Urban Interaction Design - digital traces and physical places

1. Urban Interaction Design- digital traces and physical places Gabriela Avram Imedia2014

2. Net Localities (Gordon, de Souza) • The concept of the web as a metaphorical city has given way to the reality of the web as part of the city. • physical space has become the context for that information. • for most people, there is no physical city without the web. • The database is all around us.

3. One of the consequences of being able to locate things and people is that you can also be located, and frequently location-aware technologies have been viewed with skepticism and fear due to possible threats to personal privacy and the imminence of top-down and collateral surveillance. • Dataveillance • the distinction between nearness and distancelessness is growing thin.

4. Increasingly, locating oneself is not merely a form of participation, like adding a comment to a blog or posting a review on Yelp. It literally sets conditions for interaction and provides the context from which information is interpreted and used. • Location has become central to the way we navigate information, and as a result, has become central to the way we expect to be navigated. • Urban spaces are becoming hybridized (de Souza e Silva, 2006), meaning they are composed through a combination of physical and digital practices.

5. Net Locality • a global phenomenon • needs to be considered locally • How specific cultures appropriate technologies, adapt social practices, and produce cultural references, are going to influence the meanings of location. • Devices, including your television set and gaming console, will become access points to a ubiquitous, contextualized network. (Gordon & de Souza e Silva- 2011)

6. Geographical Information Systems • In the fourth phase of GIS, maps are not visual documents to be consumed; they are interfaces through which users access, alter and deploy networked data. If the basic functionality of GIS is the integration of databases with maps, where the database is manifested and reflected onto the map, we can begin to understand current practices as a reversal of that reflection. The map is reflected in the database. The integration of this fourth phase of GIS into many aspects of web search has altered the general user approach to data.

7. Just as we gain control of the mappable world, we lose control with the realization that we are part of the world to be mapped. • We lose the world because we believe we are capable of controlling it. • The map creates our world; it does not simply mediate it.

8. projections on urban spaces might also promote social interaction and communication (Spohrer, 1999, p. 609). • Camille Utterback – Abundance

9. Location Based Services • A '''Location-Based Service''' (LBS) is an information or entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device • LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search • LBS include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest banking cash machine or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS include parcel tracking and vehicle tracking services. LBS can include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. They include personalized weather services and even location-based games. They are an example of telecommunication convergence.

10. Geosocial Networking - a type of social network service in which geographic services and capabilities such as geocoding and geotagging are used to enable additional social dynamics.User-submitted location data or geolocation techniques can allow social networks to connect and coordinate users with local people or events that match their interests. Geolocation on web-based social network services can be IP address-based or use (Wi-Fi)hotspottrilateration. For mobile social networks, texted location information or mobile phone tracking can enable location-based services to enrich social networking.

11. Geosocial Networking Uses • Geosocial networking allows users to interact relative to their current locations. Web mapping services with geocoding data for places (streets, buildings, and parks) can be used with geotagged information (meetups, concert events, nightclubs or restaurant reviews) to match users with a place, event or local group to socialize in or enable a group of users to decide on a meeting activity • In disaster scenarios, geosocial networking can allow users to coordinate around collaboratively filtered geotag information on hazards and disaster aid activities to develop a collective situational awareness through an assembly of individual perspectives. This type of geosocial networking is known as collaborative mapping. Furthermore, geolocated messages could assist automated tools to detect and track potential dangers for the general public such as an emerging epidemic .

12. Geosocial Networking Uses(continued) • The technology has obvious implications for event planning and coordination. Geosocial has political applications, as it can be used to organize, track, and communicate events and protests. • For example people can use mobile phones and twitter to quickly organize a protest event before authorities can stop it. • People at the event can communicate with each other and the larger world using mobile device connected to the Internet. • Geosocial has the combined potential of bringing a Social Network or Social Graph to a location, and having people at a location form in to a Social Network or Social Graph. Thus social networks can be expanded by real world contact and recruiting new members.

13. Location-Based Social Media Applications • Foursquare • Gowalla • Google Latitude • Dodgeball • Facebook Places • Yelp • Dopplr • Trip It • GroupOn • An almost exhaustive list here:Location Based Social Networks, Location Based Social apps and games

14. Applications of LBS – Social Media • German Billboard Dispenses Dog Food When You Check In on Foursquare • FlashMob in Milwaukee restaurant • The World of Fourcraft • The wandering Jimmy Choo runners

15. ARGs or MRGs • Alternate reality games or ARGs (also called Mixed Reality Games) are designed to involve fans of video games or other media in a form of viral marketing which CNET described as encompassing "real-life treasure hunting, interactive storytelling, video games and online communities”.

16. Location Based Games • A location-based game (or location-enabled game) is one in which the game play somehow evolves and progresses via a player's location. Thus, location-based games almost always support some kind of localization technology, for example by using satellite positioning like GPS. • "Urban gaming" or "Street Games" are typically multi-player location-based games played out on city streets and built up urban environments. • Current research trends are looking to other embedded mobile technologies • Near Field Communication, • Bluetooth, and • UWB. • Poor technology performance in urban areas has led some location-based games to incorporate disconnectivity as a gameplay asset. • Geocaching is probably the best known LBG

17. I Love Bees • The goal of I Love Bees was: • to utilize every person who interacted with the game, and • to use any electronic resource to do so • "If we could make your toaster print something we would. Anything with an electric current running through it. A single story, a single gaming experience, with no boundaries. A game that is life itself."[16] Weisman

18. Pac-Manhattan • Pac-Manhattan is a real-life version of Pac-Man created in 2004. It was invented by graduate students at the Interactive Telecommunications Program in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. It uses Wi-Fi technology, open-source software, and cell phones. • The game is played with ten people: "Pac-Man" and his "controller" (who keeps contact with him via cell phone and keeps track of how much of the city he has covered), and the four ghosts and their controllers. Pac-Man and the Ghosts play out the game on the streets of Manhattan while their respective controllers give them information and strategy advice via cell-phone from the control room. • Pac-Man and his controller have an intelligence advantage as a result of Pac-Man's controller having a bird's eye view of the game. Pac-Man's controller can see the current position of all the Ghosts on the streets, although the Ghosts' controllers cannot see the current position of Pac-Man, only that of the other Ghosts. Thus the Ghosts' numerical advantage is balanced against Pac-Man's information advantage.

19. Uncle Roy All Around You • Uncle Roy All Around You is an urban game by Blast Theory from 2003. Street Players used handheld computers to search for Uncle Roy using the map and incoming messages to move through the city. Online Players cruise through a virtual map of the same area, searching for Street Players to help them find a secret destination. Using web cams, audio and text messages players must work together to find Uncle Roy. The game uses street level phone boxes and a limousine. • The game premiered in the immediate vicinity of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (the hosting venue), London in June 2003. The work was changed significantly at subsequent settings including the Cornerhouse in Manchester and The Public in West Bromwich.

20. Flypad • Flypad is a bespoke multi-player, augmented reality, physics-based game. Twelve screens and interactive footpads line one section of a long ramp that spirals round an atrium in The Public (Nottingham). Visitors step up onto the pads and see their avatar (as well as other players' avatars) superimposed on the atrium's empty space. In the game, players steer their avatar around the space using the footpad. They exchange body parts with other players by colliding with them and engaging in increasingly more complex wrestling holds. Players attempt to stay flying for as long as possible as they get heavier over time.

21. Design Exercise • In groups of 3-4, do a quick brainstorming about a potential game that: • Would be based on location- places around Limerick • Would use digital material available online – videos, audio recordings, pictures, blogposts, Facebook pages • Would allow for interaction through existing social media apps: Twitter, Facebook, Foursqaure • Would be easy to cobble together from existing components