Why do you check in?

After our interviews earlier this year, location mashups and our ongoing studies into different ways of checking in, we’re now gathering more data to understand how people use location-sharing apps.

Gowalla & Foursquare users, why do you check-in and share? Help us out by filling out our survey.

Update: This survey is currently closed, thanks everyone!
If you’d like to participate in Mobile Life’s future studies on location-sharing or try out new location-based apps, please contact me via henriette AT mobilelifecentre.org. We’d really appreciate it!

Foursquare + Spotify = Spotisquare

Mattias Rost, Nicolas Belloni and me just released Spotisquare. Spotisquare is a mobile web app that adds music to places by combining Foursquare, the location-based service, and Spotify, the music streaming service). Connect a Spotify playlist to a foursquare venue, check-in and listen! The mobile app, also usable as a regular foursquare client, is accessible via m.spotisquare.com. More info at www.spotisquare.com. (And a big thank you to foursquare and numerous Twitterers for picking up on both Spotisquare and φ²)

Beyond just building a cool service, this project explores locative media and the opportunities and challenges in combining commercially available services for research purposes. From a research perspective we’re for example interested in how limitations in rapid development of mobile services affect both the user experience and research results.

φ² scanner released! Physical check-ins for foursquare

Our Mobile 2.0 intern Sebastian Büttner just released his Android scanner app to check-in using barcode stickers to foursquare at http://phi2.mobilelifecentre.org

φ² is a project we’re doing at Mobile 2.0 exploring different ways of physical check-ins for location-based services and the connection between ‘the visible and virtual’. φ² Scanner is a mobile Android app that checks you in to foursquare by scanning 2D barcode stickers. If you want to generate your own barcodes for your favorite venue, use the φ² Barcode Generator.

Beyond just building cool apps, we actually have some bigger research goals as well. While location-based services have been around in research for a long time, they are just now booming as commercial services for ‘people on the street’. So, how do people use them? What does it mean to share your location with others? Which design dimensions affect their experience? How do location-based services change people’s experience of space and place? We’re doing user studies on how existing services (Foursquare, Gowalla, Latitude, Brightkite, etc) are used, we also develop new concepts for location-based services (such as making hidden services visible at physical locations, and physical ‘check-ins’).