Bikers are a special form of road users whereas they often travel as a group of vehicles. They also journey to meet other bikers at specific meetings. Since, these activities comprise extensive collaborative work it would be of interest, from a CSCW perspective, to study ther interaction practices and what tools they use to order their use of the motorcycles. This would also add to the growing body of reserach in the area of mobile informatics where an important focus consider IT-support in mobile contexts. Further, we believe that this groups of users would benefit of new information technology to support the articulation of their practice. The project will start with a period of planning before launching a project based on ethnographic user studies and design sessions with industrial partners.

Bikers are selected because they are so explicit on their road use as a social activity. Much could be learned from their practices and use of information technology, which could illuminate road users future activities. The studies will be performed based on ethnographic fieldwork. Our main interest lies in the study of the biker’s co-ordination as an on-going activity. But it will also benefit from the use of life style and identity analysis. Up until know, we have a experience from the field by the means of everyday motorcycling, participation in Mälaren Runt (approximately 10.000 bikers participated during a single day). A group of bikers has been identified, which has an ongoing conversation on their website. Examples of this everyday experience are discussions with bikers at parking lots, the waving among the oncoming bikers on the roads and the nodding in mutual understanding next to the traffic lights but without possibility to have a conversation. During Mälaren Runt we were confronted with the problem of co-ordination in situations where the bikers had lost sight of each other. To support this co-ordination they used mobile phones and voice mail. The main problem still remained while they only had the opportunity to use this equipment during breaks. In this case the route was fixed, but the problem concerned how to find each other, to settle time and place where to meet. While one of the researchers (Mattias Esbjörnsson) is a biker he has some experience from the field during his own driving. In view of this, there is no problem to continuously take part in forthcoming events, for example Swedish Bike Meet, Wednesdays at Brostugan (a popular place where bikers in Stockholm meet every Wednesday during the season, approximately 400 bikers each time) and Mälaren Runt.