Understanding Roles and User Experience of Mobile Technology in Co-located Interaction

Over the last few decades, mobile phones have evolved into ubiquitous devices that support remote communication and various kinds of personal activities. Due to their personal nature, device users are engaged in interactions on mobile devices and pay less attention to other people around them. Furthermore, as the user interface is optimized for a single person use, it reduces sharing and interaction capabilities with co-located people, which negatively influences the opportunities for shared experiences and social activities. This thesis attempts to understand how mobile technology can be designed for co-located interaction.Previous literature on the topic indicates that mobile technology is designed and employed in co-located interaction to fulfill one of these objectives - inviting interaction, facilitating interaction, encouraging interaction or enforcing interaction. While mobile technology facilitating interaction is investigated the most, this research further explores the remaining three objectives.This thesis belongs to the research field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). This research follows research through design approach, producing the contribution of knowledge through design interventions. This compound thesis includes six studies, introducing seven concepts for mobile application, a novel design for a mobile device, and two functional prototypes. Four studies explore mobile technology ‘inviting interaction’; one study explores the technology aiming to ‘encourage interaction’ and the other study explores the mobile technology ‘enforcing interaction’. The intended contexts of use are for leisure and non-work-related activities, with an emphasis on enhancing the co-located social interaction in the activities.The empirical findings of this thesis include both subjective user experiences and objective observations of users’ interactions engendered by mobile technology as well as reflections on the findings in light of existing literature. Based on these findings, this thesis provides insights about 1) The user experience in respect to mobile technology in different co-located interactions; and 2) The roles that mobile technology can play in co-located social interactions, and the design implications describing properties that influence interaction and collaboration between co-located users. These insights provide understandings about mobile technology for researchers and designers dealing with the colocated interaction domain. In addition, this thesis introduces a model of designing mobile technology for co-located interaction. The model intends to help researchers and designers in their early research and design process of mobile technology for co-located interaction. The model is built upon the relation between design objectives, design perspectives, dealing with limitations of mobile technology and the roles of technology in co-located interaction

Playfulness and progression in technology-enhanced social experiences between nearby strangers

acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Increasing collocated people's awareness of the mobile user's activities : A field trial of social displays

Many activities that have traditionally been performed with different dedicated physical artifacts are now done with personal mobile devices. Consequently, the privacy of mobile interfaces has hampered social observability and chances for serendipitous interactions. For example, reading an electronic newspaper with a mobile device does not allow the surrounding people to be similarly aware of the reader's activity as traditional newspapers. Social displays are additional displays on mobile devices providing the surrounding people with light-weight cues about the activities of the device user. We implemented a prototype that reveals the user's current active application and presents its name on an e-ink display on the backside of a mobile device. We conducted a ten-day field trial with 13 participants using the prototype. The results show that the prototype was able to increase awareness of users' mobile activities and occasionally triggered interactions with others, without significantly violating the sense of privacy.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Social display...We can see what you are doing on your mobile device

Mobile devices have become powerful in terms of computing and supporting various human activities. People have moved some of their activities that earlier have been done with dedicated artifacts to mobile devices. However, due to the rather private and personal interfaces of mobile devices, activities that earlier were easily observable by surrounding others have become private, decreasing the surroundings people's awareness of a mobile user's activity and thus the possibilities for serendipitous interactions. We developed a prototype called social display; it provides light-weight visual cues about mobile user's current activity with the device. The cues are displayed on a display attached to the backside of the user's mobile device. We present the concept, explain the design decisions and briefly report key findings from, first, a focus group study and, second, a field trial study.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe