Right this way: Exploring the use of mobile maps in Street‐Level wayfinding

Abstract

The poster explores practices of street‐level wayfinding mediated through the mobile digital map. To study everyday wayfinding, I approached people in the streets of Toronto, New York, Amsterdam and London, and asked for directions, requesting they draw their instructions. In total, I collected 220 drawings and corresponding observational fieldnotes, along with 20 supplemental interviews. Following collection, I used visual grounded theory (Konecki, Revija Za Socilologiju, 2011, 41, 131–160) and situational analysis (Clarke, Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn, 2005) to analyze the data, concentrating on encounters in which informants used a mobile mapping platform. The poster showcases a selection of the visual dataset and presents a theoretical framework for assessing the everyday applications of mobile mapping platforms such as Google Maps in relation to presumptions of reliability, seamlessness, and claims to space.