Nam-wook Kang

A study of cultural effects on mobile-collocated group photo sharing

International and intercultural collaborations provide a unique opportunity to explore cultural differences in the usage and appropriation of a technology. Mobile photo capture and sharing has been growing in popularity in the Western world but nowhere has the practice been as eagerly adopted as in South Korea. In this paper we present an evaluation of a mobile-collocated photo sharing technology probe designed to determine the ways in which photo capture and sharing can effect and enhance face-to-face interaction for pre-existing social groups. We explore the interaction of culture and automatic, real-time photo capture and sharing on groups of friends engaging in a walking tour. We assemble a multicultural research team to better understand our observations and isolate cultural and technological artifacts. We relate our findings to prior work in the area to show that culture can have as much, if not more, impact on group usage of a technology than the technical capabilities of a system.