"Where we met last time": a study of sociality in the city

Understanding the context of use of a computing system is an important part of designing human-centred interaction especially where that computing pervades the places and activities of daily life. The aim of this paper is to introduce two ontologies that represent understanding of 1) human perception of architectural place and 2) sociality in an urban space, gained through field studies of the physical and social layers of an urban environment. This paper demonstrates how these ontologies are used to provide an understanding of context of use of an urban space, and how to identify design opportunities for informing design of a digital layer of pervasive computing.