Donald McMillan

100 days of iPhone use: understanding the details of mobile device use

Internet connected mobile devices are an increasingly ubiquitous part of our everyday lives and we present here the results from unobtrusive audio-video recordings of iPhone use -- over 100 days of device use collected from 15 users. The data reveals for analysis the everyday, moment-by-moment use of contemporary mobile phones. Through video analysis of usage we observed how messages, social media and internet use are integrated and threaded into daily life, interaction with others, and everyday events such as transport, delays, establishment choice and entertainment. We document various aspects of end-user mobile device usage, starting with understanding how it is occasioned by context. We then characterise the temporal and sequential nature of use. Lastly, we discuss the social nature of mobile phone usage. Beyond this analysis, we reflect on how to draw these points into ideas for design.

Five Provocations for Ethical HCI Research

We present five provocations for ethics, and ethical research, in HCI. We discuss, in turn, informed consent, the researcher-participant power differential, presentation of data in publications, the role of ethical review boards, and, lastly, corporate-facilitated projects. By pointing to unintended consequences of regulation and oversimplifications of unresolvable moral conflicts, we propose these provocations not as guidelines or recommendations but as instruments for challenging our views on what it means to do ethical research in HCI. We then suggest an alternative grounded in the sensitivities of those being studied and based on everyday practice and judgement, rather than one driven by bureaucratic, legal, or philosophical concerns. In conclusion, we call for a wider and more practical discussion on ethics within the community, and suggest that we should be more supportive of low-risk ethical experimentation to further the field.

Data and the City

We consider how data is produced and used in cities. We draw on our experiences working with city authorities, along with twenty interviews across four cities to understand the role that data plays in city government. Following the development and deployment of innovative data-driven technology projects in the cities, we look in particular at collaborations around open and crowdsourced data, issues with the politicisation of data, and problems in innovating within the highly regulated public sphere. We discuss what this means for cities, citizens, innovators, and for visions of big data in the smart city as a whole.

From in the wild to in vivo: Video Analysis of Mobile Device Use

The explosion of mobile applications and services presents challenges for evaluation and user study. One successful approach has been to deploy instrumented applications, logging their use over long periods of time. We present an expansion of this by remotely recording video and audio of use, while also capturing device and app context. In vivo combines five data collection techniques -- screen recording, ambient audio recording, wearable cameras, data logging and distributed remote uploads. This data provides a range of insights and we discuss examples from previous work which reveal interaction design issues where interface confusions or task mismatches occur. We see how apps are integrated into ongoing activity and environment (such as how maps are used in situ), and how recorded conversations around and about apps may be used for evaluation purposes. We conclude by arguing that this combinative method helps us to move from considering app use in isolation, to studying app use in interaction.

Situating Wearables: Smartwatch Use in Context

Drawing on 168 hours of video recordings of smartwatch use, this paper studies how context influences smartwatch use. We explore the effects of the presence of others, activity, location and time of day on 1,009 instances of use. Watch interaction is significantly shorter when in conversation than when alone. Activity also influences watch use with significantly longer use while eating than when socialising or performing domestic tasks. One surprising finding is that length of use is similar at home and work. We note that usage peaks around lunchtime, with an average of 5.3 watch uses per hour throughout a day. We supplement these findings with qualitative analysis of the videos, focusing on how use is modified by the presence of others, and the lack of impact of watch glances on conversation. Watch use is clearly a context-sensitive activity and in discussion we explore how smartwatches could be designed taking this into consideration.

Bio-Sensed and Embodied Participation in Interactive Performance

Designing for interactive performances is challenging both in terms of technology design, and of understanding the interplay between technology, narration, and audience interactions. Bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies afford new ways for artists to engage with audiences, and for audiences to become part of the artwork. Their deployment raises a number of issues for designers of interactive performances. This paper explores such issues by presenting five design ideas for interactive performance afforded by bio-sensing and bodily tracking (i.e. Microsoft Kinect) developed during two design workshops. We use these ideas, and the related scenarios to discuss three emerging issues namely: temporality of input, autonomy and control, and visibility of input in relation to the deployment of bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies in the context of interactive performances.

Glimpses of the future: designing fictions for mixed-reality performances

Mixed Reality Performances straddle technological and performative innovation, providing a site for collaboration between artists, performers, HCI scholars and designers. While interdisciplinarity provides opportunities for innovation, it also poses challenges for the underlying creative processes and their outcomes. To explore the role Design Fiction can play in addressing these challenges we organized a workshop at CHI 2017 [1], to use Design Fiction to generate visions of future Mixed Reality Performances (MRP).

Text in Talk: Lightweight Messages in Co-Present Interaction

While lightweight text messaging applications have been researched extensively, new messaging applications such as iMessage, WhatsApp, and Snapchat offer some new functionality and potential uses. Moreover, the role messaging plays in interaction and talk with those who are co-present has been neglected. In this article, we draw upon a corpus of naturalistic recordings of text message reading and composition to document the face-to-face life of text messages. Messages, both sent and received, share similarities with reported speech in conversation; they can become topical resource for local conversation–supporting verbatim reading aloud or adaptive summaries. Yet with text messages, their verifiability creates a distinctive resource. Similarly, in message composition, what to write may be discussed with collocated others. We conclude with discussion of designs for messaging in both face-to-face, and remote, communication.

The Smartwatch in Multi-device Interaction

Wearable devices are typically not used on their own. Indeed, many are sold specifically as companion devices to mobile phones. Here, we take a close look at smartwatch use in its natural multi-device context, building on a corpus of 1009 in vivo smartwatch use incidents recorded with twelve participants over 168 h. We examine closely four exemplar clips, exploring glances for information during other tasks, maintenance tasks that allow the allocation of spare attention, the smartwatch in conversation around media consumption, and the physical constraints of its embodied use on the wrist alongside other devices. Our study sheds light on current smartwatch use practices alongside devices with more established use scenarios, and on how the smartwatch changes and disrupts those practices.

Friendly but not Friends: Designing for Spaces Between Friendship and Unfamiliarity

While urban life requires us to maintain a healthy social distance and anonymity from others, a recurring design goal has been to push against this anonymity and assist in the formation of communities. In contrast, our aim in this paper is to design for keeping others at a comfortable distance, without seeming rude or uncongenial. Building on findings from 20 interviews and two design workshops, we present three design explorations that illustrate opportunities to support a sense of friendly connection in local, communal spaces, without promoting the formation of friendship or other long-term engagements, or requiring the effort and commitment they would necessarily demand.