Presentation at the MIT

Today, I presented to the SENSEable City Lab team my past projects and my line of research on location-awarness at the crossroad of ubicomp, HCI and urban studies. This purpose was to provide a rather detailed awareness of my research agenda to maybe find synergies for the future. The slides and notes are available here.

The feedbacks were rather positive with many questions and discussions around the shift from location-based services and location-enhanced services (e.g. location is not at the center of attention). Carlo Ratti questioned the overall coherence of my different studies. For example, he was puzzled by the case study of a study of a system such as Flickr, designed by somebody else to then evaluated my own design in the field. I am aware (and concerned) that I will need to find relations between studies, but so far the several advisors who have seen my work at CHI and Pervasive confirmed me that if was fine. However, I surely will need to find a stronger focus (e.g. study of one/two specific spatial activity) and define the audience and part of the system (e.g. interface visualization, interaction, middleware) I would like to influence. My claim is that I am in a funnel and that this summer case studies will lead me to study and evaluate more specific issues as the one I described today.