Issues with the construct of quality

This paper proposes an outline for a framework that aims to give a comprehensive view of perceived video quality, including physical characteristics, perceptual attributes and cognitive factors

Overcoming the distance between friends : people and computers XXI HCI...but not as we know it

Staying in touch is a fundamental aspect in maintaining a long-distance relationship, whether it is in a family context or a friendship. An effective communication appliance can enable families or friends living apart to have a feeling of connectedness and help them to maintain their relationship despite the physical distance. This paper describes the results of an exploration study on people living far away from their families and friends, with a focus on how they stay in touch with their close friends and overcome the distance. The targeted user group in this study is geographically and physically isolated people. A user study was conducted by means of a survey, focus group and interview. The results show that sharing problems and feelings between two remotely located friends is crucial. Consequently, the design goal was set to enable users to notify and physically comfort each other, in a subtle way, through a remote but shared experience, whenever a problem or feeling occurs

"Narrowcast yourself"

The StoryBank project is examining technologies and practices to allow digitally impoverished communities to take part in the user-generated content revolution. The approach involves combining mobile phones to create audio-visual stories and a touch screen display situated in a community meeting place. This paper discusses the design, evaluation and refinement of the situated display. We consider how our experiences of working with a rural Indian village community influenced design processes, principles and prototypes. The work highlights the value of community-centred design practices and prototypes in such developing-world contexts

StoryBank: mobile digital storytelling in a development context

The paper reports a new paradigm for audiovisual information sharing in developing communities with low levels of textual and computer literacy. This was informed by ethnographic studies of a community radio station in Budikote village, India and involves the creation of audiophoto narrative stories on a mobile phone which are shared through a physical community repository (or ‘Story-bank’). The paper reports the design and evaluation of the sociotechnical system in a trial, laying the foundation for subsequent work in South Africa resulting in the Com-Me community media open source toolkit: http://digitaleconomytoolkit.org/ This work was funded by the EPSRC Bridging the Global Digital Divide initiative and led by David. . The Computer Human Interaction Conference (CHI) is the premier annual conference in the field, with full paper acceptance rates of between 10 and 15%

Democracy, design and development in community content creation: lessons from the StoryBank project

Mobile and Web 2.0 technology have the very real potential to democratize the creation and sharing of multimedia content in developing communities, even beyond the levels currently seen in community radio and television. In this article, we report the ªndings of an exercise to test this potential in partnership with a Budikote village in southern India. We show how a system called StoryBank supported the creation of short digital stories on a text-free camera phone, and how these stories could be shared through a community repository and touch-screen display. Despite the success of a ªeld trial in which 137 stories were created and shared over a one-month period, various technical and social factors meant that the devices and content were more hierarchically managed and controlled than expected. The implications of these experiences for rural development and community-centered design are discussed