Design for emergence: collaborative social play with online and location-based media

This 192 page book investigates spontaneous, unpredictable uses of technology that are driven by social contexts and collaborative processes. The book proposes a research process of design for emergence, focusing on emergent phenomena as part of an iterative design process. This book is a published PhD thesis which presents early studies with multiple simultaneous users experimenting with location-based media in the real world and is unique in focusing on emergent user interaction, the role of the social and physical environment and how these can inform the design of new technologies. The thesis concludes with a positive vision of ubiquitous and social computing, in which the virtual world becomes a 'first class citizen' rather than a substitute for the real world, creating new situations and engaging experiences in the setting of our daily life that were not possible before.