Proxemics mobile collocated interactions

Recent research on mobile collocated interactions has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices. However, existing practices fail to fully account for the culturally-dependent spatial relationships between people and their digital devices (i.e. the proxemic relationships). Building on the ideas of proxemic interactions, this workshop is motivated by the concept of 'proxemic mobile collocated interactions', to harness new or existing technologies to create engaging and interactionally relevant experiences. Such approaches would allow devices to not only react to presence and interaction, but also other indicators, such as the interpersonal distance people naturally use in everyday life. The aim of this one-day workshop is to bring together a community of researchers, designers and practitioners who are interested in exploring proxemics and mobile collocated interactions

Many-screen viewing: collaborative consumption of television media across multiple devices

The landscape of television is changing. Modern Internet enabled sets are now capable computing devices offering new forms of connectivity and interaction to viewers. One development enabled by this transition is the distribution of auxiliary content to a portable computing device, such as a mobile phone or tablet, working in concert with the television. These configurations are enabled by second screen applications that provide relevant content in synchronisation with the programme on a nearby television set. This thesis extends the notion of second screen to arrangements that incorporate multiple mobile devices working with the television, utilised by collocated groups of participants. Herein these arrangements are referred to as ‘many-screen’ television. Two many-screen applications were developed for the augmentation of sports programming in preparation of this thesis; the Olympic Companion and MarathOn Multiscreen Applications. Both of these applications were informed by background literature on second screen television and wider issues in HCI multiscreen research. In addition, the design of both applications was inspired by the needs of traditional and online broadcasters, through an internship with BBC Research and Development and involvement in a YouTube sponsored project. Both the applications were evaluated by collocated groups of users in formative user studies. These studies centred on how users share and organise what to watch, incorporate activity within the traditionally passive television viewing experience and the integration of user-generated video content in a many-screen system. The primary contribution of this thesis is a series of industry validated guidelines for the design of many-screen applications. The guidelines highlight issues around user awareness devices, content and other user’s actions, the balance between communal and private viewing and the appropriation of user-generated content in many-screen watching

Many-screen viewing: collaborative consumption of television media across multiple devices

The landscape of television is changing. Modern Internet enabled sets are now capable computing devices offering new forms of connectivity and interaction to viewers. One development enabled by this transition is the distribution of auxiliary content to a portable computing device, such as a mobile phone or tablet, working in concert with the television. These configurations are enabled by second screen applications that provide relevant content in synchronisation with the programme on a nearby television set. This thesis extends the notion of second screen to arrangements that incorporate multiple mobile devices working with the television, utilised by collocated groups of participants. Herein these arrangements are referred to as ‘many-screen’ television. Two many-screen applications were developed for the augmentation of sports programming in preparation of this thesis; the Olympic Companion and MarathOn Multiscreen Applications. Both of these applications were informed by background literature on second screen television and wider issues in HCI multiscreen research. In addition, the design of both applications was inspired by the needs of traditional and online broadcasters, through an internship with BBC Research and Development and involvement in a YouTube sponsored project. Both the applications were evaluated by collocated groups of users in formative user studies. These studies centred on how users share and organise what to watch, incorporate activity within the traditionally passive television viewing experience and the integration of user-generated video content in a many-screen system. The primary contribution of this thesis is a series of industry validated guidelines for the design of many-screen applications. The guidelines highlight issues around user awareness devices, content and other user’s actions, the balance between communal and private viewing and the appropriation of user-generated content in many-screen watching

Understanding what drives consumers’ electronic word-of-mouth behavior in a multichannel, multimedia and multiscreen environment

JEL Classification: M31, M39O objectivo da presente dissertação consiste em investigar a intenção dos consumidores em escolher canais electrónicos quando decidem partilhar informação (boca-a-boca) com outras pessoas, num ambiente de múltiplos canais e dispositivos. O estudo explora as motivações dos consumidores aquando pretendem transmitir informação, com o objctivo de perceber o que os leva a (1) envolver-se neste tipo de comunicação, especificamente na indústria das companhias aéreas, e (2) associar essas motivações à intençao de uso de vários canais electrónicos para a partilha da informação. Foi realizado um questionário online, determinando uma amostra de 103 adultos portugueses, de forma a analisar quantitativamente as hipóteses propostas, através de análises estatísticas para factores e associações lineares entre as variáveis. Os resultados sugerem que as motivações dos consumidores para a partilha de informação influenciam positivamente a escolha de múltiplos canais electrónicos para a sua transmissão, sendo que a preocupação pelos outros, ajudar a empresa, e expressar maus sentimentos consistem nas principais motivações. Foi ainda verificado que o conhecimento prévio sobre um canal influencia positivamente a sua posterior utilização. A dissertação ainda oferece sugestões para as empresas desenvolverem estratégias sobre a utilização de canais electrónicos no contexto da intenção dos consumidores em partilhar informação sobre a empresa. Desta forma, o estudo prevê um avanço no conhecimento na área de gestão de múltiplos canais electrónicos, através da investigação das motivações que levam os consumidores a escolher certos canais na transmissão de informação.he purpose of the current dissertation is to investigate the intention of consumers to channel usage when engaging in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communications, in a context of multichannel, multimedia and multiscreen environment. The study explores consumer’s motivations for eWOM in order to understand what takes consumers (1) to engage in this type of communication, specifically in the airline services industry, and (2) associate these motivations to channel usage intention and consequent multichannel behavior. A questionnaire was conducted, with a sample of 103 Portuguese adults, in order to perform a quantitative statistical analysis with factor analysis and linear regression between the variables. Findings suggest that eWOM motivations influences multichannel behavior, being concern for others, helping the company, and venting negative feelings the principal motivations for a multichannel behavior. Additionally, obtained findings suggest that perceived channel knowledge has a positive important in explaining consumer’s choice of online channels. The research offers suggestions to develop multichannel strategies in a context of eWOM intentions as this study advances knowledge in the multichannel management field by investigating why and how consumers choose channels for transmitting eWOM

Proxemic mobile collocated interactions

Funding: EPSRC grants EP/G037574/1 and EP/G065802/1 (MP).Recent research on mobile collocated interactions has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices. However, existing practices fail to fully account for the culturally-dependent spatial relationships between people and their digital devices (i.e. the proxemic relationships). Building on the ideas of proxemic interactions, this workshop is motivated by the concept of 'proxemic mobile collocated interactions', to harness new or existing technologies to create engaging and interactionally relevant experiences. Such approaches would allow devices to not only react to presence and interaction, but also other indicators, such as the interpersonal distance people naturally use in everyday life. The aim of this one-day workshop is to bring together a community of researchers, designers and practitioners who are interested in exploring proxemics and mobile collocated interactions.Postprin

Personal Tracking of Screen Time on Digital Devices

Numerous studies have tracked people's everyday use of digital devices, but without consideration of how such data might be of personal interest to the user. We have developed a personal tracking application that enables users to automatically monitor their 'screen time' on mobile devices (iOS and Android) and computers (Mac and Windows). The application interface enables users to combine screen time data from multiple devices. We trialled the application for 28+ days with 21 users, collecting log data and interviewing each user. We found that there is interest in personal tracking in this area, but that the study participants were less interested in quantifying their overall screen time than in gaining data about their use of specific devices and applications. We found that personal tracking of device use is desirable for goals including: increasing productivity, disciplining device use, and cutting down on use

Voice interfaces in everyday life

Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are becoming ubiquitously available, being embedded both into everyday mobility via smartphones, and into the life of the home via ‘assistant’ devices. Yet, exactly how users of such devices practically thread that use into their everyday social interactions remains underexplored. By collecting and studying audio data from month-long deployments of the Amazon Echo in participants’ homes—informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis—our study documents the methodical practices of VUI users, and how that use is accomplished in the complex social life of the home. Data we present shows how the device is made accountable to and embedded into conversational settings like family dinners where various simultaneous activities are being achieved. We discuss how the VUI is finely coordinated with the sequential organisation of talk. Finally, we locate implications for the accountability of VUI interaction, request and response design, and raise conceptual challenges to the notion of designing ‘conversational’ interfaces

Your window-on-the-world: interactive television, the BBC and the second shift aesthetics of public service broadcasting

The impetus for this project was to consider how the digitalisation of television stood as an important moment to re-evaluate key concepts and debates within television studies. To this end, my focus is on public service broadcasting and television studies' textual tradition. I examine how linear models of the television text are challenged, usurped and at times reinforced by interactive television's emergent non-linear, personalisable forms. In so doing, I am concerned to analyse interactive television's textual structures in relation to the BBC's position as a public service broadcaster in the digital television age. Across these two concerns I aim to historicise the moment of digitalisation, drawing on longer positionings of television's technological and cultural form as a 'window-on-the-world'. An introduction is followed by section 1 of the thesis that includes a review of key literature in the field, focusing particularly on work on the 'text' of television studies. The chapters in section 1 mix this review with an historical argument that understand the current digital television era as one of 'excess', placing television at the boundaries of new and old media concerns that can be usefully understood through the presence of a dialectic between television's position as window-on-the-world and its emergent position as 'portal'. Section 1 demonstrates how this dialectic is called up by the prominence of discourses of 'choice' in new media practices and textualities and, more importantly, the debates about public service broadcasting's role in the digital age. As I go on to show in section 2, this dialectic evidences a tension between the 'imaginative journeys' television's window offers and the way in which these are then 'rationalised'. The second half of the thesis maps out emergent textual forms of interactive television by analysing the way choice and mobility are structured, providing a series of case studies in non-fiction television genres. Chapter 4 demonstrates the persistence of key discourses subsumed within the window-on-the-world metaphor in the formation and 'everydaying' of interactive television, elucidating key institutional and gendered tensions in the way these discourses are mobilised in the digital age. In turn, Chapter 5 connects the kinds of mobility promised by interactive television's window to longer historical practices of public institutions regulating spectator movement. Chapter 6 examines how television's window has been explicitly remediated by interactive television, placing it within the 'database' ontologies of computing. Finally Chapter 7 demonstrates the way in which television's window increasingly comes to function as a portal through which to access digital media spaces, such as the Internet. Across the chapters I am concerned to connect the textual and discursive form of each case study to the academic debates and public service concerns of the various applications' generic identity. Although I am interested in the challenges television's digitalisation poses to both public service broadcasting and traditional television studies approaches to the text, a more important motivation has been to re-affirm the role of both in the digital television landscape. Thus through close textual analysis that connects aesthetics with production and regulation, the thesis aims to demonstrate the relevance of television studies and the BBC, as a public service broadcaster, as an 'old media' becomes a 'new' one