Towards Design Strategies to Deal with Spatial Uncertainty

Building ubiquitous applications that exploit location requires integrating underlying infrastructure for linking sensors with high-level representation of the measured space to produce a pleasant user experience. However, the real-world constraints limit the efficiency of location technologies. An inherent spatial uncertainty embedded in mobile and location systems constantly challenges the coexistence of digital and physical spaces. This paper reports on a qualitative study of spatial uncertainty in the context of a pervasive game named CatchBob! It is part of ongoing work that aims at capturing information on users’ perceptions of uncertain spatial information in uncontrolled, real-world settings as well as a key element for defining better design strategies to manage spatial uncertainty in location-aware applications