The experience of enchantment in human-computer interaction

Improving user experience is becoming something of a rallying call in human–computer interaction but experience is not a unitary thing. There are varieties of experiences, good and bad, and we need to characterise these varieties if we are to improve user experience. In this paper we argue that enchantment is a useful concept to facilitate closer relationships between people and technology. But enchantment is a complex concept in need of some clarification. So we explore how enchantment has been used in the discussions of technology and examine experiences of film and cell phones to see how enchantment with technology is possible. Based on these cases, we identify the sensibilities that help designers design for enchantment, including the specific sensuousness of a thing, senses of play, paradox and openness, and the potential for transformation. We use these to analyse digital jewellery in order to suggest how it can be made more enchanting. We conclude by relating enchantment to varieties of experience.</p

Facebook's Mobile Career

At the end of its first decade, Facebook’s identity, popularity, and characteristics are shaped in important ways by its becoming a form of mobile media, as much as it as platform associated with Internet and social media. This paper seeks to explore and understand Facebook as the important force in mobile media and communication it now is. It draws upon and combines perspectives from technology production, design, and economy, as well as user adoption, consumption, practices, affect, emotion, and resistance. The paper discusses the beginnings of mobile Facebook, and the early adoption of mobile Facebook associated with the rise of smartphones. The second part of the paper explores Facebook’s integration with photography (with Instagram) and social games (such as Zynga’s Farmville). The paper argues that Facebook’s mobile career is an accomplishment that has distinctively melded evolving affordances, everyday use across a wide range of settings, as well as political economies, corporate strategy, and design.Australian Research Counci

'It’s Just Not That Exciting Anymore’:The Changing Centrality of SMS in the Everyday Lives of Young Danes

This article considers the centrality of short message system (SMS) texting in the communication repertoires of young Danes. Recent years have seen dramatic changes in the mediascape with a multitude of new possibilities for text-based communication; Facebook, in particular, has become popular among young Danes. Some have suggested that the role of SMS texting, a technology that was previously an entrenched part of young people’s communication repertoires, has changed in this diversified media environment. Based on interviews with 31 Danish high school students and drawing on the domestication approach, this article examines the use practices and meanings associated with SMS texting in today’s complex and evolving mediascape. This article argues that SMS texting is becoming re-domesticated, its meanings changing, and the technology finding a new position in the communication repertoires of users

Premium Rate Culture: The New Business of Mobile Interactivity

This paper considers a neglected but crucial aspect of the new business of mobile interactivity: the premium rate data services industry. We provide an international anatomy of this industry model, and the ways in which it has been used to capitalize upon the surprising success of short message service (SMS) to provide a basis for the development of consumer markets for mobile data services. We situate this analysis within a wider consideration of the role of premium rate culture in the social shaping of interactivity in convergent media. Specifically, we look at how premium rate services are being constructed in relation to telecommunications, television, and the Internet. We conclude that although premium rate culture has rejuvenated innovation in broadcast television it may potentially constrain the interactive potential of the mobile Internet