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The project brought together researchers from diverse disciplines to examine the
relationship between mobile media and collaboration, and served as a catalyst for
a network of personnel and activities that could advance both these and
emergent themes from the work. The project was grounded in the theory of
Wenger (1999) and Coyne (2010), however little stimulus was required for
potential participants to offer opinion and examples of how mobile devices
manipulate, change and adjust situations. With mobile phones proving a catalyst
for impassioned discussion and debate around information, collaboration and
group working the research stimulated a wide range of both curiosity and concern
regarding issues such as identity, synchronicity, inter-disciplinary, information
over load and interaction.
The main thrust of the research was to develop a mobile software application
(Figure 1) to run on iPhones and iPads that could be used to test difference
suppositions on group working. Different disciplines brought approaches and
methodology for developing the application – private computing consultants and
Computer Science proved particularly adept at this. Architecture and construction
served as the focus for group working exemplars, meetings and design
discussions being the main point of interest. Business and cultural studies raised
questions and proposed workshops to test theories regarding digital media and
identity. The Geo-sciences and archaeology provided a divergent field of study
focusing on synchronicity and asynchronicity. Emergent themes have resulted
from the inter-disciplinary nature of the project and additional research continues
to be consolidated at the expiration of this project.
Activities
As proposed a mobile application was designed and deployed on iPhones and
iPads, also ‘test-cases’ were held with the mobile phone application being
deployed in various contexts.
Figure 2 Screenshots of the group selection screen and a typical 'fieldnote' containing both
text and image
Although the FoRST target for application is June 2011, changes in the
FoRST funding body may require a reframing of the proposed project.
Research Themes
The research was proposed to ‘seed’ future work. As the project is now wrapping
up, several themes have been consolidated, and will be explored in future
research.
Electronic Memory
A digital topography now exists between, across and folded into objects and
places. Increasingly occupants are sensitised to this digital landscape and ‘check-
in’ using 4square or facebook. Incentives are given and new invisible territories
created, existing in parallel and exerting an effect on our built environment.
Architecture has a long tradition of embedding memory in built objects. However,
can we design for this electronic memory? How does this rich digital media
influence the perception of place and space?
Inter-group dynamics
In environments that are still subject to the ravages of nature data gathering
remains an analogue process. However a new generation of smart phone and
tablet mobile computing is changing that. Although we take synchronous
communication as a given in our current situation, Within processes such as of
governance, and environmental or archaeological investigation, groups and
individuals work autonomously recording and logging data in pro-forma layouts.
Quickly identifying both inconsistencies and agreements in such environments is
important, however being able to align a single groups data can be time
consuming, let alone analysing inter-group dynamics, consistency and
resonances. The digital fieldnotes applications presents the possibility of the live
logging of data and tagging it with group as well as locative information. Can this
supposed benefit actually help inter-group working? How can we display, mine
and interact with such complex information?
Expenditure
Expenditure went according to the intended budget outline in the project
application. There were some fluctuation in hardware cost but these were
mitigated against other costs within the project budget. Balance as of March was
NZ$4397, final invoice of NZ$4025 (excluding GST) was submitted 4th April.