Social gravity: a virtual elastic tether for casual, privacy-preserving pedestrian rendezvous

We describe a virtual “tether” for mobile devices that allows groups to have quick, simple and privacy-preserving meetups. Our design provides cues which allow dynamic coordination of rendezvous without revealing users’ positions. Using accelerometers and magnetometers, combined with GPS positioning and non-visual feedback, users can probe and sense a dynamic virtual object representing the nearest meeting point. The Social Gravity system makes social bonds tangible in a virtual world which is geographically grounded, using haptic feedback to help users rendezvous. We show dynamic navigation using this physical model-based system to be efficient and robust in significant field trials, even in the presence of low-quality positioning. The use of simulators to build models of mobile geolocated systems for pre-validation purposes is discussed, and results compared with those from our trials. Our results show interesting behaviours in the social coordination task, which lead to gu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: CHI
• Authors: John Williamson, Simon Robinson, Craig Stewart, Roderick Murray-Smith, Matt Jones, Stephen A. Brewster
• Keywords: CHI 2010, Dynamic Virtual Object, Geosocial Interaction, Human Computer Interaction, Social Gravity