Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 16.4
The pattern of two players
context information. Using mobile phones as a data collection device allows for a range of
multimedia data to be collected. Collection of data using mobile phones gives the researcher
a wide pool of potential participants for research activities such as exploration of social
interaction, peoples' relationships with their environments and emergent behaviour in new
types of pervasive gaming. The manner in which this data is collected is determined by the
researcher. Simply asking the participant to collect data is one approach, or another could
be to use games to prompt and direct participants to collect data.
Once we have collected this data we are then presented with the challenge of visualizing
this data for analysis. Often we collect data which can be location tagged and therefore we
are able to present this data spatially. In the hitchers case study we show how mobile phone
cell IDs can be used to present a spatial representation of data collected during the course of
the game. Although this spatial representation does not correspond to physical locations on
a map, the analyst can view an abstract spatial representation of the data that can facilitate
exploration and reveal clusters of interest.
Conversely, with newer mobile phones, GPS is becoming an integrated feature and there-
fore precise physical location information can be captured. This then allows the possibility
of presenting data on maps through existing GIS software or other tools such as Google
Earth (2007)
To supplement this location information it is often possible to collect context information
about a location. This context information can include, for example, the number of Blue-
tooth connections, the number of recognized Bluetooth connections, WiFi access points,
etc., which can be used to present information about the surrounding environment. For
example, if an area has a large number of Bluetooth connections it could be assumed that the
environment has a large number of people. If these Bluetooth connections are other mobile
phones then this could be a crowded city centre; however, if they are Bluetooth connections
from computers then it could be the participant's place of work.
Additional insight can be gained by inspecting this data over time. The advantage to
allowing the analyst to view how the collected data was built up is that patterns in the data
Search WWH ::
Custom Search