Exploring in-betweenness: the experience of riding the London Tube". Position paper, ExUrban Noir workshop, Ubicomp 2006

Research on the design of future technologies has been recently directed toward the identification of what space and place mean in relation to people and ubiquitous technologies. However, mostly the workplace and the domestic sphere have been well defined and studied so far [1, 2] with a smaller number of projects focusing on social spaces [3, 4]. We believe these categories only address a narrow range of people’s daily experience. More specifically, the transition from one place to another has not been much considered, yet it is these transitions which structure people’s daily life as a continuous flow rather than a series of discrete moments. We are using the concept of in-between-ness to explore these passages between meaningful places and events. In-between spaces such as public transport, lobbies, shopping plazas and underpasses are typically overlooked and relegated to the background; only by virtue of their unimportance are they considered to be related. Rather than classing them as the void between more ‘meaningful ’ places, we are considering them in their own right