Happy coincidences in designing for social connectedness and play through opportunistic image capture

Abstract

We explore the opportunities and constraints for sharing personal and 'social group' communications through the use of multi-location interactive image displays and mobile image capture devices. Accordingly, we seek to provide a better understanding of the use of such technologies in supporting close tie relationships through the implementation of Collage, an interactive image display.Collage has been designed for immediate and lightweight modes of sharing though synchronous and asynchronous interaction between users and digital images/text. We report on the results of a technology probe with three related families over a ten-week period. Through interviews and participant data we provide a rich account of their use with the system, emergent practices and usability issues that enabled and limited their experience of sharing digital family images. We also show evidence for user driven resolution of ambiguities in the system as an enabler of new experiences -What might be called "happy coincidences".

Life changes, connection stays

“…According to Miller [12] the internet has the potential to improve these people's independence and social connectedness because it enables interaction with others independent of distance and time. To support connectedness among distributed family members, Ashkanasy et al [1] built an interactive display system that used internet and mobile phones with MMS capabilities. They used this system to find out to what extent sharing and manipulating images and textual content affects interaction and supports a sense of connectedness.…”

Sparcs

“…Another set of prototypes have explored sharing photos taken on mobile phones to help people capture and share experiences in the moment. eKiss [4] enabled sharing between children and parents through a mobile photo blog, while ASTRA [17] and Collage [1] displayed messages and photos taken on a mobile device on a display in a home (or several homes with Collage).…”

“…Besides wanting more infrequent communication, C 1 highlighted another challenge around daily sharing saying, "By the end of the week I was running out of options," because she did not have very many photos to choose from. Integrating photos taken on mobile devices, as other systems have done [e.g., 1,4,17], could help SPARCS address this challenge.…”