Social navigation and seamful design

Abstract

Social navigation exploits social practices to help users navigate and explore system functionality. In a wireless world, people move around, meet others and experience places and situations. Those activities may be recorded and presented to others through wireless devices, and serve in social navigation. One design challenge is how to deal with the technical limits and 'seams' of such devices, such as gaps and breaks in functionality, imprecise positioning, and errors in recording and representation. Social navigation systems rely on recording and representing people's activity, and computational representation is affected by seams. We gained some insights into the way that social navigation and seams are socially constructed by analysing the functionality and social practice of thres systems: GeoNotes, Hocman and the Seamful Game. We p[ropose that social navigation and a 'seamful design' approach helps users take advantage of seams, appropriating and adapting system functionality for their own use and interpretations.