Giulio Jacucci

Like bees around the hive: a comparative study of a mobile augmented reality map

We present findings from field trials of MapLens, a mobile augmented reality (AR) map using a magic lens over a paper map. Twenty-six participants used MapLens to play a location-based game in a city centre. Comparisons to a group of 11 users with a standard 2D mobile map uncover phenomena that arise uniquely when interacting with AR features in the wild. The main finding is that AR features facilitate place-making by creating a constant need for referencing to the physical, and in that it allows for ease of bodily configurations for the group, encourages establishment of common ground, and thereby invites discussion, negotiation and public problem-solving. The main potential of AR maps lies in their use as a collaborative tool.

Worlds of information: designing for engagement at a public multi-touch display

In designing for engagement at a public multi-touch installation, we identified supporting multiple users and allowing for gradual discovery as challenges. In this paper, we present Worlds of Information, a multi-touch application featuring 3D Worlds, which provide access to different content. These 3D widgets gradually unfold and allow for temporal navigation of multimedia in parallel, while also providing a 2D plane where media can be shared. We report on a field trial at an exhibition using questionnaires and video ethnography. We studied engagement through questions adapted from Flow, Presence and Intrinsic Motivation questionnaires, which showed that users, overall, had a positive and social experience with the installation. The worlds effectively invited multiple users and provided for parallel interaction. While functionality was discovered gradually through social learning, the study demonstrates the challenges of designing multi-touch applications for walk-up-and-use displays.

Directing exploratory search: reinforcement learning from user interactions with keywords

Techniques for both exploratory and known item search tend to direct only to more specific subtopics or individual documents, as opposed to allowing directing the exploration of the information space. We present an interactive information retrieval system that combines Reinforcement Learning techniques along with a novel user interface design to allow active engagement of users in directing the search. Users can directly manipulate document features (keywords) to indicate their interests and Reinforcement Learning is used to model the user by allowing the system to trade off between exploration and exploitation. This gives users the opportunity to more effectively direct their search nearer, further and following a direction. A task-based user study conducted with 20 participants comparing our system to a traditional query-based baseline indicates that our system significantly improves the effectiveness of information retrieval by providing access to more relevant and novel information without having to spend more time acquiring the information.

Active construction of experience through mobile media: a field study with implications for recording and sharing

To fully appreciate the opportunities provided by interactive and ubiquitous multimedia to record and share experiences, we report on an ethnographic investigation on the settings and nature of human memory and experience at a large-scale event. We studied two groups of spectators at a FIA World Rally Championship in Finland, both equipped with multimedia mobile phones. Our analysis of the organization of experience-related activities in the mass event focuses on the active role of technology-mediated memories in constructing experiences. Continuity, reflexivity with regard to the Self and the group, maintaining and re-creating group identity, protagonism and active spectatorship were important social aspects of the experience and were directly reflected in how multimedia was used. Particularly, we witnessed multimedia-mediated forms of expression, such as staging, competition, storytelling, joking, communicating presence, and portraying others; and the motivation for these stemmed from the engaging, processual, and shared nature of experience. Moreover, we observed how temporality and spatiality provided a platform for constructing experiences. The analysis advocates applications that not only store or capture human experience for sharing or later use but also actively participates in the very construction of experience. The approach conveys several valuable design implications.

Extending large-scale event participation with user-created mobile media on a public display

Most large public displays have been used for providing information to passers-by with the primary purpose of acting as one-way information channels to individual users. We have developed a large public display to which users can send their own media content using mobile devices. The display supports multi-touch interaction, thus enabling collaborative use of the display. This display called CityWall was set up in a city center with the goal of showing information of events happening in the city. We observed two user groups who used mobile phones with upload capability during two large-scale events happening in the city. Our findings are that this kind of combined use of personal mobile devices and a large public display as a publishing forum, used collaboratively with other users, creates a unique setting that extends the groups feeling of participation in the events. We substantiate this claim with examples from user data.

Supporting the shared experience of spectators through mobile group media

Interesting characteristics of large-scale events are their spatial distribution, their extended duration over days, and the fact that they are set apart from daily life. The increasing pervasiveness of computational media encourages us to investigate such unexplored domains, especially when thinking of applications for spectator groups. Here we report of a field study on two groups of rally spectators who were equipped with multimedia phones, and we present a novel mobile group media application called mGroup that supports groups in creating and sharing experiences. Particularly, we look at the possibilities of and boundary conditions for computer applications posed by our findings on group identity and formation, group awareness and coordination, the meaningful construction of an event experience and its grounding in the event context, the shared context and discourses, protagonism and active spectatorship. Moreover, we aim at providing a new perspective on spectatorship at large scale events, which can make research and development more aware of the socio-cultural dimension.

Interactive intent modeling: information discovery beyond search

The system should let users incrementally direct their search toward relevant, though not initially obvious, information.

Eco-Feedback on the Go: Motivating Energy Awareness

The EnergyLife mobile interface incorporates lessons from environmental psychology and feedback intervention to relay information from appliance sensors, offering a gaming environment that rewards users for decreased electricity consumption.

Comedia: mobile group media for active spectatorship

Previous attempts to support spectators at large-scale events have concentrated separately on real-time event information, awareness cues, or media-sharing applications. CoMedia combines a group media space with event information and integrates reusable awareness elements throughout. In two field trials, one at a rally and the other at a music festival, we found that CoMedia facilitated onsite reporting to offsite members, coordination of group action, keeping up to date with others, spectating remotely, and joking. In these activities, media, awareness cues, and event information were often used in concert, albeit assuming differing roles. We show that the integrated approach better supports continuous interweaving of use with the changing interests and occurrences in large-scale events.

From Space to Stage: How Interactive Screens Will Change Urban Life

Framed digital displays will soon give way to walls and facades that creatively motivate individual and group interaction. A stage serves as an apt metaphor to explore the ways in which these ubiquitous screens can transform passive viewing into an involved performance.