The Living Map -A communication tool that connects
real world and online community by using a map
Yuichiro HARAGUCHI*, Tetsuko SHINOHARA**, Yoshimasa NIWA**, Kenji IGUCHI**,
Sahori ISHIBASHI**, Masa INAKAGE**
Keio University *Graduate school of media and governance
**Faculty of environmental information
<[email protected]>
Abstract:
We would like to propose an online communication tool, "The Living Map", by using
cell phones as media to interchange city information. Our aim is to expand the activity range of
each person in the city. In the main issue, we would like to indicate three elements that are required
for a tool to interchange information in the city, and moreover to state about the system and the
design methods which would merge the map and the community.
1. Introduction
The prevalence of internet-enabled cell phones allow people to access networks whenever they want to.
Access to information media has become more common in daily life, like e-mail on cell phones. When people are
able to exchange information adapted to their personal actions, it creates an environment that supports and extends
people's actions as in ways discussed in ubiquitous computing [1]. Through the research, we created "The Living
Map", a system users can access the online community and exchange information by mobile devices while they
are walking in the town, to extend people's actions in town.
2. Background
On the web, there are many sites related to cities. A site provided by an organization introducing their
community or a site collecting information on specific theme such as "really good Italian restaurants" are some
examples. However, these sites are created by the information provider's point of view, so sometimes there is
information that is taken as unnecessary or dubious by users.
On the other hand there are community-type sites represented by "machi-BBS"[2]. In these sites, information
is exchanged among people who actually live in the town, so if users can find a person whose interests are close to
theirs, they can get reliable information from them. However, it is difficult to find out the right person from the
various and chaotic mass of information, and it is also difficult to be up to date on information that gets updated so
rapidly.
Therefore, we summarized the factors a medium to obtain information about towns needs into three.
(a) Communication oriented --- Users can obtain information through communication with other users in town.
(b) Support for efficient ways to discover information --- Giving users a better grasp of the information through
visualization, and a system to automatically finding people of similar interests and narrowing information down to
the relevant.
(c) Creating a database --- Accumulates and organizes communication processes to be used as a database.
Through this thesis, we propose a system that solves these problems.
3. The Design of The Living Map
Pattern of user’s action
Database
We will give an overview of The Living Map in 3.1, and go into
the details of each of the features in sections 3.2 to 3.4. The
implementation specs will be given at the end.
3.1 Design idea
The Living Map is an online community for exchanging
information on cities. Unlike conventional forums, it uses a
dynamically generated map as its interface, which changes in
Create an original map by composing data of
people who has similar idea.
Using pictures and texts
information of the town.
to
exchange
Fig. 1 the flow of the Living Map
accordance to the user's activities. We suppose that the system will run on cell
phones and act analogous to traditional paper maps, as to be consulted as the
user walks around the city.
The map (fig.2) is generated using locational data collected from the user's
movement, pre-entered data of frequented locations, and data from other users
with similar activity patterns. (see 3.2)
The user can then use the map to exchange information by searching for
recent topics, taking photographs in the city and uploading them, or posting
comments. (see 3.3)
The topics and photographs are archived in a database. (see 3.4)
Fig. 2 map
3.2 Creating original maps by linking individual activities
3.2.1 Sharing Spots
By adding their favorite or frequented locations ('spots') to their hotlist, the user can join the location-based
community for that spot. The added spot information can also be used by the system for matching people with
similar tastes.
Users can add spots in two ways. One way is to select a location from the on-screen map. The user can also
add their current location as a spot, using the location data obtained from the GPS feature of the cell phone.
3.2.2 Activity Linking
The system seeks out people with similar activity patterns using the users' shared spots. The more locations the
users have in common, the closer the system decides the users are. By automatically sharing spots with similar
users, the user can see where people with similar interests go, resulting in the expanding of the user's world.
Groups can be formed by friends or people of a particular interest. Spots are shared between group members,
enabling easy creation of theme-based maps.
3.2.3 Sharing Roads
The paths users may take vary greatly depending on age and
preferred method of transportation. The system generates trail
maps by superimposing the paths of the user and similar users
onto the map.(fig.3)
The system records location data obtained from the GPS at
regular intervals, and saves the trail of the user to the server. It
then layers the trails together to generate the trail map.
Fig. 3 sharing roads
3.3 Real-time communication between people of the same
interests
One of the characteristics of The Living Map is that the
map and the on-line community are presented as one.
Corresponding image-enabled forums exist for each spot the
user adds. The user can participate in the forums via the web
and cell phones, and post images and comments.(fig.4)
3.4 Building a living database of the town through
accumulation of communication
3.4.1 Displaying information about the entire town
The system builds a database of the city by utilizing user
trails, registered spots, and communication logs. The map of the
entire town is assembled by layering the trail and spot
information of all users together.
3.4.2 Searching by keywords
Users can filter out spots by performing a keyword search.
Only spots whose communication logs contain the keyword are
shown.
Fig. 4 forum
3.4.3 Showing temporal changes
The time is set to the present by default, By the user can specify an arbitrary point in the past, for instance
“January 2003”, and see what the trails and spots were like back then. As the time is specified by a slider interface,
the user can have a continual view of how the city has changed over time.
3.4.4 Virtually reliving experiences by pictures
When the user moves the cursor over the map, the system
will display a series pictures following the trail of the cursor
(fig.5). The system does this by retrieving image data from the
forums which are locationally close and showing them on the
screen. The series of images, taken by numerous people, serves
the user to virtually re-live that part of the city.
Fig. 5 pictures following the
trail of the cursor
3.5 Implementation
We have used AU's ezweb plus cell phones for the mobile
DB
terminal devices. Java is used to obtain location data from the
GPS and send them to the server at regular intervals. The
client PC for viewing the database uses Macromedia Flash,
Server
and accesses a PostgreSQL database using PHP at the server
side.
Personal mode
On Mobile (Java )
4.Usage of The Living Map
DB mode
On PC(Flash)
Fig. 6 system
4.1 What you can do by using The Living Map
The Living Map system holds many possibilities. We think
that The Living Map can be an information infrastructure to support various activities through its map interface.
For example, we can make maps on specific categories, search friends of similar interests, communicate with the
local community, make records of local information, and advertise stores. At the moment we are working on
projects to support the activity of the town community by using The Living Map.
4.2 The Green Map Project
The Green Map [4] is a project worked on all over the world. It is a project that participants go around and
find ecologically relevant places in town. This project has in elements common to The Living Map in that both
projects make information gathered from the community into a database and opens it to the public. If we
incorporate the Green Map into The Living Map system, users will be able to send photos right away at the point
where they found it, or they can walk around by looking at the map on the cell phones. What is more, users can
expand their communities by exchanging information on-line and it will be easier for people to participate in. We
are planning that The Living Map be used in the Green Map community.
4.3 Cycle Café Project
Bicycles are attracting attention as a means of transportation in the city of Tokyo. The biggest reason is that
bicycles excel in mobility, more so than cars or trains in the Tokyo city area since the area is of moderate size.
Other advantages include that it is ecological, healthy and economical as well. However, there is not much
information of the town aimed at bicycle users. There are information that people cannot tell from ordinary maps,
such as streets that bicycles cannot go through because of steps, places that are dangerous because of many cars,
parks that can be passed through and so on. There are shops that prohibit bicycle parking, too.
If bicycle users can use The Living Map, such information can be shared. Maps made specifically for bicycle
users can be created using The Living Map. Because The Living Map creates maps by layering trails of each user,
another advantage is that the resulting map will automatically be suited for bicycle trails.
Cycle Café [5] is a community having Mr.Yajima, a planner, as its pivot. This community is making progress
on making a town that is friendly to bicycle users, such as rebuilding shops to make it easier for bicycle users to
use. We are planning to carry out a collaboration project with Cycle Café so that The Living Map can be widely
used by bicycle users.
5. Future Issue
5.1 Evaluation of the System
The most essential issue in the future is the evaluation and the promotion of the system. For that, other than
bringing projects into practice (mentioned in Chapter 4), our plans are to hold events to have people from the
public as monitor subjects and obtain feedback from them. We will be able to check if the ‘similarity’ based on the
users’ activity pattern is pertinent and usability is natural.
5.2 Reinforcement of the function
There are 2 issues at the present.
The first issue is the accuracy of the GPS. Test results show that the GPS of a cell phone actually has higher
accuracy compared to a normal stand-alone GPS device, but still we cannot avoid the deviations that occur in such
places like narrow alleys in the city. One solution would be to show the map in a way so that the user won't have
to worry much about the equation. The other is to correct the data into a more accurate position in the map like car
navigation systems do, by using existent maps and sensors. At this present time, we are considering the former
idea.
The second issue is to improve the search efficiency of the database. Now, a pattern matching search system
operated by an arbitrary search keyword is used in this system, but there was a suggestion that the system would
be better if it had pre-categorized information. For this, we are considering to solve the problem by using an
automatic categorization system linked to a Japanese language transaction and thesaurus dictionary, or by
preemptively keeping a menu with pre-selected keywords likely to come up.
6. References
[1] Mark Weiser "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, 94-10, 1991
[2] “machiBBS” http://www.machibbs.com/ , accessed 28.7.2003
[3] Yasushi Watanabe “Jyouhou Design Nyumon” [Information Design], Heibonsha, 2001
[4] “Green Map”, http://www.greenmap.org/ , accessed 28.7.2003
[5] ”CycleCafe”, http://www.netlaputa.ne.jp/~yassy/cyc/ , accessed 28.7.2003
[6] “cooltown”, http://cooltown.hp.com/cooltownhome/ , accessed 28.7.2003
[7] Yutaka Nakamura and Kouhei Okamoto, “mental map nyumon” [an introduction to mental map], Koinshoin,
1993
[8] Fumio Matsumoto and Akira Wakita, “CT-City Tomography”, Siggraph, 2002
[9] “NycBloggers”, http://www.nycbloggers.com/ , accessed 28.7.2003
[10] W. G. Griswold, R. Boyer, S. W. Brown, T. M. Truong, E. Bhasker, G. R. Jay, and R. B. Shapiro, “Using
Mobile Technology to Create Opportunitistic Interactions on a University Campus'', UbiComp2002 Workshop on
Supporting Spontaneous Interaction in Ubiquitous Computing Settings, Technical Report CS2002-0724, 2002.