Journeys & Notes: Designing Social Computing for Non-Places

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mobile app that fosters online communities around non-places through travel logging and note sharing, exploring new design opportunities for location-based social computing.

Contribution

It presents novel features and design insights for social computing systems focused on non-places, supported by user studies and a large-scale deployment.

Findings

User engagement in non-places increased through community features

Design lessons for social computing in transient spaces

Successful large-scale deployment demonstrating feasibility

Abstract

In this work we present a mobile application we designed and engineered to enable people to log their travels near and far, leave notes behind, and build a community around spaces in between destinations. Our design explores new ground for location-based social computing systems, identifying opportunities where these systems can foster the growth of on-line communities rooted at non-places. In our work we develop, explore, and evaluate several innovative features designed around four usage scenarios: daily commuting, long-distance traveling, quantified traveling, and journaling. We present the results of two small-scale user studies, and one large-scale, world-wide deployment, synthesizing the results as potential opportunities and lessons learned in designing social computing for non-places.