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

Abstract

This Special Issue focuses on the emerging use of wearable technologies for mobile collocated interactions. Rather than merely listing off the articles that follow, we wish to introduce this Special Issue by discussing the past, present, and future of this field in HCI through its theories, ongoing designs and research efforts, and emerging frameworks. We conclude by providing an overview of a series of workshops on the topic, and introduce the two main articles that comprise this Special Issue. Mobile collocated interactions: origins of the fieldMobile devices such as smartphones and tablets were originally conceived and have traditionally been utilized for individual use. Over the last decade, research on mobile collocated interactions [1-4] 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.Early research in this field frequently encouraged people to share their devices to create a collective experience or reach a common goal. Various physical and social contexts of use were investigated including teamwork at the office [2], sharing media content at home [3] and outdoors [1], public expression in a theme park [5] and in a pub [3,6], location-based mobile disaster response games [7], and sharing educational stories in rural, developing-world contexts [8].The investigation of mobile collocated interactions began almost a decade ago when work in engineering platforms that allow designers to easily create applications for mobile groups began to emerge around 2007/2008 [2, 9, 10]. Hardware and sensing innovations coupled with the smartphone revolution and researchers' newfound ability to design, build, and deploy mobile applications provided an opportunity for HCI researchers to begin to prototype mobile collaborative group experiences. Additionally, some researchers had earlier focused on how general groupware issues such as ad-hoc group formation and floor control policies are impacted by the switch from standard group-use hardware, such as tabletop displays or interactive whiteboards, to a collection of mobile devices [11,12]. More recently researchers have looked into simple ways to bind devices together in the context of mobile collocated interactions [13,14]. The gaming community also showed interest in understanding and designing for the

On Visual Granularity

“…This development started in 2007/2008. Interaction designers became interested in mobile collocated interactions with the use of emerging suitable engineering platforms for mobile group applications [16,36,37,38,39,48]. Similarly, our research looks into mobile phones, tablets and projectors and their content as support for the conversation taking place in a sales meeting.…”

“…Despite being originally intended for single-user activities [36] and seen as problematic during social activities [61], sales reps have increasingly begun using mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets and laptops) in a collocated way [37], in sales meetings and more generally in work-related [50] settings. Sales reps choose their digital equipment based on equipment provided by a workplace, personal desires, number of participants in meetings, and locations in a buyer's operational environment (e.g., meeting rooms).…”

The Disappearing Tabletop

“…As new devices such as smartphones, tablets, and videowalls have emerged, the ISS community has moved to explore interaction and collaboration across multiple surfaces and spaces [2,3,7,10] -often including tabletops as one component of a 'device ecology'. As these devices have gained widespread adoption, they have often displaced the tabletop as the central focus of collaborative activities.…”

Towards Proxemic Mobile Collocated Interactions

“…One such example is It's About Time (Pearson et al, 2015), which explores extending smartwatch interactions to turn personal wearables into public displays. This current second-wave of mobile collocated interactions is experience-centric (Lucero et al, 2016a).…”

“…A third wave of mobile collocated interactions research should address the pressing need to understand the importance of spatial relationships between people and the digital devices in space (Lucero et al, 2016a). Adopting ideas of proxemics could allow designers to better shape each individual's personal motivations and perceptions of their interactions with both devices and others, to better support their experiences.…”