Why people say where they are during mobile phone calls

An often-noticed feature of mobile phone calls is some form of 'geographical' locating after a greeting has been made. The author uses some singular instances of mobile phone conversations to provide an answer as to why this geolinguistic feature has emerged. In an examination of two real cases and a vignette, some light is shed on a more classical spatial topic, that of mobility. During the opening and closing statements of the paper a short critique is put forward of the 'professionalisation' of cultural studies and cultural geography and their ways of theorising ordinary activities. It is argued that a concern with theory construction effectively distances such workers from everyday affairs where ordinary actors understand in practical terms and account competently for what is going on in their worlds. This practical understanding is inherent in the intricacies of a conversational 'ordering', which is at one and the same time also an ordering of the times and spaces of these worlds. By means of an indifferent approach to the 'grand theories' of culture, some detailed understandings of social practices are offered via the alternatives of ethnomethodological and conversational investigations

Informing the design of calendar systems for domestic use.

Abstract. This paper contributes to the design of Groupware Calendar Systems (GCSs) for use in domestic life. We consider a number of ethnographic studies of calendar use in domestic circumstances to illuminate the design space and inform design reasoning. GCSs have been employed in the workplace for sometime and have been informed by studies of ‘calendar work’. As design moves out of the workplace and into the home, the unique demands of domestic use now need to be considered. Existing insights into calendar work are restricted to the workplace however, and are constrained by analytic taxonomies. In the absence of first-hand knowledge of calendar use in domestic settings, we suspend the use of taxonomies and describe the ‘interpretive work ’ implicated in calendar work in order to explicate real world practices of calendar use in domestic life. These novel studies draw attention to a corpus of accountable work-practices that impact directly on design. In particular, they emphasize the need for design to consider how the physical and the digital may be merged to support collaboration ‘anywhere, anytime’; the necessity of devising negotiation protocols supporting computer-mediated communication; and the development of collaborative access models and interaction techniques to support data sharing

Informing the Development of Calendar Systems for Domestic Use

Abstract. This paper contributes to the design of Groupware Calendar Systems (GCSs) for use in domestic life. We consider a number of ethnographic studies of calendar use in domestic circumstances to illuminate the design space and inform design reasoning. GCSs have been employed in the workplace for sometime and have been informed by studies of ‘calendar work’. As design moves out of the workplace and into the home, the unique demands of domestic use now need to be considered. Existing insights into calendar work are restricted to the workplace however, and are constrained by analytic taxonomies. In the absence of first-hand knowledge of calendar use in domestic settings, we suspend the use of taxonomies and describe the ‘interpretive work ’ implicated in calendar work in order to explicate real world practices of calendar use in domestic life. These novel studies draw attention to a corpus of accountable work-practices that impact directly on design. In particular, they emphasize the need for design to consider how the physical and the digital may be merged to support collaboration ‘anywhere, anytime’; the necessity of devising negotiation protocols supporting computer-mediated communication; and the development of collaborative access models and interaction techniques to support data sharing