finding the there there: theory and praxis of location-aware systems design

Finding the There ThereTheory and Praxis of Location-Aware Systems Design

Thomas WendtSurrounding Signifiers@[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]




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


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“We live in a world where there is more and more

information, and less and less meaning.”

Jean Baudrillard





Data is complicated.


Context is complex.



• Question the ways we currently think about location.

• Illustrate the complexity of location context.

• Start establishing some theoretical models.

Why are we here?


ContextEmbodimentSpacePlacePraxis


Context Layerssituation

environment

cognition

emotion

But what does “context” mean?



Context ≠ Sensors


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

“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.”


Winograd says

Terry Winograd

“Context is an operational term: Something is context because of the way it is used in

interpretation, not due to its inherent properties.”


Winograd says

Terry Winograd


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Context creates meaning





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Context shapes experience





Context is always of something

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Context is never static

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Architecture for everyday life





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Context is all we know





The body presents a problem.


1) We’re thrown into the world.

2) We interact with objects.

3) We cope.


Smooth Coping

User is in the midst of a seamless experience, acting-through, without distinction between self and object.

Section Title


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Surrounding Signifiers srsg.co | @thomas_wendt | [email protected]

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Theoretical knowledge, disconnected from here and now. World presents itself

as an obstacle.

Intentionality


Smooth Coping

Intentionality


Coping

Intentionality


Intentionality

Coping


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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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“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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Cognition






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Cognition in context






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Proprioception






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Disembodied navigation




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Embodied navigation






ProprioceptionOur phones sense our bodily orientation and

act accordingly.


HyperceptionAmbient perception.

Our new subconscious relation to the world.


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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Modernist Tension





"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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“Space is not a thing, but rather a set of relations

between things.” Henri Lefebvre






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Postmodern textualization






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"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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Disappear here




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“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





Ears

Eyes

Skin





Ears

Eyes

Skin

Orientation




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"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




Static map interactions


Idea Representation Action Physical Space



“The map is not the territory”Alfred Korzybski


Idea ActionPotentiality

Representation Representation

Physical Space

Mobile map interactions

Data is complicated.

Context is complex.


Text


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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




Intentionality

Coping




Physical Space



WORLDUnfocused Existence

Decision-orientedInfluenced by Microworlds

MICROWORLDFocused Existence

Task-orientedInfluenced by World


Smooth Coping

Intentionality


Intentionality

Smooth Coping

World

Microworld


FragmentsSense of self is focused on many

concerns at once.


ConnectionsContext is found in the

interconnections between self, world, and microworlds.


DifferencesMeaning emerges out of the

differences between self, world, and microworld.


Intentionality

Coping


Context Layerssituation

environment

cognition

emotion


LayersMany experiences are layered upon

each other.

emotion

cognition situation




Physical Space





Physical Space


intentionality

coping

intentionality smooth coping

coping

smooth coping




Physical Space


virtual

virtual

virtual physical

virtual

physical

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We need more models

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We’re starting to rebuild







We’re like babies...

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Learning to walk


Thanks!

Thomas WendtSurrounding Signifiers@[email protected]





finding the there there: theory and praxis of location-aware systems design

Technology

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