This document discusses mapping lived place through an experiential lens. It describes mapping as a way to represent how elements of the physical environment are embodied in personal narratives. The author advocates studying movement as part of how meaning and place emerge, noting movement unfolds narratives within the environment. Case studies using mapmaking are presented, such as having workers map their work terrain and paths to represent associations to locations. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of methods to study people's experience of place on the move and how meaning practices are situated and unfold through movement within the physical world.

1. Mapping Lived Place
Dr. Luigina Ciolfi, Interaction Design Centre
University of Limerick (Ireland)

2. IDC: Multi-disciplinary research group (psychology, communication,
computer science, art & design, architecture, sociology, media studies, etc)
Design, development and deployment of interactive technologies for
human use
Human-centred approach
Technology as mediation tool in human activity and as methodological tool
for empirical research

3. Study and design of technological interventions within
the physical world through notions of space and place
Tradition of phenomenological geography (Tuan,
Relph)
Experiential aspects of place: personal, social, cultural,
spatial. Agency, placemaking
Augmentation of physical environments
The experience of mobility, work in progress

4. “the scene of an experience of relations
with the world” (Auge’, 1995)
How do we experience place?

5. “To live in a place means to experience it,
to be aware of it in the bones as well as in
the head. Place, at all scales from the
armchair to the nation, is a construct of
experience; it is sustained not only by
timber, concrete, and highways, but also
by the quality of human awareness” (Yi-
Fu Tuan, 1975)

6. Articulation of place
(Ciolfi, 2003; Ciolfi and Bannon, 2005)
Physical/structural
Personal
Social
Cultural
Place as an articulation of emergent
experience alongside these dimensions.
Spatial extension
Embodied
Emergent
Influenced by cultural and social factors
Personal (agency)

7. “Experience is compounded of feeling and
thought. Human feeling is not a succession of
discrete sensations; rather memory and
anticipation are able to wield sensory impacts
into a shifting stream of experience so that we
may speak of a life of feeling as we do of a life of
thought.
(Yi-Fu Tuan,1977)

8. Mobility as a situated experience,
Vs. many views in the Interaction Design field of
mobility as place-less
Study of human practices and experiences on the
move: use of techniques that are less used in the
Interaction Design field, but quite consolidated in
geography and other human sciences, such as
walkthroughs/ walk alongs and mapmaking

9. Overview: experience of path-space
why maps can be useful?
what can they represent?
Elements: terrain
landmarks
labels
connectors/flows
boundaries
Examples: “NomadS” Project
Some practice - hopefully!

10. Studying the emergence of practices and experience
throughout a physical environment
How does place (lived space) become part of practices
and activities? Importance of grounding human
experiences in the physical world
Path-space (Bollnow, Ingold, Tuan), agency

11. “Walking (…) is much like talking, and both are
quintessential features of what we take to be a human
form of life. We are already talking by the time we realize
that this is what we are doing”
“Knowledge and footprints, it would seem, lie on opposite
sides of a division between the mental and the material: on
the one side the mental content that we take with us into
our encounter with the world; on the other the marks left
after we are gone”
(Ingold & Vergunst, “Ways of Walking”, 2008)

12. Map making is part of narrative
enquiry through a space, to highlight
how the features of the physical
space are embodied in personal
narratives.
Ethnographically-based method, to be
used in conjunction with other
methods.

13. Situatedness of emergent experience: elements of the
environment are not simply a physical support, or triggers
for behaviour, they are essential elements of the
structure of values and meanings we attribute to
situations
Movement as constituent of experience of place
Movement as unfolding of meanings and narratives

14. Mapmaking
Maps: representations of geographical space
through the perspective of the mapmaker, who chooses
which aspects of the space to highlight and connect
“(…) Part of what fascinates us when looking at a
map is inhabiting the mind of its maker, considering that
particular terrain of imagination overlaid with those
unique contour lines of experience. If I had mapped that
landscape, we ask ourselves, what would I have chosen
to show, and how would I have shown it?” (Harmon,
2004: p.11)

15. Mapmaking
Maps are personal representations of lived paths: path is
not just movement but the unfolding of an experiential
narrative
Experiential artefacts scattered along the way
Association of meaning (values, culture, identity)

16. “The mapmaker has to simplify, selecting only those
elements of reality that he or she considers to be
necessary to serve their (…) purpose
(…) Usually the subjectivity of maps is concealed
because the user shares the values of the mapmaker
(…) Indeed the most fascinating and valuable aspect of
the subjectivity of all maps lies in the mirror that they
provide into the mentalities of mapmakers and their
societies (…) Often maps will reveal more about attitudes
and objectives than their makers would normally trust to
put into writing”
(Carlucci & Barber, “Lie of the Land”, 2001)

17. Mapmaking is a proactive exercise: re-establish the
elements of place experience.
What do we ask people to do when we invite them to
draw a map?
Exercise can be workshop style, or interview style: be
careful in planning ahead. What are your questions?
What is the goal of the mapmaking session? How does it
fit with the rest of your fieldwork?

18. Elements: terrain
landmarks
labels
connectors/flows
boundaries

19. Elements: terrain
What is the canvas? Empty or partly filled? What does it
represent, what is its scale?

20. Landmarks
What are the point of references? Are some given or the
canvas is left entirely empty? Codes or lifelike? Providing
landmarks guides the participants’ work

21. Labels
How will the map be labelled? Freedom to choose own
labels or pre-made ones? Natural language or symbols?
What’s in a label? Importance of place names/language
(e.g. political, value-laden)

22. Connectors/flows
A map represents place but also paths, connections and
sequences of events. Connectors create a narrative.
Providing participants with types of connectors, or
allowing them to create their own?

23. Boundaries
What is inside or outside a certain area? What
differences does a boundary mark? Different types of
boundaries: fluid or fixed; official or perceived; personal
or shared

24. In planning mapmaking exercises:
- Focus
- Scale
- Contribution of participants
- Preparation of materials (as if of questions)
- Technology can help

26. Case Study: NomadS
Study of workers (sales
representatives), who spend their
working week on the move
Each work-place has different
meanings and associations to
them, so has the movement
between locations
Mapmaking as a way of
representing their “terrain of
activities”
Analysis: multi-layered notion of
place

27. Conclusions
- Importance of methods to study people’s
emergent experience of place on the move
- Situatedness of meaning making practices
- Movement as unfolding of meanings and
narratives within the environment. Physical world
is more than a constraint
- Importance of studying these aspects as part of
place enquiry

28. Thanks!
Luigina.Ciolfi@ul.ie
www.idc.ul.ie
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