Mapping interviews with open source

technologies

Dr. Chris McDowallLandcare Research

FOSS4G, SydneyOct 23, 2009

geography

making stuff

+ knowledge representation

stuff that interests me

context

system

thoughts

[ some context ]

Qualitative researchis hard

After participating ininterviews, two thingsbecame clear …

Important material is lost

Audio is hard to analyse and search

So, this is what I did …

[ early experiments ]

Embed media in interactive map

User interface offers guided narrative and exploration

Good way to share and contextualise stories

Content creation is time consuming and costly

Does not address our interview problems

I kept stumbling across clues on the web …

http://www.iapad.org

http://johnnylee.net

An idea started forming …

[ the system ]

Interviewsnippet

Place name Geo-location

265 Queen Street, Auckland 1010,

New Zealand

POINT(-36.8507, 174.7464)

Build a system based on{ audio, placename, location }that answers questions like …

“Take me to the bit when she talked about Rawene”

“Show me all interviews that mention Taupo”

“Make me a map of the interview”

SQLite

OpenLayers

Create a new interview

Navigate to region of interest.Sync audio recording with the app …

… and begin

Markers are time-stamped, reverse-geocoded and sent to the database

The system also recognises freehand lines

Lines and markers remember what zoom level the map was at when they were created

When you’re finished, upload the mp3 file …

… and you have a map where audio is synced to gestures

Selecting markers on map or list controls the audio playback

Map centers and zooms to focus

… and lines too

[ whiteboard ]

terracode.com

http://tinyurl.com/audiogeotag

[ some thoughts ]

This is an alpha system

Untested in a real interview

Next steps:testing,refine interface,control map with playerenhanced search

How should the system …

. assign names to lines?

. handle multi-part lines? (e.g. arrows). balance ease of use with flexible options?

search: audio geotagging

Thank you

Chris McDowall – Landcare ResearchTwitter @fogonwater