influencing the experience of people in urban public places through mobile mediated interactions

Influencing the Experience of People in Urban Public Places through Mobile Mediated

Interactions

Final Seminar Presentation

Jan Seeburger - [email protected]

Urban Informatics Research LabQueensland University of Technology

Brisbane, Australia

mailto:[email protected]


Agenda

• Introduction & Motivation

• Methodology

• Case Study 1: Capital Music

• Case Study 2: PlaceTagz

• Case Study 3: Urban Screens and Mobile Phones

• Synthesis

More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities (United Nations, 2008)

People live more closely together and share the urban infrastructure.

“Physical closeness does not mean social closeness” (Wellman, 2001, p. 234)

Information and Communication Technology creating “cocoons” in public urban spaces (Mainwaring et al., 2005; Bassoli et al., 2007; Crawford, 2008)

Using ICT to seclude oneself and avoiding contact with collocated strangers in public spaces

Mobile engagement […] is so clearly about (among other things) occupying a cocoon of private space while in public that the mobile phone can function in many cases as […] effectively closing off interaction with anyone not already on one’s contact list”(Crawford, 2008, p. 93)

“What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.” (Whyte, 1980, p. 19)

“People and human activity are the greatest object of attention and interest. Even the modest form of contact of merely seeing and hearing or being near to others is apparently more rewarding and more in demand than the majority of other attractions offered in the public spaces of cities and residential areas” (Gehl, 1987, p. 31)

Opportunity

“Adding a digital layer to the existing physical and social layers could facilitate new forms of interaction that reshape urban life”(Kjeldskov & Paay, 2006)

Opportunity

• Urban Informatics

“Urban informatics is the study, design, and practiceof urban experiences across different urban contextsthat are created by new opportunities of real-time,ubiquitous technology and the augmentation thatmediates the physical and digital layers of peoplenetworks and urban infrastructures” Foth et al. (2011)

People Place

Technology

Opportunity

Influencing the Experience of People in Urban Public Places through Mobile Mediated Interactions

How can ICT in public urban places be applied to influence user experiences and in what ways?

Experience: More enjoyable and social

Mobile Mediated Interactions: Sharing “lightweight data” with unknown collocated people

Three case studies

Methodology

• Methodology

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Chapter 4: Case Study 1



Chapter 7: Discussion

Chapter 8: Conclusion

Case Study 1: Capital Music

“Music also plays a role in our social lives – talking about, displaying, swapping and sharing music are all ways through which we express who we are and interact with others.” (O'Hara & Brown, 2006, p. 3)

Visualising artworks of currently played songs of collocated people?


Approach

Literature Review & Ethnographic

Observation

Paper-based Experiment/Foc

us Group

Development

User trial/Focus

GroupDevelopment

User Experience Study (WoZ)

October 2009 September 2011


1

How can Capital Music influence the experience of a bus ride?

1


User Experience Evaluation: Wizard of Oz Study

– 13 study participants in simulated real-world scenario


User Experience Evaluation: Findings

• Sharing, discovering, and recommendations

• Social interaction

– Music ideal icebreaker

– Like message easy way to interact

– Sharing additional information towards song selection

– Anonymity important

– Lightweight interaction to kill time


User Experience Evaluation: Findings

• Curiosity, perceptions, voyeurism

– Who is who?

– Raised awareness towards collocated people

– Reconsidering perceptions: Not judging a book by its cover

– “Digital people watching”

• Entertainment and fun

Case Study 2: PlaceTagz


Approach

Deployment/ Data Collection

Development

December 2010 February 2012

Concept BuildingContent

Analysis/Semi-structured Interviews


• 150 PlaceTagz deployed

• Content Analysis of 121 comments

• Interviews with application users


Real-world experiences & findings:

• QR code = Advertisement

• Decontextualised QR codes pique curiosity

• Uniqueness, location-awareness, and interactivity

• Raised awareness towards collocated people who used the space in the past


Real-world experiences & findings:

• Lightweight interactions about people, place, and technology

• Reply to PlaceTagz content rather then previous posts

• Co-experience

• Boredom and waiting

• Still collecting data…

Case Study 3: Urban Screens and Mobile Phone Interaction

Case Study 3: Urban Screens

Approach

User trial/Focus

GroupDevelopment

October 2010 April 2012

Concept Building

ObservationDevelopment DevelopmentSurvey/Data Analysis

Concept Building

Sapporo City Council searching Space Content Application for the North 2 Underground Public

“To create a social space where the general public, government, as well as commercial and cultural sectors can collaboratively engage in promoting and learning about Sapporo’s creative industries, tourist attractions, art, culture, and other relevant information, utilising ten large public screens and speakers that are to be installed in the underground passageway”

Sapporo City Council

Sapporo World Window

- Interactive screen based application- Location-sharing on public screens- Remixing social media

Sapporo World Window

The Original Plan

• Abstract Submission

• Development

• Initial User Study

• Media Release March 10, 2011

• Final Release March 12, 2011

• Observation & Interviews

• Analysis

March 11, 2011


2nd Iteration: Brisbane Hot Spots


2nd Iteration: Brisbane Hot Spots - Observation

• Observations


• 2nd Iteration: Brisbane Hot Spots – Observation

• Screen orientation




• Screen location and bus stop location




• Screen location and bus stop location

• Flow of people

• Looking down, not up

• Public interaction

• Environmental conditions


3rd Iteration: Design Goals

• Private Interaction

• Lightweight content

• Auditive experience

Case Study 3:YourScreen

• 3rd Iteration: YourScreen

http://yourscreen.urbaninformatics.net/home/index

Case Study 3:YourScreen

• 3rd Iteration: YourScreen


• Data Collection:

– 183 video submissions in 10 Weeks

– Twitter: 52 %

– Mobile Web 44 %

– Facebook 4 %

– 16 Survey Responses


• Findings:

– Videos for the crowd

– Sharing experiences

– Specific videos for own interest


• Findings

– Motivation to submit a video: idle time, curiosity, and reactions from collocated people

– Motivation behind video submission: entertainment for others/self, promotion

– Social experimentation in public space and awareness of collocated people and their reactions

– Novel experience

– Community and connections

Synthesis

How does the establishment of ICT-mediated social interactions between collocated users influence the experience of those users in particular urban spaces?

Synthesis

• Activities in Place (Gehl, 1987, 2010)

Necessary Activities Optional Activities Social Activities

Commuting, catching a

bus, buying groceries

Going for a walk,

sunbathing, play

Seeing, hearing, greeting,

talkingExample

Good physical

environment

Poor physical

environment

Digitally Mediated Social Activities

New Optional Activities

Synthesis

• Presentation of Self (Goffman, 1959)

Social interaction in public urban places as theatrical performance

- Actor/Audience

- Give/Give off impressions

- Front/back

Synthesis

• Presentation of Self (Goffman, 1959)

Mobile mediated interaction in public urban places as theatrical performance

Capital Music: digital presentation of self on top of physical presentation of self

YourScreen: create digital fronts and observe the performances of collocated people

PlaceTagz: digital stage demonstrating user’s front comprising given and given off information

Synthesis

• Escape boredom while waitingBoredom: “an unpleasant, transient affective state in which the individual feels a

pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity”(Fisher,

1993, p. 369)

Humans experience boredom when being disconnected from what is going on or when they are understimulated and there is nothing to do (Conrad, 1997)

Mobile phones are used as a social utility to relieve boredom through socialising (Wei

and Lo, 2006)

Design interventions provide novel interaction possibilities while being bored and provide information to connected to the place and the people within.

Synthesis

• CuriosityCuriosity:“a positive emotional-motivational system associated with the recognition, pursuit, and self regulation of novel and challenging opportunities” (Kashdan et al., 2004, p. 291)

Curiosity can result from the deprivation in cognition through a gap in a persons knowledge (Loewenstein, 1994)

Curiosity is related to a positive experience in relation to the self, the world, and the future (Kashdan et al., 2004)

Synthesis

• Categories of curiosity (Berlyne, 1954)

Synthesis

• Zone of Curiosity (Anderson , 2011)

Synthesis

• Awareness

Design interventions raise awareness towards people, place, and technology

Awareness: “knowledge or perception of a situation or fact” (Oxford Dictionary)

Synthesis

• Anonymity

Anonymity a social construct (Marx, 1999)

Blasé attitude: “an incapacity [...] to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy” (Simmel, 1950, p. 413)

Focus on content rather than people

= Implicitly “giving off” information

Anonymise content and interactions

= Lightweight data exchange

Synthesis

Boredom Curiosity Awareness

Anonymity Lightweight Content

People

Technology

Place Necessary, optional, and social activities

Presentation of self

Designing for…

The End

Questions?

Thank you for your attention!Jan Seeburger

QUT Urban Informatics Research Lab

[email protected]
