Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

This research program considers how space syntax theory can be employed to determine digital content selection, presentation, and placement in the physical environment.Space syntax is an actively developing area of architectural research. Informed by work in spatial mental model acquisition and structure, space syntax applies a formal analytical approach to physical layouts to infer how they will be perceived, and to some extent, used. We will explore how space syntax can help drive immersive media in a manner that exploits spatial characteristics to better support users, or to create more compelling experiences. To date, little to no research has explored this potential. Imagine an IT manager walking down a hallway at work, wearing a personal information display. She keeps her schedule and a messaging app open. Because the hallway is identified as a high-flow area, the apps are displayed parallel to the nearest wall. She enters a room and sits at a conference table. The app windows, now reduced in size, are presented on the table to her right. Space syntax theory is used here to identify the hallway as a flow region and respond accordingly; the conference table adaptation highlights how space syntax might be combined with rules derived from room-scale spatial theory already used in HCI (e.g. F-formations and proxemics). After work, the IT manager plays a zombie infiltration game with some of her coworkers. Zombies appear from around a corner and shamble down the hallway toward her. She hurries past rooms, looking in the doorways only to see zombies peering back. She gets to the stairwell and finds a zombie slowly descending the stairs toward her. A dialog appears saying human voices can be heard below. She moves quickly down the stairs and out to the lobby where her co-workers are waiting to stage a standoff. Space syntax here determines where zombies should appear, and what they can see. Dead end rooms are used to create dramatic tension. The game identifies introduces a new task at the stairwell (a new spatial segment), and the lobby (an area with high centrality) is used for significant game events. Space Syntax alone cannot predict the use or “meaning” of a space. A core contribution of this research program will be an assessment of the nature of engagement required of both the designer and user (termed "hinting" here), as an important element of the research. The goals of this research are: to explore the application of different approaches developed by the Space Syntax community to our problem domain, including the combination of these approaches with other spatial theory already in use in HCI; to develop and evaluate methods for annotation, explicit direction, and testing/playback to better understand what an effective human-in-the-loop process should look like; and to architect and develop a spatially-adaptive media toolkit for researchers and practitioners.