Preprint Understanding the user experience of location based services : five principles of perceptual organisation applied

Within recent years, the development of location based services have received increasing attention from the software industry as well as from researchers within a wide range of computing disciplines as a particular interesting class of context-aware mobile systems. However, while a lot of research has been done into sensing, adapting to, and philosophising over the complex concept of “context”, little theoretically based knowledge exists about why, from a user experience perspective, some system designs work well and why others don’t. Contributing to this discussion, this paper suggests the perspective of “Gestalt theory” as a theoretical framework for understanding the use of this class of computer systems. Based on findings from an empirical study, we argue that the user experience of location based services can be understood through Gestalt theory’s five principles of perceptual organisation: proximity, closure, symmetry, continuity, and similarity. Specifically, we argue, that these principles assists us in explaining the interplay between context and technology in the user experience of location based services, and how people make sense of small and fragmented pieces of information on mobile devices in context. Keywords: location based services, user experience, Gestalt theory, field study Please refer to the published version of this article: Paay J. and Kjeldskov J. (2008) Understanding the user experience of location based services: five principles of perceptual organization applied. Journal of Location-Based Services, 2(4): 267-286. DOI=10.1080/17489720802609328 * Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]