Giuseppina Pellegrino

Ubiquity/Mobility

Interaction, co-presence and infrastructures

in augmented environment design

Introduction

By analyzing the case of augmented environment and ubiquitous computing design, this research
project aims to focus on the modes of social and communicative interaction, the re-configuration of
co-presence and the role of sociotechnical infrastructures in envisioning patterns of future
interaction and new users and uses of technology. In so doing, it focuses potential areas of overlap,
collaboration and common reflection between Humanities (namely sociology of science and
technology, ethnographic approaches) and Technology (as envisioned by designers and
implemented in specific settings).
This contribution focuses on sociotechnical processes which make artefacts more and more
convergent, multi-functional and either pocketable (e.g. smart phones) or distributed in the
environment. In this sense, ubiquity and mobility are two sides of the same coin, which interweaves
the pervasivity of technological mediation with the extended and plural mobility (‘mobilities’, cf.
Urry, 2007) in contemporary society, where not only people but also objects, representations and
information move around, across old and new boundaries.
The dimension of ubiquitous communication is addressed in two contexts.
On the one hand, ubiquity is framed and envisioned by designers of advanced computing systems,
defined as 'ubiquitous', sometimes 'pervasive' and, of course, mobile.
On the other hand, ubiquity is experienced by users of current sociotechnical systems and especially
by those users who are very mobile in space, time and their work. The selected case study is that of
consultants in international organizations.
In the long term, the aim is to compare design discourse and practice with mobile workers’
practices, especially highly mobile workers experiencing contexts characterized by lacking
infrastructures (e.g. international consultancy in developing countries). In particular, the objective
is to compare mobility and ubiquity as experienced by mobile workers, with the perspective
proposed by designers of ubiquitous environments and devices.

Scenario and research questions

Mobile technologies and ubiquitous computing represent an open laboratory into which individual
and organizational actors experiment different behaviours to cope with very advanced echnological
artefacts. Two trends can be drawn here: the convergence of relatively older media and information
services into new devices (e.g. e-mail accessed through mobile phones); the virtually ‘universal’
portability, e.g. independence from space and time, of such devices, which makes them different
from other types of computing (cf. Lyyttinen and Yoo, 2002). In such a way mobile technologies
draw boundaries for new or restructured social action and interaction.
One of the research hypotheses is that to domesticate mobile technologies (and the type of mobility
they support) interstitial arenas are enacted: mobile/ubiquitous devices draw lines of both continuity
and discontinuity in everyday life, bridging the gap between work and non work and drawing
interstitial arenas of negotiation. The case study of ubiquitous systems design aims to understand
how processes of technological innovation work in order to shape future environments of
innovative interaction as well as pro-active users and uses of technology.
The following research questions will be addressed:
- What type of mobility do mobile and ubiquitous technologies support/enact?
- How is the design process organized in order to involve users’ participation?
- How does the identity of a physically mobile user change because of mobility of information?
- How is ubiquity of information and infrastructures connected to physical mobility?
- What kind of interaction, co-presence and infrastructure is envisioned by designers and how are
current sociotechnical infrastructures used by mobile workers (namely, consultants in international
organizations)?

The theoretical framework

Mediated mobility, as intertwined with technological infrastructures and artefacts, is fostered by

both ‘compulsion to proximity’ (Urry, 2002) and spatio-temporal separation typical of the media
(Thompson, 1998). In order to depict and capture the ambivalence of this phenomenon, the
theoretical framework is centred on the tradition of Science and Technology Studies. Technology as
mediation of activities but also as result of conflict and negotiation around a technological frame
(Bijker, 1995) is linked with the way people, objects and information are more and more ‘on the
move’. Technological mediation is both based on specific artefacts, e.g. mobile phones, laptops,
PDAs; and embedded in complex infrastructures based on technical networks, e.g. electricity, the
Internet, broadband networks, wireless networks.
Technologies of/for mobility can be situated at the crossroad of other concepts: convergence, that
means the trend toward uniformity of technological platforms and systems (cf. Pellegrino, 2007a);
saturation as ‘complex web of interoperability’ (Bowker and Star, 2000); ubiquity as aspiration
towards omnipresence (cf. Pellegrino, 2007); ecologies of artefacts as local niches where new
media and old practices find a temporary equilibrium.
The central hypothesis argues that mobility as a relational category (Adey, 2006) depends on
sociotechnical processes which make artefacts more and more convergent, multi-functional and
pocketable (e.g. smart phones). On other hand, individuals and environments are saturated - literally
filled up - with technologies. Such a saturation makes both the body and the environment hybrid,
and the distinction between what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘artificial’ more and more conventional.
Therefore, there is a continuum between bodies and environments, which brings about new forms of
co-presence and sociality, transforming old practices through new media.
Ubiquity as aspiration to omnipresence, therefore, is embedded into discourses and artefacts
supposed to be mobile and ubiquitous, that means accessible anywhere anytime (at least in
principle). The myth of ubiquitous computing as invisible, unobtrusive infrastructure embedded into
material surfaces founds a prolific literature (Greenfield, 2006). Moreover, it is exemplary of a
trend to imagine and design contexts of interaction, both public and private, where materiality of
technology is redefined (cf. Schmidt et al., 2002).
To analyze these processes the research looks at the design of augmented environments and
ubiquitous computing infrastructures. Design is a privileged observatory for understanding how
technological innovation is elaborated and socially shaped; how the future is envisioned and
imagined, and what influence discourses about ubiquity in the media, enterprises and institutions
(cf. Pellegrino, 2006 and 2008) have on the devices, infrastructures and projects carried out through
the design of innovative environments for social interaction.

Methods and fieldwork

The research adopts a qualitative approach based on several techniques (literature review, in depth
interviews, ethnographic observation).
The first part of the fieldwork will be based on visiting laboratories where augmented environments
and ubiquitous computing infrastructures/devices are designed and shaped.
By reconstructing and observing the design process as well as interviewing designers and experts on
site, the research fieldwork will aim to understand conditions and contexts through which new
products, services and uses of technology are imagined and configured.
Furthermore, through face-to-face interviews to mobile consultants working in international
organizations, the criticalities of current mobile interaction and infrastructures supposed to be
ubiquitous will be focused on, in order to bridge the gaps between current communicational
practices in specific and future interaction as envisioned by designers’ work and discourse.

Selected bibliography

Adey, P. (2006). “If Mobility is Everything Then it is Nothing: Towards a Relational Politics of
(Im)mobilities”. Mobilities, 1(1), 75-94.

Bijker, W.E. (1995). Of bycicles, bakelites and bulbs. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Bowker, G. and Star, S. L. (2000). Sorting Things Out. Classification and Its Consequences.
Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

Greenfield, A. (2006). Everyware. The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Berkeley, CA:
New Riders.

Lyyttinen, K. and Yoo, Y. (2002). “Issues and Challenges in Ubiquitous Computing”,

Communications of the ACM, 45 (12): 63-65.

Pellegrino, G. (2006). “Ubiquity and Pervasivity: On the Technological Mediation of (Mobile)

Everyday Life”. In Berleur, J, Nurminen, M. I & J. Impagliazzo (eds.) Social Informatics: An
Information Society for all? In remembrance of Rob Kling. Boston: Springer, 133-144.

Pellegrino, G (2007). “Discourses on Mobility and Technology Mediation. The Texture of

Ubiquitous Interaction”. PsychNology Journal, Vol. 5 n. 1, pp. 59-81.

Pellegrino G. (2008). "Convergence and Saturation: Ecologies of Artefacts in Mobile and

Ubiquitous Interaction". In Nyiri K. (ed.) Integration and Ubiquity. Towards a philosophy of
telecommunications convergence. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, pp. 75-82.

Schmidt, A. Strohbach, M., van Laerhoven, K., and H. W. Gellersen (2002). “Ubiquitous
Interaction - Using Surfaces in Everyday Environments as Pointing Devices”, 7th ERCIM
Workshop "User Interfaces For All", 23 - 25 October. At
www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~albrecht/pubs/pdf/schmidt_ui4all_2002.pdf, last access May 2006

Thompson, J.B. (1995). The Media and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Urry, J. (2002). “Mobility and Proximity”, Sociology, 36(2): 255-274.