Kenton O'Hara

A comparison of reading paper and on-line documents

We report on a laboratory study that compares reading from paper to reading on-line. Critical differences have to do with the major advantages paper offers in supporting annotation while reading, quick navigation, and flexibility of spatial layout. These, in turn, allow readers to deepen their understanding of the text, extract a sense of its structure, create a plan for writing, cross-refer to other documents, and interleave reading and writing. We discuss the design implications of these findings for the development of better reading technologies.

A diary study of work-related reading: design implications for digital reading devices

In this paper we describe a diary study of how people read in the course of their daily working lives. Fifteen people from a wide variety of professions were asked to log their daily document activity for a period of 5 consecutive working days. Using structured interviews, we analysed their reading activities in detail. We examine the range of reading activities that our subjects carried out, and then present findings relating to both common characteristics and variation across the sample. From these findings, we discuss some implications for the design of digital readiig devices.

Consuming video on mobile devices

Mobile video is now an everyday possibility with a wide array of commercially available devices, services and content. These technologies promise to transform the way that people can consume video media in their lives beyond the familiar behaviours associated with fixed TV and video technologies. Building upon earlier studies of mobile video, this paper reports on a study using diary techniques and ethnographic interviews to better understand how people are using commercially available mobile video technologies in their everyday lives. Drawing on reported episodes of mobile video behaviour, the study identifies the social motivations and values underpinning these behaviours that help characterise mobile video consumption beyond the simplistic notion of viewing TV to kill time wherever you may be. Implications for adoption and design of mobile video technologies and services are discussed.

Place as a Practical Concern of Mobile Workers

In this paper we examine the spatial practices of mobile workers—how mobile workers manage their use of technology and place. Data from interviews with highly mobile workers and ‘hot-deskers’ are used to explore the reciprocal relationship between practice and place: how places change work, but also how work changes places. Mobile workers often need to configure their activities to take account of the different places in which they find themselves. This can involve considerable ‘juggling’ of their plans, humble office equipment, and their coworkers. In turn mobile workers change places, as they appropriate different sites for their work. Specifically, technology allows for the limited reappropriation of travel and leisure sites as places for work (such as trains and cafés). Time is also an important practical concern for mobile workers. Although mobile work may be seen as relatively flexible, fixed temporal structures allow mobile workers to ‘accomplish synchronicity’ with others. Although this paper focuses on the specific practices of mobile workers, it also explores how ‘grand social theory’ can help us understand the practical details of mobile work, yet how practice cannot be simply reduced to theory.

A diary study of information capture in working life

Despite the increasing number of new devices entering the market allowing the capture or recording of information (whether it be marks on paper, scene, sound or moving images), there has been little study of when and why people want to do these kinds of activities. In an effort to systematically explore design requirements for new kinds of information capture devices, we devised a diary study of 22 individuals in a range of different jobs. The data were used to construct a taxonomy as a framework for design and analysis. Design implications are drawn from the framework and applied to the design of digital cameras and hand held scanners.

Student readers' use of library documents: implications for library technologies

We report on a study of graduate students conducting research in libraries, focusing on how they extract and record information as they read. By examining their information recording activities within the context of their work as a whole, it is possible to highlight why students choose particular strategies and styles of recording for what these activities provide both at the time of reading and at subsequent points in time. The implications of these findings for digital library technologies are discussed.

Jukola: democratic music choice in a public space

Jukola is an interactive MP3 Jukebox device designed to allow a group of people in a public space to democratically choose the music being played. A public display is used to nominate songs which are subsequently voted on by people in the bar using networked wireless handheld devices. Local bands and artists can also upload their own MP3s to the device over the Web. The paper presents a field trial of the system in a local cafe bar. As well as the value in affording a democratic musical outcome, more importantly the whole process of voting and choice created a rich source of social value and interaction in the form of discussions around music, playful competition, identity management and sense of community.

Touchless interaction in surgery

Touchless interaction with medical images lets surgeons maintain sterility during surgical procedures.

On the naturalness of touchless: Putting the “interaction” back into NUI

Normans critique is indicative of the issue that while using the word natural might have become natural, it is coming at a cost. In other words, precisely because the notion of naturalness has become so commonplace in the scientific lexicon of HCI, so it is becoming increasingly important, it seems that there is a critical examination of the conceptual work being performed when it is used. There is a need to understand the key assumptions implicit within it and how these frame approaches to design and engineering in particular ways. A second significant element of this perspective comes from Wittgenstein, and his claim that, through action, people create shared meanings with others, and these shared meanings are the essential common ground that enable individual perception to be cohered into socially organized, understood, and coordinated experiences.

Collecting and Sharing Location-based Content on Mobile Phones in a Zoo Visitor Experience

The augmentation of visitor experiences with location-based technologies has been available for some time. Through in-depth studies of users during these experiences the field is building a rich picture of user behaviour in relation to certain location-based technologies. However, little work has explored the use of mobile camera phones and 2D barcodes on situated signs and their properties as a way of delivering such augmented visitor experiences. In this paper we present a study of people engaged in such a location-based experience at London zoo in which they use mobile camera phones to read 2D barcodes on signs at the animal enclosures in order to access related content. Through the fieldwork we highlight the social and collaborative aspects of the experience and how particular characteristics of the mobile phone and barcode technology shape these behaviours. The paper also highlights some of the non-instrumental aspects of the location-based experience, in particular in relation to the importance of collecting location-based content. We explore the social aspects of collecting as well as certain competitive elements it introduces into people’s behaviour. This creates an interesting tension in that aspects of the application encourage cooperation and sharing among the visitors whereas others encourage competition. In the course of presenting the fieldwork, we explore this tension further.