# A Contextual Investigation of Location in the Home Using Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons

## TL;DR

This paper investigates Bluetooth Low Energy beacon-based location sensing in diverse home environments, revealing insights for designing seamful indoor location systems that account for social and contextual factors.

## Contribution

It provides an ethnographic approach to measuring Bluetooth beacon performance in real domestic settings, bridging laboratory studies with practical home environments.

## Key findings

- Insights into Bluetooth beacon performance in homes
- Implications for seamful indoor location design
- Understanding of social context in location sensing

## Abstract

Location sensing is a key enabling technology for Ubicomp to support contextual interaction. However, the laboratories where calibrated testing of location technologies is done are very different to the domestic situations where `context' is a problematic social construct. This study reports measurements of Bluetooth beacons, informed by laboratory studies, but done in diverse domestic settings. The design of these surveys has been motivated by the natural environment implied in the Bluetooth beacon standards - relating the technical environment of the beacon to the function of spaces within the home. This research method can be considered as a situated, `ethnographic' technical response to the study of physical infrastructure that arises through social processes. The results offer insights for the future design of `seamful' approaches to indoor location sensing, and to the ways that context might be constructed and interpreted in a seamful manner.