Awareness, Transience and Temporality: Design Opportunities from Rah Island

Part 15: Mobile Interaction DesignInternational audienceThis paper deals with the implications of the socialness of private communication. Drawing upon ethnographic observations of first time mobile phone users in Rah, an island in Vanuatu, we revisit the debate on how the mobile phone reconfigures private and personal communication. Our observations show how the advent of the mobile phone disrupts and challenges existing practices around how private communication is managed on the island. These observations are used to open up a design space where we explore the socialness of personal, private communication. Drawing on the analysis, we discuss three directions for future thinking of mobile interaction design: (1) designing for spatial awareness; (2) designing for transience and (3) designing with temporality. We expand on these to discuss the notion of digital patina, which we argue, is an exciting topic to explore for the design of personal, social communication