Assessing the cognitive advantages of different systems for the explicit encoding of location.

Maps have been for a long time the only way to organize and communicate spatial information. Recent GPS assisted technologies allow people to find their location and navigate without interfacing a map. When communicating one’s location, people exchange linguistic information. Now location is encoded in many different ways (addressess, coordinate systems, etc.) and while most places are not defined in some systems (most new urban developments do not have address systems), many location encondings are not easily unerstood or communicated (few people master coordinate systems.) The purpose of the internship is to enlist and evaluate different spatial encoding systems in terms of their usability, under a number of (to be defined) cognitive, ecological and social constraints. The starting point is the following paper: https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems The deliverable is a refinement of the classification of location enconding systems proposed in the paper and the definition of dimensions of evaluation, and possibly of experimental designs for assisting the evaluation. The internship takes place at IJN and (do be discussed) at Attoma Paris (http://www.attoma.eu/)