I first gave this talk at the Pitney Bowes Innovation Day 2013. The goals for the presentation were to 1) use theories of context and embodied interaction to examine the ways our conceptions of space and place have evolved, 2) illustrate new complexities of location-aware mobile design, and 3) suggest some new theoretical frameworks for thinking about designing location-aware systems.
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Finding the There There: theory and praxis of location-aware systems design
1. Finding the There
There
Theory and Praxis of Location-Aware Systems
Design
Thomas Wendt
Surrounding Signifiers
@thomas_wendt
thomas@srsg.co
srsg.co
2. 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
3. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Seining_salmon.jpg
4. Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
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
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• Question the ways we currently think about
location.
• Illustrate the complexity of location context.
• Start establishing some theoretical models.
Why are we here?
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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
14. “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.”
Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
Winograd says
Terry Winograd
15. “Context is an operational term: Something is
context because of the way it is used in
interpretation, not due to its inherent properties.”
Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
Winograd says
Terry Winograd
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Context creates meaning
17. Text
Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://www.deviantart.com/download/281824001/reading_book_by_srnnrgz-
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Context shapes experience
18. Context is always of something
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Context is never static
https://www.google.com/url?
sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=qpWnd3U5dLkNYM&t
20. Text
Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
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Architecture for everyday life
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Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://fogsmoviereviews.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/
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Context is all we know
23. The body presents a problem.
Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
24. 1) We’re thrown into
the world.
2) We interact with
objects.
3) We cope.
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Smooth Coping
User is in the midst of a seamless
experience, acting-through, without
distinction between self and object.
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Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
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Theoretical knowledge, disconnected
from here and now. World presents itself
as an obstacle.
Intentionality
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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wxrYOHd_MKA/T9d3EJi8LXI/AAAAAAAAAB8/
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“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
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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wxrYOHd_MKA/T9d3EJi8LXI/AAAAAAAAAB8/
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“Embodiment is the property of
our engagement with the world
that allows us to make it
meaningful.” Paul Dourish
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Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/adesignaday/files/2009/06/
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Moravec’s Paradox
“High order” tasks are easy to program.
“Low order” tasks are difficult to program.
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http://www.cnmeonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IBM-
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Cognition
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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
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http://img103.fansshare.com/pic12/w/non-celebrity/
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"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
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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
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Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
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
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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
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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
66. Text
Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt
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"A schizophrenic out for a
walk is a better model than a
neurotic lying on the analyst's
couch." Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
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Idea ActionPotentiality
Representation Representation
Physical Space
Mobile map interactions
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WORLD
Unfocused Existence
Decision-oriented
Influenced by Microworlds
MICROWORLD
Focused Existence
Task-oriented
Influenced by World
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Layers
Many experiences are layered upon
each other.
emotion
cognition situation
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Idea ActionPotentiality
Representation Representation
Physical Space
Mobile map interactions
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Idea ActionPotentiality
Representation Representation
Physical Space
Mobile map interactions
intentionality
coping
intentionality
smooth
coping
coping
smooth
coping
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Idea ActionPotentiality
Representation Representation
Physical Space
Mobile map interactions
virtual
virtual
virtual physical
virtual
physical
82. 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