Place and the Experience of BLISS

Abstract

This paper builds on earlier work that understands the design of bus information panels as rooted in a landscape of human experience. It turns the mundane activity of waiting at a bus stop into a problematic space of emotion and volition by understanding the dialogic relationship between human and technology. It does this by developing a novel approach to interaction design, which combines a theoretical framework, which reveals the rich experience and `felt life' of technology, with an empirical analysis of bus information. By imagining a series of conversation-like dialogues, based in a Conversation Analytic (CA) sensitivity to the achievement of meaning in sequence [Condor & Antaki 1997], it generates a series of experience narratives that provide for a critical analysis of the information presentation. It uses this to engage with the idea of place as a layered feature of the bus stop.