Jarno Ojala

A Diary Study on Combining Multiple Information Devices in Everyday Activities and Tasks

As people possess increasing numbers of information devices, situations where several devices are combined and used together have become more common. We present a user study on peoples current practices in combining multiple information devices in their everyday lives, ranging from pragmatic tasks to leisure activities. Based on diaries and interviews of 14 participants, we characterize the usage practices of the most common devices, including smartphones, computers, tablets, and home media centers. We analyze 123 real-life multi-device use cases and identify the main usage patterns, including Sequential Use, Resource Lending, Related Parallel Use, and Unrelated Parallel Use. We discuss the practical challenges of using several information devices together. Finally, we identify three levels of decisions that determine which devices are used in a particular situation, including acquiring, making available, and selecting the devices for use.

Identifying drivers and hindrances of social user experience in web services

Social activity is becoming a central contributor to user experience (UX) in many modern Web services. The motivations, norms and rules of online communities have been widely researched, however, social activity and its UX in modern Web services is a less studied area. We conducted a four-week-long field study with three Web services -- Facebook, Nokia Sports Tracker and Dopplr -- which all support social activity. The aim of this study was to identify the central drivers and hindrances of social UX, user experience of online social activity. Our results show that the main drivers of social UX include self-expression, reciprocity, learning and curiosity, whereas unsuitability of content and functionality, incompleteness of user networks and lack of trust and privacy are often experienced as hindrances for social UX. Our findings also reveal the pragmatic and hedonic nature of the drivers and hindrances. The results can be used to inform design and evaluation of social UX in Web services.

Personal content in online sports communities: motivations to capture and share personal exercise data

Web services that support exercise have become increasingly popular in the last couple of years. This paper describes a qualitative case study that includes a trial use and interviews with 20 users of three different online sporting communities. These services enable users to add the training content from their personal tracking devices. In the interviews, data was gathered on the users’ experiences and their opinions on the social needs and motivation to share content in online sports communities. The answers from the interviews were categorised into three main classes: social needs in sports communities, motivation for sharing content, and motivation for adding personal content to the services. As a result, users were motivated to create a personal exercise diary and content inventory online and also to share it with others in order to gain important information on exercising as well as peer support. Though the primary need for most users was a personal training diary, they also saw major advantages in sharing their data with the other members of the community.

Maintaining the Instant Connection—Social Media Practices of Smartphone Users

In the last few years, using social media via mobile phone applications has become increasingly common. However, there are only few studies exploring people’s mobile application usage behavior. In order to understand users’ mobile social media practices in the context of everyday life, 30 owners of high-end smartphones were interviewed for this study. The context of their mobile SNS use cases was studied through diaries kept by 15 of the participants. The results show that mobile social networking is typically about briefly checking the latest updates and news, most often while in transit and when immersive use of the internet is not possible. Also, there are more browsing activities on the mobile phone than content creation, which is better done with PC. In the use of social media, immediate access to the most interesting content, such as photos, status updates and news, is highly valued; in this respect, the mobile phone adds value to the use of social media by enabling access to it in a great variety of situations and locations. As a practical result, we present design implications for mobile SNS applications and point out that there is currently a lack of features for effective selection, storing and filtering of content produced through the various social media sites.

MyTerritory: evaluation of outdoor gaming prototype for music discovery

This paper presents an outdoor gaming prototype for music discovery and its field-trial evaluation by 15 Finnish users. The implemented mobile prototype enables users to conquer physical areas from a map view by circulating them and assigning songs to dominate the areas. Music can then be consumed from these areas by other users using three different methods. Based on the results, the concept adds novel experiences to outdoor gaming and music discovery. Populating the world with music by competing in the game was seen as a motivating way to discover and share music. Outdoor exercising combined to discovering places conquered with new music were seen as important and interesting by all the users in the interviews. Users found the different music consumption options to be novel and useful. This paper proposes a set of general design drivers for music discovery in outdoor gaming and further development ideas for the concept.

Applying the heuristic evaluation method in the evaluation of social aspects of an exercise community

Social interaction plays an important role in the use of modern websites. Because the practical ways to improve social interaction through community design often remain unknown, this study aims to provide guidelines for designing and developing social features for websites. In this paper, we introduce the results of a three-week-long qualitative field study with an internet service prototype intended for people who exercise. We aim to provide knowledge of factors that improve the social design of websites by introducing a set of heuristics for evaluating sociability. In order to validate the heuristics, the findings from heuristic expert evaluations were compared with data collected from ten test users of the internet service prototype. We suggest that the Heuristic Evaluation Method with sociability heuristics helps to identify the most fundamental problems concerning sociability and thus serves as a practical tool, particularly in the early stages of the design process of social internet sites.

Six Enablers of Instant Photo Sharing Experiences in Small Groups Based on the Field Trial of Social Camera

Mobile photo taking and sharing has become a frequent leisure-time activity for smartphone users. This paper presents a field study of a mobile application called Social Camera, which enables instant sharing of photos within small groups. The application enables collaborative creation of photo collections with shared folders in the cloud and instant connection through the folders and photos. Social Camera was evaluated using four groups (altogether 17 users) in a field trial. The results reveal six enablers of instant photo-sharing experiences within small groups: sense of connectedness and social awareness, presentation and expression of self, lightweight and surprising interaction, collective photography, documentation of experiences, and finally, privacy and user control. This work gives design implications of these enablers for photo-sharing applications.

Photo sharing in small groups: identifying design drivers for desired user experiences

Study of user groups regarding their photo sharing and managing practices and needs for future designs was arranged with four different target groups: cosplayers, snowboarders, camera club and the family. Group interviews of 15 people and two individual interviews were carried out in total. Study identifies experiences and features that users appreciate, current practices and bottlenecks in the photowork. novel needs for photo sharing solutions, and gives design drivers for these kinds of solutions in the small group context. Results of the group interviews suggest that new kinds of collective repositories are needed to make photo sharing experience more enjoyable. There are many services that allow publishing photos publicly to the big audiences or the whole user communities, but services that aim for supporting working with limited and intimate groups are still in their infancy.

Opportunities and challenges of mobile applications as "tickets-to-talk": a scenario-based user study

This paper presents a scenario-based user study of mobile application concepts that would encourage interaction between people within close proximity. The scenarios demonstrate three themes of digital tickets-to-talk: informing who and what are around, augmenting self-expression, and online interaction encouraging physical interaction. Our interview study explored the opportunities and challenges of such applications in developing into further face-to-face interactions between strangers. Tickets that are related to activities that convey a solid intention that would lead to practical collaboration, such as playing sports or studying together, have the best potential to advance to meaningful face-to-face interaction. Augmenting self-expression and online interaction encouraging physical interaction were found to have potential to create curiosity but seen less credible by our 42 interview participants to motivate face-to-face interaction between strangers. We conclude by discussing the potential of each theme of ticket-to-talk based on our findings as well as related literature.

Investigating mid-air gestures and handhelds in motion tracked environments

Smart spaces with multiple interactive devices and motion tracking capabilities are becoming more common. However, there is little research on how interaction with one device affects the usage of other devices in the space. We investigate the effects of mobile devices and physical interactive devices on gestural interaction in motion-tracked environments. For our user study, we built a smart space consisting of a gesture-controlled large display, an NFC reader and a mobile device, to simulate a system in which users can transfer information between the space and personal devices. The study with 13 participants revealed that (1) the mobile device affects gesturing as well as passive stance; (2) users may stop moving completely when they intend to stop interacting with a display; (3) interactive devices with overlapping interaction space make unintentional interaction significantly more frequent. Our findings give implications for gestural interaction design as well as design of motion-tracked smart spaces.