E-spective: Pervasive computing presenting a new perspective of the city

As urban environments become increasingly hybrid physical and digital spaces, designing for public computing in city contexts requires researchers and practitioners to explore the intersections between spatial and physical context, sociality and pervasive computing technologies. This paper presents the e-Spective research project bringing together expertise from the fields of architecture, sociology, human-computer interaction, and computer science to explore inner city socialising and to design and evaluate in situ a public pervasive computer system prototype facilitating sociality by adding to a city precinct a digital layer of information about people, places and activities adapted to each individual user's own physical and social context. Making invisible dimensions of the inhabited physical space around you visible, the prototype system augments the city and contributes to the ongoing reshaping of urban life by facilitating new kinds of behaviour and situated social interactions in public spaces.