Automatic Mobile Video Remixing and Collaborative Watching Systems

In the thesis, the implications of combining collaboration with automation for remix creation are analyzed. We first present a sensor-enhanced Automatic Video Remixing System (AVRS), which intelligently processes mobile videos in combination with mobile device sensor information. The sensor-enhanced AVRS system involves certain architectural choices, which meet the key system requirements (leverage user generated content, use sensor information, reduce end user burden), and user experience requirements. Architecture adaptations are required to improve certain key performance parameters. In addition, certain operating parameters need to be constrained, for real world deployment feasibility. Subsequently, sensor-less cloud based AVRS and low footprint sensorless AVRS approaches are presented. The three approaches exemplify the importance of operating parameter tradeoffs for system design. The approaches cover a wide spectrum, ranging from a multimodal multi-user client-server system (sensor-enhanced AVRS) to a mobile application which can automatically generate a multi-camera remix experience from a single video. Next, we present the findings from the four user studies involving 77 users related to automatic mobile video remixing. The goal was to validate selected system design goals, provide insights for additional features and identify the challenges and bottlenecks. Topics studied include the role of automation, the value of a video remix as an event memorabilia, the requirements for different types of events and the perceived user value from creating multi-camera remix from a single video. System design implications derived from the user studies are presented. Subsequently, sport summarization, which is a specific form of remix creation is analyzed. In particular, the role of content capture method is analyzed with two complementary approaches. The first approach performs saliency detection in casually captured mobile videos; in contrast, the second one creates multi-camera summaries from role based captured content. Furthermore, a method for interactive customization of summary is presented. Next, the discussion is extended to include the role of users’ situational context and the consumed content in facilitating collaborative watching experience. Mobile based collaborative watching architectures are described, which facilitate a common shared context between the participants. The concept of movable multimedia is introduced to highlight the multidevice environment of current day users. The thesis presents results which have been derived from end-to-end system prototypes tested in real world conditions and corroborated with extensive user impact evaluation

Field Studies on User Experience of Automation in Context-Aware Social Media

Today’s social media services increasingly contain highly automated context-aware features. However, there is scant research on understanding how automation affects user experience and what are the related issues, which should be taken into account when designing social media services. This thesis starts to fill this gap through empirical user studies and by forming design implications for automation in social media services from a user experience point of view. Many popular social media services have introduced automatic context-aware means for social interaction. For example, users are able to automatically assign location information to their status updates on Facebook and Twitter, and information about a movie one is watching on the online movie service Netflix, can be automatically and instantly sent to the user’s Facebook profile for friends to see. Human factors research has shown that automation has benefits and costs. On the one hand, it can free humans from performing nuisance tasks; on the other hand, it changes the role of the human user in the task performance loop by making the human a passive supervisor, which can decrease for example manual skills and situation awareness. This thesis belongs to the field of human-computer interaction. The research takes a cross-case approach on the results of several field studies in which users used context-aware social media technologies in real-life contexts. The studies cover topics such as automatic location sharing, mobile notifications, and automatic video remixing, and majority of the studies were in mobile context. Altogether, 132 users participated in the studies. Individual interviews, data logging, and questionnaires were used as the primary data gathering techniques. In the cross-case analysis, the results were categorized under three themes: automation in input of information, automation in output of information, and automation in collaborative media generation. The benefits and costs of automation in each category were discussed. In addition, broader design implications are proposed to guide automation design of social media services into a direction where automation can support user experience. The results convey that automation is capable of supporting users in pragmatic tasks. In addition, if the level of automation in the execution of the pragmatic tasks is also in agreement with user’s hedonic (emotional) goals, automation can support a positive user experience. However, at the same time automation assists the user, it also lowers user control. This thesis shows that it can be challenging for the user to, for example, correctly interpret automated social information, sustain satisfactory privacy, and control the impression other people form of them. To conclude, this thesis proposes five implications for design that emphasize the application of alternative levels of automation to achieve a pleasant user experience with social media services

Field Studies on User Experience of Automation in Context-Aware Social Media

Today’s social media services increasingly contain highly automated context-aware features. However, there is scant research on understanding how automation affects user experience and what are the related issues, which should be taken into account when designing social media services. This thesis starts to fill this gap through empirical user studies and by forming design implications for automation in social media services from a user experience point of view. Many popular social media services have introduced automatic context-aware means for social interaction. For example, users are able to automatically assign location information to their status updates on Facebook and Twitter, and information about a movie one is watching on the online movie service Netflix, can be automatically and instantly sent to the user’s Facebook profile for friends to see. Human factors research has shown that automation has benefits and costs. On the one hand, it can free humans from performing nuisance tasks; on the other hand, it changes the role of the human user in the task performance loop by making the human a passive supervisor, which can decrease for example manual skills and situation awareness. This thesis belongs to the field of human-computer interaction. The research takes a cross-case approach on the results of several field studies in which users used context-aware social media technologies in real-life contexts. The studies cover topics such as automatic location sharing, mobile notifications, and automatic video remixing, and majority of the studies were in mobile context. Altogether, 132 users participated in the studies. Individual interviews, data logging, and questionnaires were used as the primary data gathering techniques. In the cross-case analysis, the results were categorized under three themes: automation in input of information, automation in output of information, and automation in collaborative media generation. The benefits and costs of automation in each category were discussed. In addition, broader design implications are proposed to guide automation design of social media services into a direction where automation can support user experience. The results convey that automation is capable of supporting users in pragmatic tasks. In addition, if the level of automation in the execution of the pragmatic tasks is also in agreement with user’s hedonic (emotional) goals, automation can support a positive user experience. However, at the same time automation assists the user, it also lowers user control. This thesis shows that it can be challenging for the user to, for example, correctly interpret automated social information, sustain satisfactory privacy, and control the impression other people form of them. To conclude, this thesis proposes five implications for design that emphasize the application of alternative levels of automation to achieve a pleasant user experience with social media services

Field Studies on User Experience of Automation in Context-Aware Social Media

Today’s social media services increasingly contain highly automated context-aware features. However, there is scant research on understanding how automation affects user experience and what are the related issues, which should be taken into account when designing social media services. This thesis starts to fill this gap through empirical user studies and by forming design implications for automation in social media services from a user experience point of view. Many popular social media services have introduced automatic context-aware means for social interaction. For example, users are able to automatically assign location information to their status updates on Facebook and Twitter, and information about a movie one is watching on the online movie service Netflix, can be automatically and instantly sent to the user’s Facebook profile for friends to see. Human factors research has shown that automation has benefits and costs. On the one hand, it can free humans from performing nuisance tasks; on the other hand, it changes the role of the human user in the task performance loop by making the human a passive supervisor, which can decrease for example manual skills and situation awareness. This thesis belongs to the field of human-computer interaction. The research takes a cross-case approach on the results of several field studies in which users used context-aware social media technologies in real-life contexts. The studies cover topics such as automatic location sharing, mobile notifications, and automatic video remixing, and majority of the studies were in mobile context. Altogether, 132 users participated in the studies. Individual interviews, data logging, and questionnaires were used as the primary data gathering techniques. In the cross-case analysis, the results were categorized under three themes: automation in input of information, automation in output of information, and automation in collaborative media generation. The benefits and costs of automation in each category were discussed. In addition, broader design implications are proposed to guide automation design of social media services into a direction where automation can support user experience. The results convey that automation is capable of supporting users in pragmatic tasks. In addition, if the level of automation in the execution of the pragmatic tasks is also in agreement with user’s hedonic (emotional) goals, automation can support a positive user experience. However, at the same time automation assists the user, it also lowers user control. This thesis shows that it can be challenging for the user to, for example, correctly interpret automated social information, sustain satisfactory privacy, and control the impression other people form of them. To conclude, this thesis proposes five implications for design that emphasize the application of alternative levels of automation to achieve a pleasant user experience with social media services