well as in the head. Place, at all scales from
the armchair to the nation, is a construct of experience; it is
sustained not only by timber, concrete, and highways, but
also by the quality of human awareness” (Yi-Fu Tuan, 1975)
Pragmatic use of the notion, useful for understanding
interaction within physical environments and for designing
their augmentation through interactive technology.

12. Place is about Agency
• People make places, all the time…Because they are there,
because they do things, bring resources, reconfigure artefacts,
accommodate their body, meet others…
• Active and constantly emergent process
• Talking about place as something that is experienced without
highlighting agency is limited
• Place is experienced and made by human agency

13. Technology in Place – affecting placemaking:
-Changes its physical features by means of new materials for handling, visual and
auditory information displays;
-Affects personal experience through providing the possibility for new activities and
modifying existing ones, evoking individual responses and memories;
-Engenders and supports new chances for social interaction, communication and
collaboration;
-Impacts on the culturally influenced qualities of an environment or even changes
them to some extent.
Awareness of the layers of place experience guides situated design.
Experiential focus guides methodological choices.
Development of and reflection over the framework so far through 5
multidisciplinary research projects with common themes of situatedness,
participation and openness
Domains: cultural heritage, public shared spaces, mobile and nomadic work

14. The Study Room
The Room of Opinion
at the Hunt Museum: “Re-Tracing the Past”
(Ciolfi & Bannon, 2007; McCarthy & Ciolfi, 2008; Ferris et Al., 2004)

15. The Recipe Station: Interactive public
installation that allows passengers to
browse, share and contribute to recipes
using ingredients from the Limerick Milk
Market
at the Milk Market: The Recipe Station
(Bannon, Ciolfi & McLoughlin, 2009)

16. A modern-day dolmen: a community hub
Sharing stories and images about travel
Linking different places
Linking the airport with its surroundings
at Shannon Airport: The Shannon Portal
(Ciolfi et Al., 2007; Ciolfi, 2007; Ciolfi, Bannon & Fernström, 2008)

19. Exploring an open-air museum through an
assembly of place-appropriate artefacts:
Mobile app
Tangible tokens
Standalone installations
Allowing for participants’ own
contributions
Reminisce at Bunratty Folk
Park
(Ciolfi & McLoughlin, 2011; McLoughlin & Ciolfi, 2011)

20. Movement as constituent of experience of place, the unfolding
of meanings and narratives
Mobility as a situated experience vs. many views in the
Interaction Design field of mobility as place-less
Studies of human practices and experiences on the move
Human actors making places for work and life
Work on the Move

22. NomadS
• How do mobile workers organise their activities in a variety of locations?
How do they make a workplace out of a location?
• Understanding mobility and place to support nomadic workers in their
daily lives
• Case study: sales representatives for “Irish Joiners”, a major company
operating in the UK and Ireland.
• Study of placemaking in different work locations: car, office, home,
building sites, other customers sites
• Transition from paper to high-tech support
• Design of prototypes to work in conjunction with a PDA
(Ciolfi, Bartolucci & Murphy, 2005)

23. Nomadic Work/Life
Collaboration with UL Dept. of Sociology, goal to inform development policies
Extensive qualitative studies of “highly mobile” professionals
- High-tech professionals based in the National Technology Park
- Creative portfolio workers in the Limerick area
- Academics in the region
Role of ICT in mediating mobility and the making of workplace, the transition
between work and life, the gendered aspects of place and of movement
(D’Andrea, Gray & Ciolfi, 2011; deCarvalho, Ciolfi & Gray, 2011)

24. Work in Progress
http://mesch-project.eu/
Petrelli, D., Ciolfi, L., van Dijk, D., Hornecker, E., Not, E. and Schmidt, A. (2013), “Integrating Material and
Digital: A New Way for Cultural Heritage”, ACM Interactions, July + August 2013, 58-63

25. Thanks for listening!
L.Ciolfi@shu.ac.uk
http://luiginaciolfi.com
@luiciolfi