Collaborative Research: Mark This! - Operationalizing the Notion of "Place" For Interactive Community Systems

移动的位置感知设备为全新的信息服务提供了潜力。然而，这种潜力尚未实现。这部分是由于缺乏坚实的概念和经验基础。该方案探索了构建必要基础的一个基础：社会定义的场所。环境心理学和建筑学已经探索了场所（如学校、办公室或剧院）如何塑造行为，但“场所”的概念还没有在互动系统中应用。这个项目承担了那个任务。关键假设是：(a)人们的信息和通信需求与地点类型有关，(b)将“地点”作为一级计算对象将提高基于位置的系统的有效性和可用性。该项目将通过结合民族志研究、新算法和界面的开发以及实验室和实地研究来检验这些假设，从而得出以下结果：1)关于地点概念及其在组织人们活动中的作用的额外经验知识；2)对基于位置的系统设计人员有用的概念框架和指南；3)以场所为中心的社区信息共享系统的通用基础设施；4)现场研究和实验室评估，证明这些系统的实用性和可接受性。

Mobile, location-aware devices raise the potential for fundamentally new information services. However, this potential has not been realized. This is due in part to the absence of a firm conceptual and empiricalfoundation. This proposal explores one basis for constructing the requisite foundation: socially defined places. How places (such as schools, offices, or theaters) shape behavior has been explored in environmentalpsychology and architecture, but the notion of 'place' has not been operationalized for use in interactive systems. This project takes on that task. The key hypotheses are that (a) people's information andcommunication needs are relative to place types, and (b) making 'place' a first-class computational object will increase the effectiveness and usability of location-based systems. This project will test the hypothesesthrough a combination of ethnographic studies, development of novel algorithms and interfaces, and laboratory and field studies, leading to the following results: 1) additional empirical knowledge about the concept of place and its role in organizing people's activities; 2) a conceptual framework and guidelines useful to designers of location-based systems; 3) a general infrastructure for place-centered community information sharing systems; and 4) field studies and laboratory evaluations that demonstrate the utilityand acceptability of such systems.