CityFlocks: Designing Social Navigation for Urban Mobile Information Systems

Longitude / Latitude g /Coord.(‐27.46758, 153.027892)Name: „Coffee Palace“ + folksonomy tags

R ti fRating from1‐10Comment: „This place serves the best coffee in town!“Contact Information(email, phone, mobile,(email, phone, mobile, SMS)

CityFlocks: A Mobile System for Social Navigation in Urban Public PlacesCityFlocks: A Mobile System for Social Navigation in Urban Public PlacesMark Bilandzic

Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universität München

Does this phone really tell you WHERE to go…?!

…or rather how to get somewhere, once you have figured out where to go?

CityFlocks: A Mobile System for Social Navigation in Public Urban Places 2

Social Navigation: Physical Objects Provide Visible Interaction History






Community Driven Services vs. Professional Information Services

Classic Mobile Information Services are mostlycontrolled by a single entity

CityFlocks is controlled and fed with informationby „The Wisdom of the Crowds“

Profession Information Provider CityFlocksProfession Information Provider CityFlocks


CityFlocks* Workflow: Three Simple Steps to Gather Social Navigational Help

1 2 3

Tag Search Relevant Places + User Created Comments + (folksonomy) Average Rating Contact Information


*URL: http://staff.ci.qut.edu.au/~foth/historyLines/login/login.html

Community Driven Mobile Information Systems: Designing for Social Navigation I

# of comments left at a place/ # of comments left at a place/ local service local service

Average ratingAverage ratingof a place/ localserviceof a place/ localservice



Community Driven Mobile Information Systems: Designing for Social Navigation II

Voice link to an expert resident(direct)

Voice link to an expert resident(direct)(direct)(direct)

SMS to an expert residentSMS to an expert residentexpert resident(direct)expert resident(direct)

Location based Location based Context informationContext information

user comment(indirect)user comment(indirect)

• Information Provider• Message Meta‐Info• Information Provider• Message Meta‐Info



Community Driven Mobile Information Systems: Designing for Social Navigation II

Context information about the expert

Context information about the expert useruser

Link to see further areas ofLink to see further areas offurther areas of expertisefurther areas of expertise

CityFlocks: A Mobile System for Social Navigation in Public Urban Places 10*URL: http://staff.ci.qut.edu.au/~foth/historyLines/login/login.html

CityFlocks improves Social Navigation using Locative Media and Mobile Web 2.0 Technology

Mobile Spatial Interaction

Location Based ServicesLocation Based Services

Context Awareness

Virtual Post‐Its

CityFlocks / Mobile Web 2.0*Mobile Web 2.0

Web 2.0

User Generated Content

Folksonomy

Geotagging

Social Navigation

Wisdom of the Crowds

Knowledge Sharing

Social CapitalAJAX

Social Capital


* A. Jaokar and T. Fish, Mobile Web 2.0

Focus Group Sessions – How do people make use of Social Navigation?


User Interface Design: Iterative Paper Prototyping


CityFlocks Connects People who Have not Known Each Other Before

Is such a social navigation system better than information from professional sources?

Do users rather prefer direct‐ or indirect link to local residents? In which situation?

CityFlocks

search for keywordse.g.‚fast‐food‘

Finds anexpert‐resident

1

User Comments

2

Visitor Local Resident

Voice‐Link / SMS

2


CityFlocks‘ Research Questions

CityFlocks […], eine Art touristischer Empfehlungsdienst:Einheimische versehen ihre Stadt mit Annotationen über Clubs,Restaurants und Freizeitaktivitäten, und Besucher der Stadt können,diese Informationen abrufen und sogar die Verfasser kontaktieren.Schon bei diesem Beispiel zeigt sich das doppelte Gesicht der neuenTechnik. Will ich wirklich von einem Touristen angerufen werden,der sich für das Nachtleben meiner Heimatstadt interessiert?

Christoph Drösser, DIE ZEIT, Nr. 39 (Germany National Newspaper)


The CityFlocks Relational Database Model


Publications

Following publications form parts of this thesis:

Bilandzic, M., & Foth, M. (2008, forthcoming). Social Navigation and Local Folksonomies: Technical and Design Considerations for an Urban Mobile Information System. In S. Hatzipanagos & S. Warburton (Eds.), Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Bilandzic, M., Foth, M., & De Luca, A. (2008, Feb 25‐27). CityFlocks: Designing Social Navigation for UrbanBilandzic, M., Foth, M., & De Luca, A. (2008, Feb 25 27). CityFlocks: Designing Social Navigation for Urban Mobile Information Systems. Paper to be presented at the ACM SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) Conference, Cape Town, South Africa.

Bilandzic, M., & Foth, M . (2007, Sep 3‐5). CityFlocks: A Mobile System for Social Navigation in Urban Public Places Paper presented at the Locative Media Summer Conference University of Siegen GermanyPlaces. Paper presented at the Locative Media Summer Conference, University of Siegen, Germany.

Bilandzic, M., & Foth, M. (2007, Sep 5‐6). Transferring Web 2.0 Paradigms to a Mobile System for Social Navigation in Public Inner‐City Places. Paper presented at the Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0 Conference, York, UK.

Klaebe, H., Foth, M., Burgess, J., & Bilandzic, M. (2007) Digital Storytelling and History Lines: Community Engagement in a Master‐Planned Development. In Proceedings 13th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM'07), Brisbane.

Bilandzic, M., & Foth, M. (2007) Urban computing and mobile devices: Mobile Location Bookmarking. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 6(3), pp. 53‐57.


Contact Details

Thank you!Thank you!

Contact:

Mark [email protected]


+49 170 6130 306

Methodology

Focus Group InterviewsHow do people make use of Social Navigation in their What obstacles do they experience when navigating

User SurveyA id t illi t h th i t it k l d ? Whi h h l d id t f t id

How do people make use of Social Navigation in their everyday life?

What obstacles do they experience when navigating socially?

Requirements and design implications for system architecture

Paper Prototyping

Are residents willing to share their tacit knowledge?With whom and with whom not?

Which channels do residents prefer to provideaccess to their local knowledge?

Design implication for communication channels

Implementation

Sketch typical use cases Refine user interface, user interaction and screen flowDesign implications for user interaction and interface design

Iterative Development

User Study - Evaluation of a mobile information system

Mobile web application

User Study Evaluation of a mobile information systemthat follows the social navigation approach

How does the system perform compared to professional information

sources?

Which concept, direct- or indirect social navigation, works better as a design and interaction approach and under

which conditions?

Which communication modes do people prefer when using social navigation on a mobile device?


which conditions?

CityFlocks is a Meshup of Folksonomy‐Tags, User Comments and Geographic Coordinates

Tags(ice-cream(ice-cream,

desert, coffee)

Urban Place / Service

UserLongitude /

Latitude

(-27.46758, 153 027892)

User Comment

„This place serves the best

ice cream in 153.027892)ice-cream in town!“


CityFlocks‘ Research Questions

CityFlocks […], eine Art touristischer Empfehlungsdienst:Einheimische versehen ihre Stadt mit Annotationen über Clubs,Restaurants und Freizeitaktivitäten, und Besucher der Stadt könnendiese Informationen abrufen und sogar die Verfasser kontaktieren.Schon bei diesem Beispiel zeigt sich das doppelte Gesicht der neuenTechnik. Will ich wirklich von einem Touristen angerufen werden,der sich für das Nachtleben meiner Heimatstadt interessiert?

Christoph Drösser, DIE ZEIT, Nr. 39 (Germany National Newspaper)


Selected Area for the Field Study: The Kelvin Grove Urban Village, Brisbane, Australia


CitiyFlock‘s Database Model uses Folksonomy to Organise User Created Contents

Users define particular places, submit comments to these places and describe them with tags.


Database Model Supports Various Communication Channels and Prevents Privacy Issues

Users can specify for each place individually if and how they wish to provide direct advice


A User Generated CityFlocks Message Consists of 5 Information Layers

Longitude / Latitude Coord.(‐27.46758, 153.027892)

Name: „Coffee Palace“ + folksonomy tags

Rating from1‐10

Comment: „This place serves the best coffee in town!“

Contact Information(email, phone, mobile, SMS)


Applying the Folksonomy Paradigm for a Mobile Service

TaggingTagging Geo Tagging

Web 2.0Web 2.0 Mobile Web 2.0Mobile Web 2.0

Folksonomy

Tagging

• Photos (Flickr!)• Videos (YouTube)• Weblinks (Delicious)

Tagging

• Photos (Flickr!)• Videos (YouTube)• Weblinks (Delicious)

Geo‐Tagging

• Longitudes / Latitudes• Urban places• Local servicesWeblinks (Delicious)Weblinks (Delicious) • Local services


Different Stylesheets make CityFlocks easily accessible via a Web UI or a Mobile Device

Using the same backend system, different stylesheets are used to optimize the representation for computer‐ and mobile device screens

CityFlocks – Database/Backend

Stylesheet ‐Web Stylesheet ‐Mobile


CityFlocks is Cross System Compatible: Separating Content and Representation

CityFlocks





Graffiti on election campaign posters[http://www.graffitieuropa.org/wahlplakate.htm]



Graffities in inner‐cities[http://www.graffitieuropa.org/graffitiwien/pages/hotspots%20Kopie.htm]


Local Services in a City: When Visitors Only Could KnowWhat Locals Know…

cheapcheap

excellentcoffee

excellentcoffee

tztztztz

cheapcheap

friendlyfriendly

“ we just walked through the town and find the place …we just walked through the town and find the place with the most people, you know, that's where the

good food is! We would just pick the busiest place...”

“ or look around for the busiest shop the place

Which cafe would your rather go to?

… or look around for the busiest shop, the place where the most people go to is probably the best food. I've tried it a couple of times, it

mostly turns out to be good”


Web Users Upload Location Based Content that can be Requested by Mobile CityFlocks Users

CityFlocksDatabase

Data InputGoogle Maps

Web User Interface

Data OutputMobile Device


Designing Urban Information Systems with the Collective Intelligence of Local Residents

The Wisdom of the Crowds


CityFlocks provides two different channels to let people access the pool of social knowledge

Local Residents

Contact Information Location Based Comments

CityFlocks ‐ Servery


Focus Group OutcomesPeople use three different sources to get recommendation about local services in a new city

Imagine you're new in a city and you want to find a good restaurant. What do you do…?

Direct Social Navigation Indirect Social Navigation

“I thi k I ld k th l l l I ld “ j t lk d th h th t d fi d th“I think I would ask the local people. I would probably go to a shop and ask the local business people”

“I think just about anything I would do to be honest, my first call would be other people,

h f d ll ”

• “ …we just walked through the town and find the place with the most people, you know, that's where the good food is! We would just pick the busiest place...”

• “ or look around for the busiest shop theLocal ServiceRecommendations

either my friends or colleagues”

“I’ll ask friends who live there. How is it, where I go. Friends first, then websites”

• … or look around for the busiest shop, the place where the most people go to is probably the best food. I've tried it a couple of times, it

mostly turns out to be good”

“Websites and even information centres. Booklets, restaurant guides”“Outside Australia, definitely Lonely Planet!”“I would probably Google it, if there was a language barrier with the local people I would just look it up in the internet” “ I go to Wikipedia”people, I would just look it up in the internet , …I go to Wikipedia

Professional Information Sources


Designing a Mobile System to facilitate Social Navigation

CityFlocks bridge time and as well as space barriers

Direct Social Navigation

‐ Voice‐link to expert residents

‐ Location based user createdcomments

Indirect Social Navigation

‐ Rating system providingaverage grade for urban public places.

‐ Context of people who havebeen there before


Applying the Folksonomy Paradigm for a Mobile Service

Web 2.0Web 2.0 Mobile Web 2.0Mobile Web 2.0

FolksonomyFolksonomy

Tagging

• Photos (Flickr!)• Videos (YouTube)

Tagging

• Photos (Flickr!)• Videos (YouTube)

Geo‐tagging

• Longitudes / Latitudes• Urban places

Geo‐tagging

• Longitudes / Latitudes• Urban places

• Weblinks (Delicious)• Weblinks (Delicious) • Local services• Local services


CityFlocks Workflow II: 2 simple steps to gather direct navigational help

1 2 3

f dEnter search tag for the wanted expertise

List of expert residents +contact details

Select expert resident search in the main menu


Folksonomy: Seeing Other User‘s Tags Helps to Find Related Content

1 2 431 2 43


Folksonomy: Seeing Other User‘s Tags Helps to Find Related Content

1 2

43


Focus Group Interviews:Imagine you're new in a city and you want to find a good restaurant. What do you do…?

AnswersI think I would ask the local people. I would probably go to a shop and ask the local business people.

ProblemsWe are fairly elderly and we don't go out and ask 20 year olds or 25 year olds. They might not quite understand what we're talking about. It might be to do

I would do the same what Brooke did, you can only learn from asking around. We do read a lot but you also have to talk to people... and use any source of information you can get, that's the way you learn... I would like to hear everybody's version

I usually ask the people where I am staying. That's what I usually do. Although, sometimes I might have a guidebook where I pick out something. So it's a mixture of both... it usually depends on what I think about the people.

I always ask people who are like me. Sometimes it's pretty hard to actually find local

with the age...

Our age group determines I think to some extend. On the other hand, if you have relatives and grand children, that's different. You react different to them.

Sometimes I find myself up for adventure, so I don't go and ask people straight away like would look something up on a website.

I really like walking, like walking around and marking stuff for myself. So I wouldy p p p y ypeople in strange places that are not people who have a set of things to sell you anyway. So you really don't know whether you can trust them because they're actually about to make a bargain. So I usually ask people who are like me, because I think, well, if they had a good experience with a restaurant last night, then I am lucky to have one as well.

We sort of help out each other, well, with any kind of problem, we advice people where to go Magret the other day told me where the bus stop is I didn't know where

I really like walking, like walking around and marking stuff for myself. So I would go like, oh there is a doctor here, okay, so I will know for the next time when I need it or this is a library, just kind of a very exploratory kind of mode.

Professional Information SourcesWebsites and even information centres. Booklets, restaurant guides.

Outside Australia, definitely Lonely Planet. where to go. Magret, the other day told me where the bus stop is. I didn t know where the bus to the hospital goes from, so Magret showed it to me.

To me it actually doesn't matter what the age is or how they dress like you know it's just about trying to get some knowledge. And I will actually ask a couple of people to find out what the best idea is to do in that way, you know. Everybody has different thoughts and different opinions about things, so I would ask several people in that way.

I’ll ask friends who live there. How is it, where I go. Friends first, then websites.

I go to Wikipedia (for destinations outside Australia) (People then discusses the Wikipedia and show their positive attitudes towards its credibility)

I would probably Google it, if there was a language barrier with the local people, I would just look it up in the internet.

Do you feel comfortable ringing people for a short advice even I wouldn’t normally go somewhere unknown to me unless I’ve read about it somewhere saying it’s good, or someone says to me that it’s really good and I should check it out.

I would definitely just ask my friends to start with if I wanted to know about something. Might depend a little bit on, sort of the type of information that I was looking for. Maybe 'Is there a good doctor to see at the health service' for example. 'Which doctor would you see?' ‐ that might be a different type of information to 'Where do I get the

though you haven't kept in touch for a long time?I woundn't do it. Depends who it is, but that's rude.

I am actually okay with doing that with male friends, but I wouldn't do it with female friends.

If this was a close friend, it would be alright. But not with people you don't normally keep in touch withy g yp g

bus from?'. I think just about anything I would do to be honest, my first call would be other people, either my friends or colleagues.

don t normally keep in touch with.


Focus Group InterviewsIndirect Social Navigation

Answers:

Once I went with my boyfriend to Cairns, and we

Problems:

How do you bridge time and space barriers?were just travelling and stuff and didn't know anyone. so we just walked through the town and find the place with the most people, you know, that's where the good food is! We would just pick

e.g. if you want to go to a good restaurantwhen not many people are around?

e.g. if you want to get a recommendationwhen you are not in situ?

the busiest place...

… or look around for the busiest shop, the place where the most people go to is probably the best food. I've tried it a couple of times, it mostly turns

when you are not in situ?

Not all physical objects provide interaction history

out to be good.

I would take a walk around the city and pick up different places... and eventually come back to the place that looked bestp


Focus Group OutcomesThere is a need to Democratise Information about Urban Services: The Wisdom of the Crowds

Problem

“I always ask people who are like me. Sometimes it's pretty hard to actually find local people in strange places that are not people who have a set of things to sell you anyway. So you really don't know whether you can trust them because they're actually about to make a bargain. So I usually ask people who are like me, because I think, well, if they had a good experience with a restaurant last night, then I am lucky to have one as well”

“ …you can only learn from asking around. We do read a lot but you also have to talk to people... and use any source of information you can get, that's the way you learn... I would like to hear everybody's version”

“…everybody has different thoughts and different opinions about things, so I would ask several people in that way”that way

Solution

We propose a system that leveraging the collective intelligence of urban residents to rate and set comments on local public places and services


Location Based Comments Provide Navigational Help

„It takes awayfrom you to take a decision when you don't have

enough information to make it So it'senough information to make it. So it ssomebody else who's got that information and

they can give you a shot…“


CityFlocks vs. Professional Information Sources: Democratising Urban Information

[about an article in the kuRB magazine*]“ h i h h k“...they can write whatever they want, you know…

…whatever makes this place sound good”

[about the CityFlocks application] „It sounds really vague, but it's a feeling that you'reconnected with somebody. You've connected toconnected with somebody. You ve connected tosomebody and they've almost talked you in

something or talked you out of this…“


*a city guidebook for the Kelvin Grove Urban Village in Brisbane, Australia

People only use the direct voice link for friends and if they knew they would not interrupt them

[afraid of talking to a stranger]

“I wouldn’t just call a random person. I would like to know at least something about them, before I call them. If it said, for example ‘Anne, 23, medicine

student’ I would consider ringing her up for advice, but what if it’s a professor or doctor or whatever, you know. That could be awkward. I wouldn’t really y y

know how to talk to them.”

[afraid of talking to a stranger][afraid of talking to a stranger]

“Probably no, I prefer to call people that I know. During the day, you know, people work, I don’t know. If I had the option to send an SMS, I would always go

for the SMS.”


CityFlocks Provides Information about Urban Places as well as Urban Residents

[CityFlocks comment about a park at the KGUV]“I love to spend time hereI love to spend time herewith my granddaughter…”


KGUV residents compare their own opinion / rumors with the CityFlocks comments

[searching for food facilities]“Oh I wanna see the IGA somebody told meOh, I wanna see the IGA, somebody told meit’s quite expensive, let me check this out!”


Direct voice link is not appropriate for unimportant everyday questions

[after a phone call with an expert resident]

“That was kinda awkward, …I mean when it wasjust about the bloody coffee I would just gojust about the bloody coffee I would just go,

I mean it’s 3 bucks...”


De.licio.us Uses Folksonomy to Organise User Created Weblinks


Flickr! uses Folksonomy to Organise User Created Photos


An Active Search Widget facilitates Local Data Input


Performance Issues due Content Overload

The response time of the system decreased increasingly with the amount of content submitted.


Current Trends make the Mobile Platform is capable to improve Social Navigation

CustomisedInfotainment

MultimediaSophisticated Multimedia Capabilities

pUser

Interfaces

High Speed Mobile Internet

Access

Rich Voice/Video Telephony Access

Location Based

Services

Telephony
