We describe a novel methodology that examines perceptions of urban space, and present a study using this methodology that explores people’s perceptions of their neighbourhood. Previous studies of spatial cues have involved a variety of tasks such as pointing and sketching to externalise participants’ internal spatial maps. Our methodology extends these approaches by introducing mobile technologies alongside traditional materials and tasks. Participants use mobile phones to carry out self-guided neighbourhood tours. We collected rich qualitative data from 15 participants during two workshops and a self-directed neighbourhood tour. Our study highlights the use of public and private landmarks, differences in spatial maps of rural versus urban dwellers, and individual variance in orientation strategies. These themes suggest guidelines for the design of technologies with personalised spatial profiles.

With an ever increasing number of mobile services, meaningful audio notifications could effectively inform users of the incoming services while minimising undesired and intrusive interruptions. Therefore, careful design of mobile service notification is needed. In this paper we evaluate two types of audio (auditory icons and earcons) as mobile service notifications, by comparing them on 4 measures: intuitiveness, learnability, memorability and user preference. A 4-stage longitudinal evaluation involving two lab experiments, a field study and a web-based experiment indicated that auditory icons performed significantly better in all measures. Implications for mobile audio notification design are presented.

In this paper, we describe a new methodology for the design and evaluation of pervasive systems. We have recruited a cohort of 30 participants who are engaging with an interdisciplinary pervasive computing project Cityware over 3 years. The cohort has been selected in order to represent a broad mix of ages and technological abilities so as to increase the ecological validity of evaluation of systems and applications developed in Cityware. We discuss some of the techniques and methods that we have been able to employ as a result of maintaining this group of participants and illustrate how their data feeds into Cityware studies and applications. While the costs of recruiting and maintaining a cohort such as this are relatively high, the benefits in terms of the depth, richness and validity of results produced in this way are considered to be significant. We discuss this in terms of the potential for new designs, the type of data one can collect and engagement within the city.