Programme Workshops Walking for Data

Walking for Data

HCI practitioners are often involved in developing mobile applications that pay little heed to the experiences of mobility and place. Although applications commonly utilise location data to deliver contextual information, (e.g. map apps, tourist guides and sports record keeping apps), little consideration is given to how the experience of being mobile and the attendant place making could be used in design. Indeed, bodily movement whilst using a mobile device is often considered problematic! Researchers’ sensitivity to the interactions mobility affords is often restricted by difficulties in collecting data whilst moving about, for example, whilst walking, Yet, as Bidwell illustrates, the importance for design of going beyond devices and methods that “constrain our world to points” is overdue. Researchers are thus driven to develop practical methods for collecting such data.

 

A one-day workshop, intended for HCI practitioners and interaction designers, will be conducted to facilitate discussion of the theoretical issues, and to explore mobile data collection and analysis of the resultant place making through what we have labelled ‘walking methods’. Video, the obvious choice for recording mobility, tends to compound the problem being both difficult to handle because of the amount of information it contains and by providing too narrow a bandwidth to render a satisfactory simile of the experience. Indeed, watching a video recording of mobile interaction is often a pale, non-immersive reflection of the experience. Yet such material affords cued-recall debriefing. By itself this is not sufficient, but it is useful in the process of interacting with the recorded data to develop artifacts that can inform and shape a design space. So, a designer’s role is not necessarily to walk the walk but rather to draw inspiration and to tease out innovation from such artifacts. Based on the day’s activities, the workshop will culminate in a discussion of how mobile interactions might yield material applicable to design.

 

Please visit http://walkingfordata.tumblr.com for additional information.