-Tactics and Concepts for Highly Mobile People

One of the families that I interviewed made a clear distinction between the private part of
the home and the public area:
“We comprise of some family areas and some formal areas, you can move away from
there to another area. It’s like a very large entertainment house basically, but it’s got
its privacy, we have our own kind of cocoon bedroom suites.”
This cocoon area is also where they can be messy and leave things lying around without
having to worry about guests coming to see it. So this is the area of bubbling in a way that
is very close to territorializing and the rest of the house is more formal.
Bubbling provides a sense of home by being a private place where people are in control of
the things going on in close proximity of the body. This provides a feeling of control and
continuity is then possible though living in constant change. It is also about creating a
familiar atmosphere around you and in that way home is what is close to you.
Designing for Bubbling - is shutting out context, which can be done technology wise
through use of mobile artifacts that is close to the body and is the communication channel
to the outside world. Bubbling also concerns shutting out context, which can be achieved
in small spaces that are non-­‐related to the specific place, being for instance business
lounges and business rooms, that rarely reflect the location, but instead acts as a non-­‐
place(Augé, 2000).
This tactic is about defining a small space around the body in order to cope with the
constant change in surroundings. According to Winther (Winther, 2006), home is a
private place where you can exclude the external things and where you can invite others
in. This is exactly what you do when bubbling: The external is excluded and a private
sphere is built either in a place or while on the move. Several props support bubbling on
the move, being mobile phones, laptops, mp3 players that people use for isolating
themselves. The bubbling tactic was also experienced in places, where curtains were not
withdrawn and an isolated area with clear boundaries.
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