Book: Mobile Nation

Mobile Nation: Creating Methodologies for Mobile Platforms
by Martha Ladly and Philip Beesley, editors
Riverside Architectural Press (August 15, 2008)
Hardcover, 272 pages

Mobile Nation explores the emerging field of mobile experience design. The papers in this anthology include essays on design theories and methods for locative technologies, devices, experiences, and games, featuring international scholars, researchers and industry experts. Discussions are wide-ranging, addressing technological issues, such as GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Radio Frequency ID tagging, intelligent materials and garments, alongside theoretical and cultural issues including mobile-social interaction, participant observation, iterative and participatory design methods, ambient media applications, and geo-locative experiences. Designers, engineers, and creators write about the potential for mobile platforms in cultural industries, architecture, engineering, industrial design, advertising, entertainment, recreation, and education.

Mobile Nation focuses on five key areas of research with the questions:

• How can mobile technologies be “reimagined” and repurposed for new user communities?
• How can mobile technologies be designed and adapted for multiple platforms?
• How can mobile experiences move beyond text, sound, and image to respond to the diverse and ever-changing needs and desires of mobile users?
• How are new paradigms in mobile communication challenging the way we experience art, design and performance?
• How are rapidly emerging hybrid, open-source, and do-it-yourself communities intersecting with social science, engineering, architecture, and other media disciplines?

Includes contributions by: Matt Adams, Julie Andreyev, Philip Beesley, Joanna Berzowska, Jim Budd, Barbara Crow, Steve Daniels, Marc Davis, Janice de Jong, Sara Diamond, Tom Donaldson, Judith Doyle, Anne Galloway, Paula Gardner, Judy Gladstone, Robert Gorbet, Nathon Gunn, Drew Hemment, James E. Katz, Ehren Katzur, Filiz Klassen, Martha Ladly, Angus Leech, Maroussia Levesque, Jason Lewis, Michael Longford, Douglas MacLeod, Krystina Madej, David McIntosh, Shawn Micallef, Laura Mulligan, Tek-Jin Nam, Leena Saarinen, Kim Sawchuk, Thecla Schiphorst, Parmesh Shahani, Leslie Sharpe, Geoffrey Shea, Rob Shields, Suzanne Stein, Jenna Stephens-Wells, Maria Stukoff, Nigel Thrift, David Vogt, Nina Wakeford, Ron Wakkary, Robert Woodbury, Eric Zimmerman, and Jan-Christoph Zoels.

The book includes the full papers and proceedings of the conference with the same name (see also here), which was organised by the Mobile Experience Lab of the Ontario College of Art & Design.

Note the article “Deep Places – mobile 2.0 and spatial experiences” (page 207-210) by Experientia’s senior partner Jan-Christoph Zoels.

Sample pdf