Community Road-Signs and Public Mobile Location-Based Systems

Mobile location-based systems can be of use to enrich community life. Based on an ethnographic study of community road signs, we argue that these systems fit somewhat with an abundant practice where private persons make and post signs along the roads. People who live along roads have various reasons, and investigate in various ways, to communicate with passing drivers. Even though these road signs are mostly used for interaction outside of the neighbourhood community, they fill an important role to sustain those communities. Our fieldwork reveals that the available mobile location based systems need to be adapted both for such communication in between members involved in different forms of communities, as well as for the particularities of reading signs when moving along a road at high speed.