Capturing Transitions Between Users' Semantically Meaningful Places Using Mobile Devices

Due to their ubiquity and ever-increasing technical capabilities, mobile devices are often used as data collection tools by researchers in multiple fields, notably HCI and Ubicomp. Although the data gathered by mobile devices can be generated from sources such as the device users, it is difficult for researchers to capture ground truth and verify data integrity beyond controlled laboratory studies. This lack of knowledge about data integrity may, in turn, affect the quality of higher-level inferences made using the data. In this paper, we report on the experience and results of a hybrid laboratory/field study in which we use mobile devices to infer the moment at which users transition between self-defined semantically meaningful personal places. The results show that filtered device motion does appear to reflect these moments of transition well, but the nature of the research question makes verification difficult in a field study.