Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
16
Visualizing Data Gathered by
Mobile Phones
Michael A. E. Wright, Leif Oppermann and Mauricio Capra
Mixed Reality Laboratory, University of Nottingham
16.1 Introduction
In an increasing number of research disciplines data gathering is an integral part of current
research. Furthermore, data gathering is moving out of the traditional laboratory environ-
ment and into the 'wild'. For example, pollution monitoring as presented by Steed
et al.
(2003) and Rudman
et al.
(2005) uses mobile pollution monitoring equipment to gather
data about pollution levels around a city. Other examples include Uncle Roy All Around You
(Flintham
et al.
, 2003) where a range of data about movements and interactions between
online and street players gave a rich data set from which player cooperation and emergent
behaviour could be studied. This is further explored in mobile pervasive games such as
Can You See Me Now (CYSMN; Anastasi
et al.
, 2002) and I Like Frank (Flintham
et al.
,
2001).
Visualization tools to graphically represent the data gathered by these systems are an
important requirement. Ethnographers, for example, often collect a wide range of data such
as text logs, audio and video. Tools such as Replayer (Tennent and Chalmers, 2005) allow
the ethnographer to view this gathered data based on location tags attached to the data,
which is often presented on a map. Similarly, the Digital Replay System (Crabtree
et al
.,
2006) presents spatial or map views of user movements through the physical environment,
which they have combined with temporal views of the data such as, video, audio and text
logs synchronized by time with the location data. Consequently, data presented in these
visualizations is much more accessible to the ethnographer when compared with the raw
record.
However, one possible limitation to these data gathering systems described above is the
need to physically carry a number of different devices such as a PDA, GPS receiver and
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