Content seeking strategies in urban computing applications

This paper presents our findings on factors that affect seeking and selecting of location-related content in an urban computing application hosted on an array of city-dispensed public interactive displays. Earlier researchers have pointed out discrepancies between self-proclaimed information needs and actual seeking behaviours, we present here empirical results that delineate a number of factors that users actually take into account during seeking location-related content in urban computing applications. We have conducted our research via a community content sharing application hosted on an array of municipally owned public interactive displays and by monitoring user interaction with it via a behind-the-scenes detailed logging mechanism that reported all tactile interactions that users had on the displays. Our findings reveal how the design of interface elements, the location of the user in relation to the presented content and the character of user´s whereabouts affect content selection of random users in the wild.