A Historian’s Basic Theory of
Location-Based History Apps
A Master Thesis and Project Document of the Students of the
University of Groningen Scruto App Project
Philip John Heaton (s2193736)
Contents
Abstract ... v
Chapter 1: Introduction ... 1
Introduction to the Thesis ... 1
Apps ... 2
A definition ... 2
Apps: a global success story ... 2
Apps and the Field of History ... 5
The First Generation of History Apps: a State of the Art ... 6
Characteristic 1: an interdisciplinary team of developers and stakeholders ... 6
Characteristic 2: developed against a spatial context ... 7
- Tourism - ... 7
- Digital exhibition of archive material - ... 7
- Commemorating an anniversaries - ... 8
Audiences, aims and features ... 10
- An example of tourism app: History Space- ... 10
- An example of an achieve exhibition app: City Strata’s Cinemapping - ... 11
- An example of a commemorative app: UGent Passage - ... 12
The Case for Apps ... 13
The Case for this Thesis ... 15
Chapter 2: Review of Existing Theories ... 18
Why We Need Theories and Which Theories to Choose ... 18
The Theories Discussed in this Chapter... 20
The Theories ... 21
Theory One: the theory of rhetorical situations – a theory of communication ... 21
- The applicability of Bitzer’s theory to history apps - ... 23
Theory Two: the theory of representation as a theory of how history writing is related to the past ... 25
- Capacity of the theory of representation to explain how history apps are related to the past - ... 28
Theory Three: Ann Rigney’s application of new theories of narratology to history as an example of a theory of digital history ... 29
- Useful insights from Rigney’s theoretical analysis - ... 31
Theory Four: Henri Lefebrevre’s social constructivist definition of space and phenomenological theories of place as two theories of space ... 32
- Social constructivist approaches to place - ... 34
- Phenomenological approaches to place - ... 34
- Useful insights from the theories -... 35
Theory Five: Jim A. Kuypers’ rhetorical framing analysis, an example of political communication studies’ framing theory ... 36
- Useful insights from the theory - ... 39
Chapter 3: A First Statement of a Unified Basic Theory of Location-Based History Apps
... 41
First Statement of the Unified Theory: Part One – The Problem ... 41
First Statement of the Unified Theory: Part Two – The Response ... 45
Chapter 4: Application of the First Statement of a Basic Theory of Location-Based
History Apps to the Students of the University of Groningen Scruto App Design ... 49
Part One: Description of a Location-Based History App Example ... 49
Background to the Scruto project ... 51
- February to March 2013 - ... 51
- April 2013 - ... 51
- May to June 2013 - ... 52
- July to August 2013 - ... 52
- September 2013 onwards - ... 53
Scruto’s final design ... 53
Part Two: Analysis of the Example... 60
Premise One ... 61
Premise Two ... 62
- The potential audience - ... 63
- The undesirable meaning - ... 63
- The audience selected by their undesirable perception of the subject’s ... 64
- Statement of the identified problem - ... 66
- Statement of the cause of the problem - ... 66
Premise Three ... 67
- Spatial and communal continuity - ... 69
- The past as an ornament of the present - ... 69
- Purpose of historical reflection and enquiry - ... 69
Premise Four ... 70
- A hidden past shaping present student life in Groningen - ... 70
- Hidden: not ostensibly historical - an anti-history - ... 71
- Student life in Groningen as a history of the University - ... 72
Premise Five ... 72
- Semi-closed associational pathways between sub-narratives -... 73
- Notifications and geo-localisation versus interactive maps - ... 75
- Images - ... 76
- General aesthetic - ... 78
- Gamification and social networking features - ... 79
Evaluation of the App ... 80
- Does Scruto address the cause of the problem in communication about the past of place? - ... 80
Chapter 5: Final Statement of a Historian’s Basic Theory of Location-Based History
Apps ... 85
Summary of Findings from Application of Theory to a Case Study ... 85
Restatement of Theory ... 88
From Theory to Guide ... 92
Bibliography ... 94
Appendices ... 99
Appendix 1: The Definition of Location-Based History Apps ... 99
Appendix 2: A Historian’s Basic Guide to Designing Location-Based History
Apps ... 100
Appendix 3: Timeline of the Scruto Project ... 103
Appendix 4: Key Actions ... 105
Resources ... 137
Resource 1: The Qualities of Apps ... 137
Resource 2: The Capabilities of Mobile Devices ... 138
Table 1. The Qualities of Apps ... 4
Table 2. Common Features of Apps ... 8
Table 3. Limitations Imposed by Mobile Devices on App's Functionality ... 9
Table 4. Some Elements of Gamification in Apps ... 79
Table 5 Scruto Developers' Approach to Defining their Audience ... 81
Figure 1. History Space: (i) Start-screen, (ii) Augmented reality, and (iii) A mini game ... 11
Figure 2. City Strata with Cinemapping prototype layer ... 12
Figure 3. UGent Passage Screen Shots ... 13
Figure 4. Scruto App Preview Screenshot: Notification ... 54
Figure 5. Scruto App Preview Screenshot: Topic Question ... 55
Figure 6. Scruto App Preview Screenshots: (i) Topic question explanation, (ii) In text images, (iii) follow up questions ... 56
Figure 7. Scruto App Preview Screenshots: (i) First follow up question, (ii) Movement from follow up question to the topic question ... 57
Figure 8. Scruto App Preview Screenshot: Map ... 58
Figure 9. Scruto App Preview Screenshot: Awards ... 58
Figure 10. Scruto's Semi-Closed Associational Pathways between Su-narratives ... 72
Figure 11. Scruto's Use of Images ... 77
Figure 12. (i) Scruto aesthetic - (ii) Today in History app aesthetic ... 78
Figure 13. Scruto's Gamification and Social Networking Features ... 79
Abstract
History apps show many signs that, in the next decades, they could become a highly useful device in the historian’s arsenal for communicating with different audiences and participating in interdisciplinary research projects. However, before this can happen, historians need more information about what history apps are, what they can do, and how a historian can get the best out of them. For this purpose, this thesis, a document of the students of the University of Groningen history app project “Scruto”, will look to develop a basic theory of location-based history apps. This theory will look to establish a theoretical basis for thinking about and developing history apps, which will support historians working inapps development projects overcome two fundamental issues they are likely to encounter: knowing how to reconcile the many different actions and stakeholders in the history app-making project with an idea of the aims of the project as a whole, and understanding how and ensuring that, despite all the app’s features, the history app is “historical”.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Introduction to the Thesis
Technology is an integral part of our world. Its systems and devices influence and even determine how we live in the world, how we control and are controlled by the world, how we move in the world, and how we see, think about, understand and talk about the world. As such, changes in technological capabilities can have profound impacts in all aspects of our lives.
Mooted as the latest technological revolution (following on close on the heels of the previous, dot com, revolution) is the mobile boom.1 This term refers to the sudden advances in mobile communications technologies and their impact in the developed world, and in particular to the wide distribution of multi-touch, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablets; the large technological, functional and thematic scope of programmes available on these devices; and the similarly considerable scope of products and services being designed with these devices in mind.
In its most general sense, this thesis is an attempt to understand the impact of this apparent “shift” on one aspect of how we relate to the world around us: how we relate to the past through history writing. The manifestation of this overarching purpose is much more specific. The first aim of this thesis is to assist historians – those charged with guiding us and monitoring us as we relate to the past – to make sense of the impact of these new technologies on their role.
To achieve this, this thesis will look to help historians understand how the first generation of location-based history mobile device apps enable their users to relate to the past, and, more particularly, how historians participate in the projects which develop history apps, and how historians can participate in projects which develop successful history apps. These aims are focused on meeting the needs of the principal audience of this thesis: historians and history students currently involved in history app projects, those preparing to be involved in history app projects, and those contemplating joining history app projects.
There is a second aim of this research. This thesis is one of several documents which have come out of the University of Groningen student history app project: Scruto. These documents are means by which the participants in the Scruto project try to make sense of their particular experience, and therefore valorise and share the learning gained during the project. As such the thesis’s second, more
1 Stuart Dredge. “Making your mobile more accessible.” The Guardian, November 23, 2011. Accessed April
specific, aim is to allow the experience generated by the participation of these developers – including this thesis’s author – in an app project to add to how they themselves and historians in general understand history apps and the historian’s role in developing them.
Apps
A definition
The first step is of course to define apps. If you are relatively new to the world of technology, then you might be surprised to find that the word application applies to many more things than you expect. This is because an application is actually any complete, self-contained computer programme that performs a specific function directly for the user (as opposed to system software which exists to support application programmes and the general running of the computer).2 This means that you have been using applications since long before bought your smartphone and that, as a historian, probably the application you use the most is Microsoft Word: at least it is by this historian.
However, it is true that, in everyday language, an application or “app” usually refers to a mobile devise app, an application designed to work on the handheld computers that are smartphones and tablets.3 Mobile devices always come with preinstalled apps, for basic functionality. But they also support third party applications, which the user downloads from remote app distribution centres like Apple’s App Store and Google Play. It is these third party apps that constitute the majority of apps being developed today and it is in this sense, to refer to third party smartphone or tablet applications, that the word “app” will be used during this thesis.4
Apps: a global success story
The app business is large and growing. In 2013, an estimated 82 billion apps were downloaded worldwide – more than the total of all apps downloaded in the six previous years added together5 –
2 Denis Howe, “Application Program,” FOLDOC the Free Online Dictionary of Computing, February 2, 2007,
accessed April 21, 2014, http://foldoc.org/application+program.
3
Peggy Anne Salz and Jennifer Moranz, The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps (Avon, MA: F&W Media Inc., 2013), 14.
4 In addition to the distinctions between mobile apps and software applications in general and between
preinstalled apps and third party apps there are a number of other potentially confusing terms which further define the type of app in question. For instance, apps can be either native apps or web apps depending on whether they are run by the mobile device itself or on its built-in web browser (Mobile Applications Creators and Generators, Easy Mobile App Generator Guide, (Ineffable Innovations, 2011): 4. However, according to Salz and Moranz, The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps, 14.the these fine categorisations and others like “hybid, wrapper and thin client apps” can thankfully be left to the software developers.
5 “Mobile Applications Futures 2013-2017,” Major Reports, last modified 2014, accessed March 30, 2014,
leading to the industry that supplies this demand to be labelled as the industry growing faster “than any other industry out there in any market in all countries”.6
This claim is not hard to believe observing figures like those of Portillo Research: that the number of people using apps will rise at 29.8 percent each year for the next three years, so that by the end of 2017 there will be an expected 4.4 billion users worldwide supplying the industry with expected global revenues of over 65 billion dollars per year.7
This growth is due to a variety of factors. It is partly due to the rapidly rising number of people owning mobile devices. More statistics from Portillo Research – an independent research company serving many leading multinational computing and communications companies including Google, Apple and Samsung and Microsoft – tell us that in 2013 for the first time smartphones accounted for approaching one half of mobile handsets sold worldwide (46%). This percentage is forecast to continue to rise so that number of smartphone handsets sold in 2017 will be approximately double the amount sold globally in 2012, with sales of tablets set to triple over that period. 8
Alongside this swelling number of smartphone and tablet owners is the equally large growth in the fields that apps are being developed for. When Apple opened the first app distribution centre in 2008, apps were for general productivity or information retrieval – for instance, for checking the weather forecast, sending emails or updating a calendar.9 Since then, apps have been developed for all kinds of purposes as we can see from the categories of apps currently available from the App Store. In March 2014 these were: “Education, Catalogues, Food & Drink, Sports, Business, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Finance, Photo & Video, Books, Medical, Music, Navigation, News, Productivity, Social Networking, Reference, Health & Fitness, Weather, Utilities, Travel, Newsstand and Games.”10 Apps’ diversity can also be considered from the perspective of the diversifying nature of smartphone and tablet users. For instance there are apps for children, apps for elderly people, apps for studying, for tourism, and for artisans and so on.
Thirdly, the growth in the use of apps is due to the apps themselves. Apps have become increasingly technically sophisticated and have concurrently become increasingly, genuinely and generally, useful for lots of purposes. It is this usefulness which is fuelling users’ demands for organisations in different fields to deliver services via apps, and organisations’ enthusiasm to meet these demands. This demand in turn is driving further technical advances in apps.
6
Mobile Applications Creators and Generators, Easy Mobile App Generator Guide, 3.
7 Portio Research, “Mobile Applications Futures 2013-2017.” 8 Portio Research, “Mobile Applications Futures 2013-2017.”
9 “Definition of: app,” Enciclopedia, last modified 2014, accessed April 15, 2014,
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/37865/app.
10 “Appstore,” iTunes Preview, last modified March 10, 2014, accessed April 15, 2014,
We can summarise the special characteristics of apps which are encouraging users to demand that more services are provided via apps as follows. Apps appeal to users due to their: mobility; interactivity; accessibility; attractiveness to users; connectivity; and their inexpensiveness. The table below elaborates these qualities in relation to apps.
Table 1. The Qualities of Apps
Mobility and Place Specificity
Mobility (the fact the apps are programmes which can be used on mobile devices) is the quality of apps which allows users to perform tasks and send and receive information without needing to be in specific locations and importantly – on the move.11
At the same time, apps have the capacity for “localisation”, the possibility to deliver location-based information. According to Roland Koch, it is this feature which gives mobility is vividness and mobility, and which embeds apps in the users’ context.12
Interactivity
Apps compete with each other and with their users’ time by engaging their users. A key strategy in achieving this is interactivity. For instance, multi-touch screens ensure that users are performing tasks rather than simply reading and digesting information. This boosts concentration, gives the user a greater sense of control over the experience and provides a sense of satisfaction that they are doing what they want to do.
Accessibility
Accessibility refers to that fact that apps aim to reduce barriers between the user and assistance in performing the task they desire. First of all apps provide alternative means of performing tasks, often geared towards audiences who are excluded from existing means. Secondly, anyone with a smartphone has only the barrier of a few touches of the screen to download an app that’s compatible with their device’s operating system and access the assistance it provides. Nowadays, more and more apps have a multi-platform development with the special purpose of reaching wider audiences.
Ease of Use
Apps tend to be very focused on the task for which the user requires them, and use intuitive, emotional design so that they can be used first time without instructions. An app should be easy enough to use that it can be used in multiple situations, with one-hand handling.
Connectivity
As apps are online whenever they are logged in to a mobile network, it is possible for them to be supplied with user specific information or notifications as this information becomes available, without the user actively requesting new information. This characteristic is called the “push functionality”.13
Inexpensiveness
Compared to other publications, apps are cheap to make and consequently cheap for the user. Of course, the user needs to be able to afford a smartphone in the first place.
11 Barbara Ballard, Designing the Mobile User Experience (John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2007): 2. 12
Roland Koch, “6 Major Characteristics of Mobile Apps,” The Flamelab Blog, January 9 2011, Accessed April 21 2014, http://www.flamelab.de/article/6-major-characteristics-of-mobile-apps/.
Apps and the Field of History
The discipline of history has not escaped “the rise of apps”. Quite the opposite, this latest innovation in historical scholarship comes at the end of over a decade of experimentation in how both digital technologies and a wider range of stakeholders can be incorporated into historical practice.14
Already, digital technology in the form of emails, e-journals and e-learning environments has facilitated greater communication and means of cooperation between teachers and students and among researchers. Digitalisation of archives has provided greater access to historical sources both for the public and researchers, as well as new means for the public to contribute to material for general scrutiny (e.g. crowd-sourcing).15 New forms of modelling data, like Geographical Information Systems, have furnished historians with new means of analysing their sources, increasing the amount of data that can be analysed and the greater sophistication of the analysis, and providing new means of visualising results of analysis and what they say about the past and changes in history.16 Finally, digital media have brought with them new possibilities for representing history. For instance, the first generation of e-books have already explored how images and maps can be used as organising structures and how hyper-textual narrative, linking different text on an electronic screen, can display complex arguments and associations, introduce evidence and document assertions in a way that “weaves text and sources together more tightly”.17
It has also been argued that historical simulation, either through borrowing techniques from video games (i.e. mixed realties), or through historical video games themselves, may create new spaces for empathy with the past and where interpretations of the past takes place from the participant view of a simulated world.18
Alongside these digital innovations, the last decades have also witnessed changes in how historical research is funded. On the one hand, researchers are being asked to be less reliant on state funding, and to explore means of funding research from private sources or through applying to funds with a wider scope than merely research, such a regional development funds. On the other, researchers are being encouraged to place greater emphasis on ensuring the research has the greatest impact on its intended audience, be it a research audience, a business or political audience, or simply as wide an audience as possible.
14 Edward L. Ayers, “The Pasts and Futures of Digital History,” Virginia Center for Digital History (1999),
accessed August 20, 2013, http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/PastsFutures.html. Ayers’ article, written in 1999, illustrates the extent of digital communications technology even fifteen years ago.
15
Ayers, “The Pasts and Futures of Digital History,” 2.
16 See: Richard White, “What is Spatial History?,” Stanford University Spatial History Lab (February 2010): 2-3, accessed September 2-2-3, 2012-3, https://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29. 17 For a review of the latest advances in e-books see: Claudio Fogu, “Digitalizing Historical Consciousness,” History and Theory, Theme Issue 47 (May 2009): 115-21.
18 Claudio Fogu, “Digitalizing Historical Consciousness,” History and Theory, Theme Issue 47 (May 2009):
Collaboration with specialists in digital media has been mooted as a way in which historians can fulfil both of these criteria, and indeed the last few years have witnessed a number of state funding streams especially created in order for these partnerships to flourish. The NWO’s CATCH funding stream in the Netherlands is an example of a funding stream dedicated to this priority. CATCH awards projects in which “IT researchers and heritage managers work together on making heritage available digitally” and therefore more accessibly.19 Another, the UK’s REACT HUB programme became one of the first such streams to award a grant to a history app prototype.
History apps have therefore arrived at the cross-roads of these two developments within history. Their characteristics such as increased accessibility and interactivity suggest that they may further the innovations of digital history in making sources more available and allowing for new relationships between the reader and the historical information. Meanwhile, the inexpensiveness of apps, their ease of use, their accessibility and their development in interdisciplinary teams may provide historians new means of disseminating their research to different audiences and therefore apply for funding from a more diverse range of sources.
The First Generation of History Apps: a State of the Art
Though history apps are only a just-emerging genre, it is possible to recognise the existence of some generic characteristics, regarding the contexts in which they are developed, their aims audiences and features.
Characteristic 1: an interdisciplinary team of developers and stakeholders
Unlike some apps, like game apps which can be developed by software-engineering firms or even individuals running cottage industries remotely from home, history apps are developed in a project and through collaboration of stakeholders containing at least a sponsor, software engineers, and a specialist (the historian or historians).
There are some history apps which are not developed in interdisciplinary teams. These, normally, are history trivia apps, the apps which, for instance, will tell you which events (wars, inventions, births of famous people) took place on your birthday. Though a thriving genre, spawning many titles such as “Abraham Lincoln Quotes”, “Today in History Lite” and “History Today”, these will not be the
19
“Continuous Access To Cultural Heritage (CATCH),” NOW Research and Results, last modified January 11, 2013, accessed August 20, 2013,
subject of this thesis as they do not involve in most cases have the participation of professional historians. Nor do they, in most cases, aim to be “historical” tending to be more geared towards to entertainment. 20
Characteristic 2: developed against a spatial context
As well as distinguishing between history apps and history trivia apps it is also possible to differentiate between history apps which have a “spatial dimension”, and those which do not.
The former category of history app will also usually be developed against a specific context or for a particular occasion. This context is embedded in a particular place, for which – due to apps’ feature of mobility – the app is able to remotely provide particular predetermined location-specific information. History apps which utilise their mobile capability to satisfy specific spatial contexts are sometimes called “location-based history apps” to emphasise their differences from history apps which do not, and which are more similar to existing genres of history writing, like websites, text books and study-aids.21 It is to these location-based history apps that the term “history app” will refer to during this thesis.
Up until now, location-based history apps (history apps) have been developed in three main spatial contexts.
- Tourism -
One common spatial context of history apps is the promotion of tourism in a particular place. For example, the apps AnnoDrenthe and History Space (developed in Northern Ireland for the EU Northern Periphery programme) are designed as decentralised heritage-tourism facilities in remote areas.22
- Digital exhibition of archive material -
On the other hand, City Strata can be seen as a digital exhibition of archival material. In Bristol, archive material that corresponds to a certain theme and location is sent to the mobile phone user when they are in that location. The layout of the information on the phone and the location itself
20 For examples of these kinds of apps see: “Today in History
Lite,”itunes.apple.com/us/app/today-in-history-lite/id312028719?mt=8; “This Day in History,” itunes.apple.com/us/app/
history-today-this-day-in/id483923680?mt=8; and “World Book: This Day in History, ”itunes.apple.com/us/app/world-book-this-day-in-history/id364739528?mt=8.
21 “History Here Location-Based History App Now Available for iPhone,” Reuters Edition US, July 23 2012,
Accessed May 5 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/23/idUS116587+23-Jul-2012+PRN20120723.
22 See for further information: “Over,” AnnoDrenthe.nl, last modified 2012, accessed May 03, 2014,
become the exhibition of the information.23 The British Museum App, is a museum app (somewhere between location-based history apps and non-location-based history apps). The distinction is minimal as, as the case of the British Museum App demonstrates. Archival material is again sent to the user in a particular location: the location of a particular artefact in the museum. This enables users to see the artefact in question on the phone in more detail than is possible in the flesh, as well as alongside a greater range of related artefacts, and in more contexts, such as the context of its purchase or rediscovery (through photographic reconstructions) or the context of its original use and disuse through computer-generated reconstructions of places and events.24
- Commemorating an anniversaries -
History apps can also be a means of commemorating a town or organisation’s anniversary – just as a year-book or album may have been in the previous century. For example, to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the University of Ghent, the University commissioned, as part of wide range of events and publications, a history app that gives a tour of locations in Ghent in some way related to the history of the University, and in this way telling a story of the University’s history.25
Table 2. Common Features of Apps26
Feature Definition
Push
Notifications
Through notifications emails, messages, updates, alerts or images appear instantly on the app’s live interface, therefore avoiding them getting snared up in spam, and allowing them to go directly to the user without him or her having to manually login to email or social media accounts.27
Location-based messaging
This combines data that devices can read about the user’s locations with its ability to send instant notifications. E.g. if a user has an app for a café they go to often, when they enter the premises they’ll be told what offers are on that day.28 Augmented
Reality
This feature combines the device’s camera sensors, working in tandem with computer generated sensory input, to display on the device’s screen an altered, in-place image of reality.29
23 “City Strata,” Heritage sandbox, last modified July 11, 2012, accessed August 20, 2013,
http://www.react-hub.org.uk/heritagesandbox/projects/2012/city-strata.
24 “Life and death Pompeii and Herculaneum, The official app,” What’s on, App, last modified 2013, accessed
April 21, 2014, www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/past_exhibitions/2013/pompeii_and_herculaneum/app.aspx.
25
“Een toer langs stad en universiteit / Touring past city and university,” UGent Passage, accessed August 20, 2013, http://www.ugentmemorie.be/dossiers/ugentpassage.
26 Two more table listing mobile device capabilities and the limitations of apps’ features can be found under
Resource 2 and Rosource 4.
27
“Our Easy Smartphone Guide,” E2Save Mobiles, last modified 2010, accessed April 21 2014, www.e2save.com/images/www/smartphones/e2save-smartphones-guide.pdf: 2.
28 Jamelia Newcombe, “The Top Ten Features Your Mobile App Should Have,” Cru Digital Blog, last modified
2013, accessed April 21 2014, http://crudigital.com.au/strategy/the-top-10-features-your-mobile-app-should-have.
29 M. Graham,, M. Zook, and A. Boulton, “Augmented reality in urban places: contested content and the
Geo-location and Maps Integration
Geo-location apps help the user acquire a sense of their current location in relation to other users and other physical locations.30 These relations can be represented by plotting the respective coordinates on digital maps, or through augmented reality (displaying information signs in the users physical view)
QR/Barcode Scanner Integration
Quick Response (QR) bar codes allow a user to point their device at the square barcode and access a range of information. The QR code connects offline and online media, again providing the user place specific information.31 A plus of QR compared to notifications is that they do not rely on GPS triangulation which uses more battery and whose signal is easily disrupted (for instance by walls and roofs). However, it requires input from the user and is generally more prosaic. Social
Networking
The user can communicate with others users via apps, enjoy shared accessed to information via apps and even participate in the use of apps together simultaneously with users on other devices.
Table 3. Limitations Imposed by Mobile Devices on App's Functionality
Limitation Definition
1. Small Screen Size
Scenes, even on tablets, are smaller on mobile devices than on desktops or televisions, restricting the amount of information that can be displayed at one time. Scrolling through pages and pages of text is not a convenient solution.
2. Lack of windows
Applications on mobile devices fill the whole screen. Also unlike with a desktop computer, most devices do not allow more than one app to be open at one time. Apps can “run in the background” while another is open however, and can, for instance, trigger a notification that interrupts another application.
3. Navigation
Without a mouse-like pointer the user selects icons and employs gestures to move between screens. Navigation needs to be especially forgiving to allow for mistakes, and icons need to be spaced widely apart to allow for selection without a mouse (reducing quantity of information per screen).
4. Cost
Even though, relative to other means of publication and providing services, apps are fairly cheap, still the cost for the user of the mobile device and the internet bandwidth charge is high. This limits the accessibility of apps. 5. Internet Service
& GPS Reading
As you use the mobile device in different locations, network connectivity (Wi-Fi or 3G), GPS-signal quality, and phone hardware will vary widely.32 6. Limited Battery
Life
Using apps, especially those which require internet consumes a lot of battery. This is a problem especially when the app is designed to be used outdoors. Low battery can influence the performance of some aspects of functionality. 7. Limited Memory
Space
The amount of information stored on the app influences the mobile devices’ ability to run it and store it alongside other apps. Of course certain kinds of information, e.g. multi-media, take up more storage space.
30 Newcombe, “The Top Ten Features”. 31 Newcombe, “The Top Ten Features” 32
Lenin Ravindranath et. al., “App Insight: Mobile App Performance Monitoring in the Wild”, Proceedings of
the 10th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, accessed April 21 2014,
Audiences, aims and features
Reflecting their different spatial contexts, history apps have different audiences, aims and features. Three examples of history apps illustrate these differences:
- An example of tourism app: History Space-
Between 2011 and 2013, the Centre of Media Research at the University of Ulster led the design and development of the History Space: Downhill Demesne application. The project was part of a transnational series of tourism app publications called Tourist Guide for Northern Periphery (TG4NP). The aim of the TG4NP project was to support and develop tourism through the application of mobile phone technologies, in regions of Europe considered to be rural and remote. The specific spatial context of History Space was the aim to improve tourist facilities and therefore attract more tourists to a heritage sited owned by the National Trust on the County Londonderry Coast in Northern Ireland. The project describes the Downhill Demesne site as remote and lacking in interpretation for visitors.33
The facility the designers aimed to provide visitors with through the History Space app was an intensely immersive interpretative experience. The app invites the user to see, touch and acquire bodily sensations (such as fatigue and musical delight) to acquire an emotional and spatial sense of the past place and the lives of its inhabitants at a particular period of the site’s history.34
To do this, the developers designed graphics and metaphors specifically for the tablet interface, and used interactive interface gestures, and gaming models, while eschewing conventional features of other apps like maps of present and past places which would interfere with the created illusion.
Specifically, the app’s features and technical capabilities work together in the following to achieve these effects:
The geographical area of the site is zoned. Specific content is geo-tagged so that it is only accessible at specific places. To access content in the zones, the user steps through doors by using their phone to draw a doorway gesture in the air. This action triggers augmented reality which allows the user to see the landscape in a changed aspect (cf. Figure 1 (ii)). For instance, if the user looks at the ruin through the camera of their phone they will see a simulation of how the building looked like in the eighteenth
33 “THE LOCATION, A ruined mansion, a crazy bishop and a library perched impossibly on a cliff!” The
Location, accessed August 20, 2013. http://www.historyspace.eu/app/location
34 “THE PROJECT,” History Space has been developed by the Centre for Media Research at the University of
A Basic Theory of Location-Based History Apps Chapter 1
century. By selecting objects in this digital view they can perform mini games (cf. Figure 1 (iii)). These tasks also involve physical exercises, e.g. carrying a tray with a glass of wine to illustrate what it was like to be a waiter at one of the Bishop’s feasts, which trigger further content related to the task. These tasks or games include fishing, learning the harp, racing clergy men, being a midnight philanderer.35
Figure 1. History Space: (i) Start-screen, (ii) Augmented reality, and (iii) A mini game
- An example of an achieve exhibition app: City Strata’s Cinemapping -
In 2012 Bristol City’s long-running digital history programme “City Strata” received funding from the UK Arts Council’s new REACT HUB funding stream to design a history app prototype for the History of Cinema Going in Bristol.
Created for an audience composed of “anyone who remembers going to the cinema with fondness, especially Bristollians”,36
the design projected a system whereby historical information about cinema-going in Bristol stored in the City’s digital archive was accessible to users via their mobile phone when they were in the location referred to by the information. This information was available in the form of “hot-spots” or groupings of historical information all related to a specific location; and thematic tours linking together hot-spots’ groupings of historical information.
35 “THE APP, Draw doorways in the air and step through to come face to face with the stories of Downhill
Demesne,” The App, accessed August 20, 2013. http://www.historyspace.eu/app/.
36 Charlotte Crofts, “Unreasonable Wonder,” Cinemapping Blog, April 12, 2012, accessed May 15, 2014,
http://www.react-hub.org.uk/heritagesandbox/projects/2012/city-strata/journal/unreasonable-wonder.
t eract ive int erface gest ures and gaming models t o enhance int erpret at ive experience, t he project hopes t hat new forms of int erpret at ive cont ent will engage and immerse visit ors in t he hist ory of t he sit e. T hey aim t o link physical and virt ual landscapes. Visit ors will explore t he landscape by discovering t he cult ure of t he people who used t o live t here by engaging wit h t he physical space in order t o underst and t he hist ory of t he sit e.
T he geographical area of t he sit e is zoned. Specific content is geo-tagged so that it is only accessible at specific places. To access content in t he zones, the user steps trough doors by using his phone t o draw a doorways gest ure int o t he air. T his act ion t riggers augment ed reality which allows t he user t o see t he landscape in a changed aspect (cf. Figure4(ii)). For inst ance, if t he user looks at t he ruin t hrough t he camera of his phone he will see how t he building looked like in t he 18t h cent ury. By select ing object s in t his digit al view t hey can perform mini games (cf. Figure4(iii)). T hese t asks also involve physical exercises, e.g. carrying a t ray wit h a glass of wine t o illust rat e what it was like t o be a wait er at one of t he Bishop’s feasts, which t rigger furt her content related to the task. These tasks or games includefishing, learning the harp, racing clergy men, being a midnight philanderer. T he planned release dat e of t he app is december 2013.
F i gur e 4: Hist ory Space (i) St art -screen, (ii) Augment ed reality, (iii) A mini game
Cit y St rat a is a mobile plat form composed of different digit al layers of t he Brist ol’s heritage. T he plat form enables user navigat ion and locat ion based experiences and includes user generat ed and uploaded cont ent . T he app is current ly prot otyped wit h a cine-mapping layer (cf. Figure5), a way of navigat ing t he city and experiencing Brist ol’s cinematic herit age. T he plat form draws cont ent about t he specific location using a remote geo-dat abase, ensuring t hat more cont ent can be received locally t han couldfit into a normal app. As t he city st rat a project aims t o provide a plat form for all sort s of layers, t he project t eam does a lot of invest igat ion int o t echnical quest ions, such as how t o cope wit h element s like bat t ery life of phones, and how t o make t he app available on all phones. T he t eam invest igat es also st rat egic quest ions like t he relat ionship between t he app and t he locat ion.
12 The app-developers were clear that that app would provide more than just information, but an experience.37 Hence, the aesthetic of the app – based on the exterior décor of cinemas was designed in order to recreate the wonder of going to the cinema. The tour could emulate the experience of going to and being in the cinema.
The features which Cinemapping’s prototype included to achieve these goals were the following:
(1) A database of archive information which includes pre-categorised information related to the history of cinema-going;
(2) A facility of monitoring users’ location in the background even though it is not actively running on the phone, through GeoFencing capabilities and of sending notifications to allow people to experience the app in the place;
(3) Short, multimedia experiences (10-15 minutes) combining video, images, text, audio and small interactive elements such as mini-games and quiz questions;
(4) A facility for the users can contribute memories in the form of images, text, etc. to the Cinemap layer directly from their mobile phones. After moderation, these are available to other users.)
(5) The design foresaw pre-organised “pop-up” events to allow people to experience the app at the same time.38
Figure 2. City Strata with Cinemapping prototype layer
- An example of a commemorative app: UGent Passage -
The UGent Passage app again formed part of a wider project: UGent Memorie a digital and analogue history project itself part of a wider series of events and publications for the University of Gent’s 200th anniversary celebrations.
37 Charlotte Crofts, “GPS My City and Walks Review,” Cinemapping Blog, April 13, 2012, accessed May 15,
2014, http://www.react-hub.org.uk/heritagesandbox/projects/2012/city-strata/journal/gpsmycitycom-city-maps-and-walks-review.
38 Richard Hull, “Tech R and D Objectives,” Cinemapping Blog, May 4, 2012, accessed May 2, 2014,
http://www.react-hub.org.uk/heritagesandbox/projects/2012/city-strata/journal/tech-rd-objectives.
For example, how much informat ion should t he user access from out side t his area and how much from wit hin t he area?
F i gur e 5: City St rat a wit h Cinemapping prot otype layer
Hist ory Today is an iPhone App t hat shows hist orical event s for each day of t he year. T he app is free of charge but displays advert isement s mixed wit h t he cont ent as depict ed in Figure6. T he user can chose from different cat egories. T he cont ent is present ed in t ext , audio but also short videos. It provides some community feat ures like comment s and a chat (cf. Figure6(iii)), where users can exchange ideas and opinions about t he hist ory of a day. Alongside t he act ual hist ory cont ent , weat her informat ion is also provided for t he current locat ion, as well as an int erface t o t he Google search.
The overall UGent Memorie project was composed of several actions each aimed at different audience, some focusing on students, others the staff, while the app was conceived as a anniversary publication for the general public. These were defined as a public of Dutch and English speakers and included visitors to the city of Ghent.
This app is essentially a tour through the city in which a voice (of the Rector of the University) reads a text about the history of various university buildings. Meanwhile, the app provides the user with related, photographic information. Through the history of these buildings the user acquires a picture of the history and collective memory of city and university. This is because the eleven locations along the route were chosen by the developers as symbolic places where the university has grown into the city, or as "lieux de mémoire, places of memory that highlight the relationship between university, city and society.”39
While the audio-guide leads the users from location to location, a map contained in the app enables the user to reach the locations independently. It is possible to access audio and textual information on the project website.
Figure 3. UGent Passage Screen Shots40
The Case for Apps
The various discussions above already suggest that history apps may have several advantages as media for communicating history. Most generally, apps have many generic qualities which have led to their successful integration into fields as diverse as elderly care and carpentry. Then, within the
39
UGent Passage, “Een toer langs stad en universiteit.”
40 UGentPassage, “Description,” iTunes Review, last modified 2014, accessed May 12, 2014,
field of history, over the last two decades there are countless examples of the positive role that digital technology can play in all areas of the discipline. The descriptions of the first generation of history apps presented above show that already in the early of adapting the genre to that of history writing, history apps have provided historians with means for working together with a wider range of disciplines to reach new audiences in different ways.
To bring these ideas together in a concrete case for the possible benefits of history apps, it is useful to consider the issue from the perspective of public history. From the viewpoint history apps first of all represent the necessary evolution of public history to new media. Public historians have been labouring for the last fifty years to ensure that, as the American National Council on Public History puts it, when ‘a member of the public makes a pilgrimage to battlefields and memorials, visit museums, watch television documentaries, volunteers with historical societies, or researches family histories’, the information they receive is based on professional scholarly research. Now that members of the public are increasingly using digital means to access information about the past for the purposes listed above, historians need also to adapt to make sure these new channels also provide information that is based on scholarly research.41
Secondly, and more importantly, history apps seem able to address some of the core concerns of public history. This is for two reasons. Firstly, though public history has changed a great deal in aims and scope over the last fifty years, at least according to the National Council on Public History it retains an ‘on-going commitments to ideals of social justice, political activism, and community engagement’. It may come as a surprise, but history apps are already being used to forward these aims. AnnoDrenthe in the Netherlands and StreetStories in London are both examples of apps as a platform for the gathering and publication of oral histories. As such they provide a means for communities to participate in historical publications and for the histories of ordinary people to be known. Similarly the HistorySpace project in Northern Ireland is an app designed to introduce cultural facilities to an under-developed part of the Northern Irish coast.42
Even without the explicit aim of involving communities or providing local facilities, due to their interactive nature, because of the demographic groups more likely to use apps, and maybe in this early stage due to their novelty factor, these apps may provide a means for reaching an audience that would not necessarily be interested in finding out about history in another way. History apps could mean
41
“What is Public History?” National Council on Public History, Accessed September 11, 2013,
http://ncph.org/cms/what-is-public-history/. For a more detailed discussion of public history see: John Tosh, “Why History Matters” (paper presented at the Birkbeck College, London, May 28, 2008),
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-79.html.
42
that fewer people are excluded from knowledge about the past, and, as all history is researched and written for an audience, this new audience will trigger research into the types of history that these groups are likely to be interested in and which may not have received scholarly attention before. Not just the audience of apps, but the way they are used will also help apps to address the concerns of public history: overcoming barriers between academic and real life. The interactivity of apps, and that fact that apps more than perhaps any other media do not make you step out of your day to day life to access information, breaks down barriers between “the academic” and normal life and the sense as a user that history is “for someone else” and not you. Working on history apps means directly addressing these concerns. Further study into these apps will lead to a refinement in the way apps reach these aims, helping them to achieve the aims more effectively.
Finally there is the perspective of the school of public history concerned with how the diverse range of media used for communicating history beyond the academy change historical knowledge. This school is often referred to a media history. Influenced by postmodernism’s sensitivity to language and media, media historians such as Wulf Kanstiener and Claudio Fogu head an ever increasing body of authors examining the impact of film, video games, and simulated reality technology to understand how information about the past is communicated on these media, and to explore the horizons of these media for communicating knowledge about the past.43 Their results are often striking. Kansteiner and Fogu for example, both investigating the genre of historical video games argue respectively that historical video games will either “greatly impact on modern historical consciousness”44
or “change our very idea of history”.45
Such weighty claims cannot yet be made for history apps. However, these studies hint at the possible importance of digital genres like history apps for history beyond their practical benefits.
The Case for this Thesis
Seen from the perspective of public history it is clear that there are many reasons which might encourage a historian to add his or her expertise to a history app project. History apps could be a way for historians to adapt existing modes of communicating directly with lay audiences to the tastes and needs of audiences in the twenty-first century. History apps could even make these strategies more effective: making knowledge even less elitist and reaching audiences previously uninterested in the
43
Wulf Kansteiner, “Searching for an Audience: The Historical Profession in the Media Age – A Comment on Arthur Marwick and Hayden White,” Journal of Contemporary History 31 (1996): 215-219; and Claudio Fogu, “Digitalizing Historical Consciousness,” 115-121.
44 Wulf Kansteiner, “Alternate Worlds and Invented Communities: History and Historical Consciousness in the
Age of Interactive Media,” in Manifestos for History, eds. Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan and Alun Munslow (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2007), 137.
past. Working with history apps and understanding them more precisely may also contribute to broader attempts of media historians to measure and evaluate how impact of digital media on attitudes and conceptualisations of the past.
However, it is the case that extensive participation of historians in app projects is limited by significant factors. Despite prevalence of digital technology in history, compared to their academic colleagues, historians can be a bit afraid of technology. This has been cited as one of the several reasons why historians of all academics have been the slowest to adopt journals as the primary means of publishing.46
Furthermore, even presented with an opportunity and the potential advantages of working with history apps, a historian may suffer from doubts and uncertainties. What is this new media? What is its value? Is there a risk that the integrity of the historical information will be lost by transplanting history onto a mobile phone?
In addition to uncertainty about the medium’s value, the historian may also be ignorant about the medium’s standards of excellence. A historian who is used to each project they are involved in having high academic and creative merit may shy away from a medium where the criteria for such work are unknown.
To overcome this reticence historians need more guidance about what history apps are and what working with them entails. Historians also need guidance about what the standards of quality are when it comes to history apps, and how historians can get the most out of this new media. For historians to be discouraged from participating in history app projects for these factors would be a pity, considering the potential benefits of apps for public history and opportunities they present for participating in interdisciplinary research projects for receiving funding from a wider range of sponsors. However, without guidance in these matters, it is likely this will be the case.
For this reason, this thesis looks to provide some of this guidance. Specifically, this thesis will attempt to develop a basic theory of history app-making, translated at the end of the thesis into a short easy to use guide, which can act as a reference to other historians as they consider, prepare for and begin participating in history app projects.
To begin this task Chapter Two will conduct a review of existing theories, elements of which may address particular pre-identified issues involved in making history apps.
Chapter Three will bring together these insights in the first statement of a theory of history apps. This theory will be illustrated by applying it to an example of the history app the author was involved in developing: the students of the University of Groningen’s Scruto app. This example will also be used to gauge the theory’s explanatory power and the extent to which the concepts it uses needs to be added to or modified.
Chapter 2: Review of Existing Theories
This chapter is a review of theories related to different aspects of history app-making. The aim of the review is to identify and bring together pertinent observations of existing theories which could contribute to a new theoretical basis for history apps for the use of historian members of history app development projects.
Reflecting history apps’ refusal to reduce to conventional theories of history writing, the theories mentioned in this chapter originate from a diverse range of disciplines – from the philosophy of history, to geography, to political communication studies. Theories from each school will be dealt with in turn and will be discussed with two purposes in mind. First of all, I will describe the grounds for using the theory as a way of making sense of history apps. Then I will list the insights provided by the theories as well as the theories’ limitations as resources for constructing a theory of history apps.
Why We Need Theories and Which Theories to Choose
We turn to theories for a way of making sense of the world around us. Normally theories do not state what you should do in so many words, as they tend to be descriptions of the world and tools of assessing the world rather than rules for living in it. However, the goals that you set and the steps you take to the reach these goals can be informed by theories. For instance, if your goal is to write history, the goals you set and the steps you take should be informed by and justified against theories of (among others) what constitutes history – what is history, what makes a text historical – and what does not. Theories also help you see understand the consequences of your actions.
In this case, the case of making history apps, we also look to theories for ways to understand and assess history apps and later to help us set goals for what we can achieve and develop methodologies for reaching them. The question is, to which theories? To help us decide we will look at a definition of history app-making composed of the definition of the various aspects of history apps set out in Chapter One. The definition will help us find which aspects of history apps projects could benefit from being grounded in theory, and more importantly, to determine what the historian might need support from theories for.
The term history app, when used in this thesis will always refer to location-based history apps which are the following: a piece of software that allows a mobile device to display to the user information about history using a variety of features in a particular place. These features often include geo-localisation and notifications; multimedia; hyperlinked text and images enabling navigation between often short selections of text and images; augmented reality and interactive maps. This software will be developed by an interdisciplinary team of (at least) historians and software developers working within a coalition of stakeholders composed of (at least) the interdisciplinary team and the financers, in order to communicate information about the past to a particular audience of (at least) one section of the general public. They are usually developed under one, or a mixture, of the following circumstances: to promote tourism; as a digital exhibition of archive material; or as a publication to commemorate an institution’s anniversary. They can be distinguished from trivia apps and non-location-based history apps by the participation of professional historians alongside software developers and by their use in historic places.
The first thing we see from the definition is that history app-development involves actions in a number of different fields which may benefit from theoretical support. For example, actions may require the team to seek theories covering fields such as software engineering to assist the computer scientists build the software that will allow the app the function with all its features; product design and marketing so that the product is user friendly, financially viable; project management to help plan the project, combine diffuse skills and resolve conflict in the interdisciplinary team; and psychology to evaluate the relationship between the app’s features and its communicative function. The majority of these actions will fall outside the direct responsibility of the historian team-member in their capacity as the team’s historian and therefore do not concern the historian (in his or her capacity as a historian) in themselves. However, as a whole they do. It is necessary that the historian has a way of conceiving of the project as a whole composed of different actions and stakeholders with different relationships between them, and that this understanding includes a sense of the historian’s role within these actions and stakeholders.
know how the app’s technical features, user scenarios, stakeholders, context and spatial dimension impact on “the history”: how the app is historical.
Therefore, this chapter will review theories which may help the historian in the history app-making team reconcile the many different actions and stakeholders in the history app-making project with an idea of the aims of the project as a whole and understand how and ensure that, despite all the app’s features, the history app is “historical”.
The Theories Discussed in this Chapter
The theories that have been chosen for this task are the following. Lloyd F. Bitzer’s theory of rhetorical situations, first published in 1963, is a theory of a particular kind of communication: rhetorical communication. It is hoped that the theory will be broad enough to establish links between all of the disciplines active in history app projects and organise their different aspects into general aims and functions, yet in terms that will still resonate clearly with the historian and what the historian might be trying to achieve through the project.
Secondly, this chapter will review Frank Ankersmit’s theory of representation. Understanding and measuring how the characteristics of history app projects influence the familiar process of history writing requires defining what history writing is: specifically what makes it historical. As a leading theory of what makes a historical text about the past, Ankersmit’s representation will provide us with such a definition. It will be applied to what we know about history apps: where it corresponds we will note what this means for how we can understand history apps; where it does not we will have discovered where we require support from other theories.
more importantly to illuminate the consequences of history app’s spatial dimension for how apps represent history.
Finally, we will turn to political communication studies, in particular to Jim F. Kuypers’ “framing theory”. Having described the theory and its use, we will examine its potential to reconcile Ankersmits theory of representation with how we can say an app “represents” history based on how we have seen the process of representation is influenced by history app’s digital features and their spatial context.
The Theories
Theory One: the theory of rhetorical situations – a theory of
communication
The first theory we will turn to is a theory of communication. This is for two reasons. Firstly, we need a theory that is sufficiently general so that all the different aspects of history app-making can discussed using the same conceptual language, a language which can be used for talking about history writing too. Secondly, the theory needs to be relevant to all the different actions from the different fields in question as well. Communication theory fulfils both these criteria, being very broad in its scope, and demonstrably applicable to all the disciplines implicated in a history app-making project, be them history, software design, project management or marketing.
The theory of communication that we will examine here is Lloyd F. Bitzer’s theory of rhetorical situations. Bitzer’s theory, set out over the course of a 1963 article, has been chosen because it is a classically penetrating statement of communication theory yet concise and accessible for non-experts in this field. More importantly, Bitzer is interested in a particular type of communication, which seems applicable to both history apps and historical publications of others kinds: rhetorical acts or communication with a persuasive goal.
Over the course of his article, Bitzer builds his case that in order to understand rhetorical acts, it is also necessary to understand rhetorical situations. He begins by acknowledging the four key traditional elements in all communication, which he refers to as “speaker, subject, speech and audience,”47
but which are more commonly referred to today in D. K. Berlo’s terms as “sender,
47 Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation” (paper presented at a public lecture at Cornell University,
message, channel and receiver”.48
He continues by defining the particular kind of communication he is interested in, rhetorical acts, as follows: A communication act is rhetorical act because
“it functions to produce action or change in the world but… [without] attempt[ing]
to alter reality by direct application of energy to objects.
Rather:
[it seeks to change reality] by the creation of discourse which changes reality
through the mediation of thought and action. [It] alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience in thought and action is so engaged that it become mediator of change.”49
Next he turns to the extra element which must be considered to understand rhetorical communication, the rhetorical situation, explaining the relationship between rhetorical acts and rhetorical situations, and how the latter is necessary for understanding the former. Essentially, rhetorical situations beget rhetorical acts:
“Rhetorical situations may be defined as complexities of persons, events, objects and
relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be… removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence.”50
An exigence is an imperfection marked by urgency, which can be removed by discourse. Therefore it can be said to be an imperfection in the system of communication between sender, message, channel and receiver.
Having described rhetorical situations thus, he then moves onto their most important features. For Bitzer, there are at least two crucial things to remember about rhetorical situations. Firstly, responses cannot exist without situations, but situations can exist without responses. Moreover, responses often are set in motion by the sender without full consideration of the situation.51 This is why so much rhetorical action is unsuccessful, and why, from an analytical point of view it is advisable to analyse the situation rather than the response to understand the nature of the problem.
48 David Kenneth Berlo, The Process of Communication: an Introduction to Theory and Practice (New York,
Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1960).
49
Bitzer, “Rhetorical Situations,” 4.
