New visiting researcher: Matthias Korn

Matthias Korn, a PhD-student of Aarhus University's Computer Mediated Activity Group in Denmark is our new visitor. Matthias is working with us within Mobile 2.0's location-based services theme.

Matthias' work focuses on the cross roads of citizen participation and mobile ubiquitous technology, and studies how location and 'being there' may support citizens in deliberation activities such as participatory planning. His research explores how mobile location-based services interweave physical and digital spaces and, specifically, how people make and experience the link between the two. Matthias' research ties into our work on location-sharing quite nicely, and it's great having him around.

Foursquare studies & apps

As part of our location-sharing research, we've been looking at how people use location-sharing and the interaction design elements that affect their attitudes and behaviour by both studying existing services, and building on top of them.

We’ve been taking a ‘performative’ view on check-ins on foursquare, and explore how these specific design elements facilitate emergent, and sometimes conflicting, social norms (not) to check-in. Read more in our MobileHCI’11 paper here.

Interested mostly in gamification elements? Shorter paper ‘Gamification and location-sharing: some emerging social conflicts’ presented at the Gamification workshop at CHI’11 here.

In the mean time, our foursquare check-in apps PhiSquare (check-in via QR codes) and Pic-In (check in by taking a picture - 3rd prize in this year's Ericsson app awards!), are still downloadable as Android apps.