This document discusses exploring urban spaces through digital traces left on location-based social media. It outlines research into how people create and consume digital content related to places in a city and how this additional digital layer can influence perceptions of places. The author describes interventions in Limerick, Ireland to reflect on the relationship between the physical city and its digital representation by supporting communities' digital presence and hosting events discussing the interweaving of digital and physical layers. Future plans are to further study how the digital overlay impacts both life in the city and perceptions of the city.

1. Connected Limerick:
exploring urban spaces through
digital traces
Gabriela Avram
Interaction Design Centre,
University of Limerick, Ireland
gabriela.avram@ul.ie

2. Outline
 Background
 Methodology
 The digital overlay
 The interventions
 Discussion
 Conclusion and future plans

3. Introduction
 Focus: mobile actors (locals and visitors)
whose movement and interaction with urban
spaces are augmented with an “additional
digital overlay” (Ciolfi, Fitzpatrick, Bannon,
2008)

4. Introduction (continued)
 Goffman-inspired presentation of place – as
relationship between the nature and the
appearance of a place (Sutko&da Souza,
2011)
 for each user, “the urban environment is
constructed through perceptions of nearby
information and people”( Gordon and De
Souza e Silva, 2011

5. Problems with navigating the city
 The lack of ubiquitous availability of a wifi or
mobile connection;
 The large number of location-based social
networks and their reliability problems;
 Affordances of smartphone apps – touch
typing while walking; screen not readable in
bright light.

6. Research questions
 What motivates people to create and share
digital content in relation to specific places
within a city?
 How is this content consumed on the move,
using location-aware mobile devices?
 What does the digital dimension add to the
appearance of a place?
 Can the digital overlay cause a shift in the
general perception of a place?

7. Methodology
 mobile methods recommended by Büscher
et al (2010):
 „moving along with‟ members of the public likely
to be touched by technology,
 „moving in‟ with prototype technologies, and
 „being moved‟ by experiences, observations and
conversations that arise along the way.

8. Work to date
 Involvement in local interest groups and
communities, supporting their digital
presence;
 Organising and running urban games;
 Working with students to create content;

9. Limerick‟s digital overlay

10. A citizen turned historian

11. Flickr Group gathering the best
photos

12. Twitter

13. Foursquare

14. Initiative and YouTube channel founded
by a native who returned from NY

15. Sonic Soundscapes

16. Geocaching

17. OpenPlaques.org

18. Communities coming together
because of Facebook

19. Boards.ie

20. The official image

21. The interventions
Reflecting upon the role of the digital layer

22. “Connected Limerick”- 2010
 Started as an initiative
meant to encourage
reflection on the
relationship between the
city and its “digital double”
 We invited individuals,
organizations and
communities to reflect on
how this content is
influencing their trajectories
through the city and how
can it be made more visible
and more accessible to both
locals and visitors.

23. “Connected Limerick”- 2011
 Series of short talks on
the interweaving of the
digital and physical
layers, followed by
discussions
 Emphasis on
embodied, situated
interaction
 The risks of studying
the digital separated
from the physical
(Bannon 2011)

24. The interventions
Contributing to the waving of the digital layer

25. Supporting the digital presence of
local communities
 miLKlabs (
Limerick
hackerspace)
 Limerick Local
Heroes
 IxDA Limerick
chapter
 We love Plassey
riverbank
 3Dcamp

26. Digital news curation

27. Tweasure Hunt
 Urban game using Twitter and Flickr as part
of the Lifelong Learning Festival in April
 Eliciting stories from people who know the
city really well and recording them; erecting
temporary plaques;
 Documenting existing
plaques for enriching the
Open Plaques repository;

29. Discussion
 Participating in community content creation:
insights into new collaborative practices;
 The waving of the digital layer can be
supported in various ways:
 semantic annotations;
 following the UT model of content co-creation &
organic growth (Angus et al 2008);
 digital curation;
 New digital tools for urban activism:
“deciphering, debugging, and hacking the
city”(Doerk&Monteyne,2011)

30. Conclusion and future plans
 Citizens and visitors are not equally affected by
the digital overlay- digital divide;
 Many of the groups active in producing digital
content ignore their audiences;
 Interventions need to build on existing, low-
tech (or no tech) practices;
 Future plans: Studying the impact of the digital
overlay consumption on changing both life in
the city and the perception of the city.

31. References
 Ciolfi, L., Fitzpatrick, G. and Bannon, L., (2008), “Settings for
Collaboration: The Role of Place”, Computer Supported
Cooperative Work Journal, Springer, Vol. 17, Nos. 2-3,
April/June 2008 (91-96).
 Sutko, D. M., & de Souza e Silva, A. (2011). Location aware
mobile media and urban sociability. New Media & Society, 13
(5), 807-823.
 Gordon, E., & de Souza e Silva, A. (2011), Net Locality: Why
Location Matters in a Networked World. Boston: Blackwell-
Wiley.
 Angus, A. et al.(2008), Urban Social Tapestries, IEEE
Pervasive Computing 7 (4) 44-51.
 Dörk, M., Monteyne, D.(2011),Urban Co-Creation: Envisioning
New Digital Tools for Activism and Experimentation in the City.
HCI, Politics, and the City (CHI 2011 workshop).

32. Thank you!
 gabriela.avram@ul.ie
 @gabig58
 ConnectedLimerick.wordpress.com
 Coniecto.org