Jaakko Lehikoinen

Contextual and cultural challenges for user mobility research

Personal, mobile synchronous and asynchronous communication has proven to be very desirable for all types of users, with estimates of more than a half-billion mobile phones sold each year [2]. Nokia Research Centers User Experience Group, working with other user practitioners in Nokia, seeks to understand why people do the things they do with their mobile communication devices and proposes solutions that best address their wants and needs. In accordance with the principles of user-centric product concept design [4], the solutions are designed to inform and inspire the product creation process within Nokia. Given that the group works three to eight years ahead of what appears on the market, confidentiality concerns restrict disclosure of many of these concepts and the findings on which these concepts are based. Instead, in this article we share some of the essential lessons learned from our projects centering on the early stages of product concept development. Two areas have proved to be particularly challenging in this respect: coping with multiple contexts and multiple cultures in the study of mobility.

Mobile multimedia presentation editor: enabling creation of audio-visual stories on mobile devices

A mobile device provides an attractive tool for creating and sharing audio-visual stories. Earlier research has shown that the users enjoy creating digital stories with their mobile devices. However, designing editor interfaces that support creation of rich audio-visual presentations has been a major challenge due to the constrained input and output capabilities of mobile devices. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of the Mobile Multimedia Presentation Editor, an application that makes it possible to author sophisticated multimedia presentations that integrate several different media types on mobile devices. Based on a user study, we present design principles for multimedia presentation editors on mobile devices. We describe an application design that supports these principles and so demonstrate that editing of sophisticated multimedia presentations is feasible on mobile devices. We report evaluations which indicate that the editor application was easy to use and supported the creativity of the mobile users well.

Understanding privacy regulation in ubicomp interactions

Ubiquitous computing contains a huge promise for more intelligent services that are available anywhere and are able to dynamically adapt to the users’ current context. However, what necessarily follows such an environment is the compromising of the users’ privacy. We aim at analyzing this complex issue by applying and extending Altman’s theoretical privacy framework, well known in social sciences, to privacy in ubicomp. Altman understands privacy as a two-way interactive process, which makes the approach promising in analyzing ubicomp where people, devices and the environment interact with each other. We point out similarities between the existing model and the features of ubicomp environment, and verify the results by applying and analyzing the resulting extended framework to typical ubicomp use cases. Based on the analysis, we argue that privacy in ubicomp can be modeled similarly to privacy in general by extending the model to cover such factors as mediation and non-human actors.

PePe field study: constructing meanings for locations in the context of mobile presence

Location information contains a huge promise in the area of awareness technologies. In PePe project, automatic location detection was investigated as part of a mobile presence system. A field study with twelve young adults was conducted to explore the usage habits of sharing location information. The participants defined, named, and shared on average twenty meaningful locations with their friends. They found the location information as the most relevant mobile presence attribute, due to a fact that it gave good overview on the status of the other users. We focus on analyzing how the participants named locations and how they used location information in the context of mobile presence. The participants utilized shared meanings of locations in naming and storing them to the PePe system. We classified the created locations as generic locations, points of interest, and geographical areas. The presented results will facilitate in designing location enhanced mobile awareness systems.

Mobile phone video camera in social context

Video recording is becoming available in various everyday situations, thanks to the quickly spreading video capabilities of modern mobile phones. Recording decision is now often made spontaneous, as the recording devices are constantly available without explicit planning. We discuss the effect of this change in the social environment on the basis of a study where four groups of people used digital video cameras in their everyday life. While this new way of communicating enables new social patterns, it also raises new concerns for privacy and trust. We discuss the relation of context and video recording through a model of primary and secondary contexts. We also analyze acceptability and transparency of video recording as functions of time.

Mobile Video in Everyday Social Interactions

Video recording has become a spontaneous everyday activity for many people, thanks to the video capabilities of modern mobile phones. Internet connectivity of mobile phones enables fluent sharing of captured material even real-time, which makes video an up-and-coming everyday interaction medium. In this article we discuss the effect of the video camera in the social environment, everyday life situations, mainly based on a study where four groups of people used digital video cameras in their normal settings. We also reflect on another study of ours, relating to real-time mobile video communication and discuss future views. The aim of our research is to understand the possibilities in the domain of mobile video. Live and delayed sharing seem to have their special characteristics, live video being used as a virtual window between places whereas delayed video usage has more scope for good-quality content. While this novel way of interacting via mobile video enables new social patterns, it also raises new concerns for privacy and trust between participating persons in all roles, largely due to the widely spreading possibilities of videos. Video in a social situation affects cameramen (who record), targets (who are recorded), passers-by (who are unintentionally in the situation), and the audience (who follow the videos or recording situations) but also the other way around, the participants affect the video by their varying and evolving personal and communicational motivations for recording.

Collective Content as a Facilitator of Community Interaction: A User Study of Four Close-Knit Communities

Social online services offer communities means for creating and using media content together. The content is jointly used for maintaining relationships and constructing common memories and experiences. Thus, it is very collective by nature. However, few studies have focused on the ways in which communities interact with such collective content . We conducted a field study on how four communities create, share, and use content together in order to understand the role of content as part of the social interaction. As the main result, we present the snowball effect of interaction. It is based on the reciprocity of participating and giving feedback. We also found that the creation of light content plays a role in maintaining the active interaction with content.