Designing and evaluating mobile systems for collocated group use

Abstract

With the proliferation of mobile devices it has become common to see groups of users working or playing together using multiple mobile devices. While much effort is exerted to ensure that interaction with a mobile device is useful for each individual user, less effort has gone into considering how to design and evaluate mobile interfaces and platforms for group use. Recent improvements in the interaction, computing, connectivity and general flexibility of mobile devices make them an ideal, yet underutilized, platform for group level interaction. Our goal with this workshop is to bring together researchers who have started to investigate the collocated group use of mobile devices and to shed light on the challenges of designing and evaluating mobile collocated group experiences.

Mobile collocated interactions with wearables: past, present, and future

“…Over the last decade, research on mobile collocated interactions [1][2][3][4] has explored situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices, thus going from personal/individual toward shared/multiuser experiences and interactions.…”

“…This Special Issue is the result of a series of workshops that began with the MobileHCI 2011 workshop "Designing and Evaluating Mobile Systems for Collocated Group Use" [4] organized by Nirmal Patel and James Clawson. At this first workshop, several design and evaluation challenges were identified as being at the core of this research area: group size, physical distance, device-binding, operating systems, privacy, extending to public displays and tabletops, and conducting in-the-wild evaluations.…”

Interaction techniques for mobile collocation

“…The first workshop on mobile collocated interactions at MobileHCI'11 [8] identified several design and evaluation challenges as being the core of this research area: group size, physical distance, device-binding, operating systems, privacy, extending to public displays and tabletops, and conducting in-the-wild evaluations. More recent workshops have focused on technology and prototyping at CHI'15 [3] (Figure 1), bodily exploration with wearable devices at MobileHCI'15 [6] (Figure 2), and proxemics at CHI'16 [10] (Figure 3).…”

Mobile Collocated Interactions

“…Research on mobile collocated interactions [6][11] [16] has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices, thus going from personal/individual toward shared/multiuser experiences and interactions ( Figure 1). …”

“…In previous workshops on the subject of mobile collocated interactions at MobileHCI '11 [16] and at ITS '13 [2], several design and evaluation challenges were identified as being the core of this research area: group size, physical distance, device-binding, operating systems, privacy, extending to public displays and tabletops, and conducting in-the-wild evaluations. One question that was introduced in our first workshop and that still remains unanswered is how can we move beyond just designing for smartphones?…”