Last changed 21 Feb 2001 ............... Length about 800 words (5,000 bytes).
This is a WWW document maintained by Steve Draper, installed at http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/equator/ade.html. You may copy it. How to refer to it.

Web site logical path: [www.psy.gla.ac.uk] [~steve] [equator] [this page]

Notes on the project on Group spatial coordination

by
Stephen W. Draper

Possible titles

Group spatial coordination

Digital support for group coordination in public spaces

The problem addressed is that when people go as a group to a public place, keeping track of the others so as to maintain the group conflicts with giving attention to the surroundings which is the point of the trip in the first place. This applies in malls, museums, Buchanan St., Grizedale sculpture forest, a department store. What is wanted is a more convenient way of keeping track of all the members of the group when wanted, without having to keep so close together and spend such a large part of one's attention on it. A measure of total success for an advanced system is whether it allows group members to be out of sight for long periods, but to link up again as soon as they wish.

Intuitively, a cord of weak elastic linking everyone would be the thing; and indeed, kindegartens sometimes get the children to hold on to a long rope to get that effect. However in public places such cords quickly interfere with other people there. Possible digital technologies might include:

As for car alarms: one member presses their button, and beepers in other members' pockets go off or flash. Or a strobe they wear round their heads gives off a huge flash directed up to the ceiling, which you can see from afar, without their being dazzled.
Similarly, on a button press, chains of illuminated arrows on the wall guide the inquirer to the next member. The timing might be enough to distinguish between groups i.e. only the arrows or beeps that go off at the moment I press my button are relevant to me.
Active badges inform a computer where everyone is. A member has a PDA with a sketch map of the museum/mall etc. layout, and group members are shown as green dots on that layout. Everyone else in the building shows as orange dots (which would also therefore give information on where the crowds and queues were, on groups that might be landmarks relative to which to find your own group; might show your child surrounded by taller people, which is why you had lost sight of them).
Any person whose badge goes outside the range of the system would sound an alarm to their group (i.e. child wandering away from the mall, party member leaving the museum altogether is a signal that it's time to leave).
GPS or indoor equivalent might show bearing (direction) and distance to another group member.
I.e. consider a wrist device, or pocket device.

Kinds of group:

Couples
Parents and several children
School parties
Conference / organised tours i.e. adults, but larger numbers, and not knowing each other well.
Children playing "near home"
*Find a (disabled?) user group for whom this is a severe, critical,
A group of friends at a Glastonbury festival. (A super-severe issue, given the huge crowds and consequent difficulty of finding anybody again once separated. Also, shows the technology should be able to deal with tens of thousands of people at once.) problem.

Initial field studies could ask organisers of each target site how many and what kind of problems occur of people losing other group members. But I suspect that this is an example of something that most people manage OK, but would adopt something that made it much more effortless.

This is probably analogous to (is there mileage in analysing this?) animals calling in herds or forests to keep in touch.

Last points

Probably this is a great demo/application, perhaps even the "killer app", of active badges: something they could clearly do, that might be really useful as it focusses on occasions where people want to make a much higher than usual density of enquiries, and where mobile/wearable output is required rather than a workstation display.

Many small variations to explore: different methods of sensing; of display and information delivery; of how to measure benefit. Explore whether to design it as supplying peripheral awareness, or supporting active queries, or even active messages (you push your button and it tells the others to come and find you).

But if successful, in the longer term could be added to almost any "wired" environment. E.g. built into audio wands in museums, into PDA museum guides, etc. etc. and offered as an add-on service. It can expand into wider digitally supported environmental awareness (i.e. one's own group, where the crowds of other visitors are, official guides/janitors shown, ....). Extend it to a facility for helping people meet each other by arrangement: instead of saying "under the clock", you wait anywhere until their symbol appears on your display, and then you go towards where it says they are. Could try applying it to meetings in an organisation / dept. (is X coming / on their way?).

How would I do it?

How would I do it if I had private resources?

I'm convinced from discussing it that this is going to be important: i.e. the need doesn't need research, just the methods for supporting it, and the ways the need appears currently.

Firstly, I'd do some small interview studies with DIFFERENT possible users: e.g. parents with young children, couples in shops, those with mobile phones (would they need anything else?), etc. Also, with "managers" of possible target sites to ask about relevant problems with their clients they have seen.

Also firstly, I'd play in the lab/local dept. with alternative methods for delivering it: PDAs, etc. Some would turn out so bad that no one wanted to take them out of the lab.

The rest, secondly, I'd install in my first test site: a museum, mall, other public space. And start observations of use.

Web site logical path: [www.psy.gla.ac.uk] [~steve] [equator] [this page]
[Top of this page]