Mobile Life Centre - News

Media Innovation Research and Information Session

Learn about Keio University Graduate School of Media Design (Keio Media Design), an epicenter of digital media technology, creative content design, and emerging business research. Keio Meida Deisgn porjects cover key areas of Creative and Cultural Industries such as entertainment computing, internet media, robotics, experience design, mobility design, pop culture, augmented reality, communication design, interacive media, digital cinema and responsive environment.

Speaker: Masa Inakage, Dean and Professor

Friday March 19, 15.30 - 16.00, Forum builiding, Isafjordsgatan 39, Sal C, 4th floor.

Social media on the road – The future of car based computing

On Wednesday February 24th at 11:00, Mobile Life organises a seminar with Oskar Juhlin. The seminar is held in Kista Mobile Showcase and lasts approximately one hour.

Title: Social media on the road – The future of car based computing

Abstract: Oskar presents his forthcoming book which summarizes 7 years of research within the Mobility studio. In the future, everyday life in traffic will be intricately meshed with city life. To-day, motorways, city streets, toll roads, country roads, etc. are places where we spend a considerable amount of time, and where a large number of everyday en-counters between people occur. Any road user’s journey coincides with several, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of other people’s journeys. But these encounters are brief and the interaction is slight. Mobile technologies and services provide us with new possibilities to support drivers and passengers beyond just helping them to reach their destination. We suggest that new
technologies and applications could enhance social interaction in traffic and make life on the road more interesting and meaningful. We provide examples of some innovative applications such as car stereos that share music among drivers; digital games that interact with the landscape passing by outside the car windows, or with passengers in surrounding cars; message systems that allow drivers to help each other; web applications that allow motorcyclists to socialize on the road and more.

Bio: Assoc. prof. Oskar Juhlin is one of four senior leaders in Mobile Life and Co-director of the Mobile Life centre. He is also Studio director for the Mobility studio at Interactive Institute.

Edinburgh Science Festival

Kristina Höök has been invited to give a the Sydney Michaelson Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Science Festival. Her lecture is entitled Mind, Mouse and Body.

Presentations at CHI 2010!

We are very happy to have several papers, one note, one work-in-progress and many workshop contributions accepted to the CHI conference this year.

Full papers:

Engström, A, Juhlin, O, Perry, M., Broth M. (2010). Temporal hybridity: Mixing live video footage with instant replay in real time”, . In proceedings of CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, USA, April 2010, ACM Press.

Sundström, P., and Höök, K. (2010). Hand in Hand with the Material: Designing for Suppleness. In proceedings of CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, USA, April 2010, ACM Press.

Weilenmann, A. 2010, Learning to Text: An Interaction-Analytic Study of How Seniors Learn to Enter Text on Mobile Phones. In proceedings of CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, USA, April 2010, ACM Press.

Notes:

Cramer, H., Evers, V., van Slooten, T., Ghijsen, M., an Wielinga, B. (2010) Trying Too Hard? Effects of Mobile Agents’ (Inappropriate) Social Expressiveness on Trust, Affect and Compliance, Note accepted for proceedings of CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, USA, April 2010, ACM Press.

Work in progress:

Jakob Tholander & Carolina Johansson (2010). Bodies, boards, clubs and bugs: A study of bodily engaging artefacts. In CHI 2010 Extended Abstracts, Work-in-progress, 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, USA, April 2010, ACM Press.

Workshops:

Cramer, H., Belloni, N., and Rost, M. (2010) On not being a stranger. Making sense of the sociable media landscape, Accepted to the workshop Social Connectedness to be held at CHI, Atlanta, USA, April 2010.

Holmquist, L.E., Ju, W., Jonsson. M., Tholander, J., Ahmet, Z., Saiful, S.I., Acholonu, U., Winograd, T. (2010). Wii Science: Teaching the laws of nature with physically engaging video game technologies. Accepted to the workshop Video Games as Research Instruments to be held at CHI, Atlanta, USA, April 2010.

Höök, K., Sundström, P., Tholander, J., Ferreira, P., Ståhl, A., Laaksolahti, J., Kosmack Vaara, E., Karlsson, A., Sanches, P., Johansson, C., Sjölinder, M., Weymann, C., and Jaensson, T. (2010) Design Processes for Bodily Interaction? Accepted to the workshop Artifacts in Design: Representation, Ideation, and Process to be held at CHI, Atlanta, USA, April 2010.

Mentis, H. (2010) Complimenting Informatization: Engaging Socio-affective Practices in Healthcare Information Technology, Accepted to the workshop on Interactive Systems in Healthcare (WISH), held in conjunction with the CHI conference in Atlanta, USA, April 2010.

Sanches, P., Vaara, E., Sjölinder, M., Weymann, C. and Höök, K. (2010). Affective Health – designing for empowerment rather than stress diagnosis, To be presented at the Know thyself: monitoring and reflecting on facets of one's life workshop at CHI 2010, Atlanta, GA, USA.

Tholander, J and Jaensson, T, (2010). Taking an Ethnography of Bodily Experiences into Design – analytical and methodological challenges, Accepted to the workshop Artifacts in Design: Representation, Ideation, and Process to be held at CHI, Atlanta, USA, April 2010.

Tholander; J & Johansson, C., (2010). Bodies, boards, clubs and bugs: A study of bodily engaging artifacts, Accepted to the workshop Whole-Body Interaction to be held at CHI, Atlanta, USA, April 2010.

Microstudies of mobile technology in use

On Wednesday February 17th at 11:00, Mobile Life organises a seminar with Alexandra Weilenmann. The seminar is held in Kista Mobile Showcase and lasts approximately one hour.

Abstract: In this talk, I want to take the opportunity to introduce myself as a new visiting member of Mobile Life. This will be done by first drawing a background to the type of micro-oriented sociological studies of mobile-technology-in-use I’ve been doing for the past ten years. Second, I will provide a few examples of this type of research, including my work on positioning practices in mobile phone calls as well as examples of the struggles senior users face when learning to do text messaging. Third, I will end with a brief description of my current project Mobile services for interaction, communication and learning, hoping to open up for your input and collaboration possibilities.

Bio: Weilenmann holds a PhD in informatics, and is Associate Professor in Applied Information Technology. She is employed at the Department of Applied Information Technology, University of Gothenburg/Chalmers. During 2010-2013 Weilenmann is working as a VinnMer Fellow with a research grant from Vinnova (Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems). The project is titled Mobile services for interaction, communication and learning and involves partners Mobile Life VinnExellence Center and The Linnaeus Center for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS).

Panel at EasyFairs in Kista

”Future Watch”

On the 16th of February, Kristina Höök will participate in a panel at EasyFairs under the title ”Future Watch”. Starting from the artefacts we use to communicate - mobiles, computers, handhelds, home video stations - we discuss the next step: what will these artefacts look like in five years time? What will we want to have at home? At work? In school? How will this affect our ways of working and our social lives?

Johan Hallsenius Moderator, Computer Sweden

Panelists:

Kristina Höök, Professor in Human-Machine Interaction at Stockholms University

Marta Sandén, Editor, Sandén Publishing AB

Morris Packer, CTO, TV4, Expressen, Mobilab AB

Erik Hörnfeldt, Head of information and PR, Tre

Fredrik Bernsel, Business manager, Online, IDG

More info.

Artefacts in Design Processes for Bodily Interaction?

On Wednesday February 3rd at 11:00, Mobile Life organises a seminar with Kristina Höök. The seminar is held in Kista Mobile Showcase and lasts approximately one hour.

Title: Artefacts in Design Processes for Bodily Interaction?

Abstract: Designing interactive systems that have illusive interaction qualities, such as suppleness or pliability, is challenging. In several design projects aiming for bodily and emotional interaction, we have aimed to find concepts, methods or processes that can capture the essence of the sought experience and steer the design process in a successful and efficient direction. Our attempts include using e.g. Laban-analysis of emotionally-oriented movement, video-cards from ethnographic studies of users in movement, or simply explicitly naming and defining the sought interaction quality. Our experiences point to the importance of moving from low-fi prototyping to high-fi – no matter which artefact is used to keep the design team on track. Repeatedly exposing unfinished prototypes not only to prospective end-users, but also to the whole design team has been another important part of our process. Finally, a deeper understanding of emotional and bodily interaction processes based on non-interactive as well as interactive systems is badly needed.

Bio: Kristina Höök is a professor in Human-Machine Interaction at Stockholm University, and upholds a parttime position at SICS. She currently leads the Mobile Life centre. Her research centers around designing for social, emotional and bodily interaction.

Bluetooth as a Design Medium

On Wednesday February 27th at 11:00, Mobile Life organises a seminar with Petra Sundström. The seminar is held in Kista Mobile Showcase and lasts approximately one hour.

Abstract: In this talk I will report on a project in which we purposefully set out to investigate what exposing and experimenting with a technology’s properties might achieve. We wanted to investigate how the explicit attempt to open up a technology, exposing its properties, might shape the directions a design follows. The technology, Bluetooth, was chosen for a number of reasons. Broadly, we were attracted to the ubiquity of Bluetooth and its status as a standard for wireless, short-range data communication. We felt this status provided us with a technology that is often seen as a closed system or black box with numerous taken for granted properties. Again, the intention was not to solve a specific problem using Bluetooth or to achieve some predefined endpoint. It was rather to see whether a focused investigation into Bluetooth, as a design medium, might open us up to anything different and/or unexpected. Results from this work is a detailed description of some of the properties of Bluetooth and a number of examples and implemented sketches of inspirational design ideas.

Bio: Petra is a senior Phd student at the Mobile Life Centre and at Stockholm University and SICS. She is this coming spring about to write up her thesis on Affective Interaction, gestures and body movement with a special focus on the design process. In this talk she will present work she conducted with Alex Taylor and Kenton O'Hara during her 3 month Internship at Microsoft Research in Cambridge last Autumn.

Successful demo of the Instant Broadcasting System at Siggraph Asia

The demo at SIGGRAPH Asia in Yokohama attracted lots of attention from the visitors. There were lots of smiles and revisits to our both. For a mobile video displaying our set up please visit this site.

'Designing for Crowds’ workshop@ Pervasive 2010

The workshop "Designing for crowds" has been accepted to Pervasive 2010 in Helsinki, Finland 17th to 20th May.

Crowds often may be formed by groups of people with some level of shared sense, purpose and togetherness. In the workshop, whilst being wary of attempting to define ‘crowds’, we will seek to explore the challenges unique to crowds through examining a range of different types and forms of crowds, such as groups of sports fans, crowds gathering around performers or public displays, or crowds at festivals and musical events. We note that even with more well-researched technologies, such as large interactive screens, there remain few empirical studies of how actual user practices and interaction in such crowd settings takes place. As such the focus of our workshop will attempt to redress this lack of studies within the domain.

Submissions: Designing for crowds website

Organisers: Stuart Reeves and Scott Sherwood, Dep of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Oskar Juhlin Mobile Life Centre Stockholm, Kenton O´Hara Microsoft Research Cambridge

Talk at Swedish Newspaper Association

Arvid Engström held a talk at the Swedish Newspaper Association’s industry days on October 2nd. The talk, titled “Creating meaningful services for a mobile life” was a part of a half day seminar on innovation, content, users and business models for mobile services for the newspaper industry.

Mobile Life at Mobilmässan November 5

Mobile Life will demo Mobile 2.0 and Affective Health during the Mobile exhibition on November 5th in Kista Science Tower.

Check out some of the demos from Mobilmässan

Professor Kristina Höök, the centre director, is a member of the jury for this year's "Guldmobiler" award that will be presented at the glittering dinner, Mobilgalan. Kristina will also talk during the day at the conference.

Design for all and design for me

Seminar with Charlotte Magnusson and Bodil Jönsson from CERTEC.

The seminar will be held on Wednesday November 4th in Kista Mobile Showcase in Kista Science City.

Abstract: Our interactions with artefacts (man-made objects) affect us in almost all situations. Distributed memory, distributed cognition and distributed reminders have become features of everyday life for most of us (even if we do not always think about it). Developers of technology for special users and special situations have to work close to reality – which means that many methods and approaches to such problems often closely resemble the ones that apply to mobile technology. We present methods and concrete examples of what one can learn by going outside of the mainstream and working with both “design for all” and “design for me”.

Bio: The seminar will be held by Charlotte Magnusson along with Bodil Jönsson, Per-Olof Hedvall, Håkan Eftring and Björn Breidegard from Certec, Department of Design Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University. Certec is the Division of Rehabilitation Engineering Research (http://www.certec.lth.se). The explicit purpose of our research and education is for people with disabilities to achieve better opportunities through useworthy technology, new design concepts and new individualized forms of learning and searching. Our efforts begin and end with the individual, while the process and results are often genuinely technical in nature.

From Malinowski to Second Life: An Introduction to Digital Anthropology

Seminar with Paula Uimonen, Thursday October 15th at 11:00, in Kista Mobile & Mulitmedia Showcase, Kista Science Tower.

Abstract: Digital anthropology focuses on the development and use of digital media and communication technologies in different social and cultural contexts. It is an emerging sub-discipline in anthropology, combining anthropological theories with ethnographic methods, based on fieldwork on- and offline. This seminar gives an introduction to digital anthropology, with examples of studies carried out in different parts of the world and in virtual environments.

Bio: Dr Paula Uimonen is specialized in digital anthropology. Her dissertation, published in 2001, was the first book to provide a comparative, empirical study
of Internet development in the developing world, based on multi-sited fieldwork in Southeast Asia and cyberspace. Her current research project focuses on Internet, culture and identity, based on fieldwork at an Arts College in Tanzania. Dr Uimonen teaches courses in digital anthropology, professional roles for anthropologists, and visual culture.

Welcome!

Annika Waern, seminar organizer

Seminar with Johan Lundin

Title of seminar: Students' digitalization of higher education

Abstract:
The seminar will build on a previous study of the inclusion of mobile phones, wikis and laptops in higher educational settings. We see a number of changes in what technology might be, and might be used for, and the effects and possible effects that this might have on higher education. In short these changes have made different kinds of computers omnipresent and networked in many higher education settings, with or without the liking of educators. Students have, and are expected to have access to computers. They are also expected to be able to use their computers in a competent way – at least relative to being a student. Hopefully I will also be able to present video data from students laptop use in classrooms, from an ongoing developement project focusing how students private technologies are integrated into higher education.

Bio: Johan Lundin's research interests focus the use and design of mobile technology and services, and learning in work and everyday practice. In particular he is interested in how mobile technology plays a part in learning in everyday life and work. His research have been conducted in close cooperations with Ericsson, Volvo IT, SAAB GM, and ADB-kontoret i Göteborg. He holds a Ph.D. in informatics (2005) from University of Gothenburg. In 2007 he was appointed as one of the senior members in LinCS excellence center financed by the Swedish Research Council. In 2008 he was asked to work as a coordinator of the new university wide initiative on interactive learning - using IT and pedagogical methods to explore and enhance the possibilities for learning at University of Gothenburg. Johan is currently employed as a guest lecturer at University of Gothenburg and as research project manager at University West.

Welcome!

Annika Waern, seminar organizer

Job opening for two researchers at the Mobile Life VinnExcellence Center in Stockholm, Sweden

We are looking for two talented researchers with an interest in interdisciplinary design oriented research. The research focus of the Mobile Life centre takes as a starting point people’s increasing mobility and the continuously improving technologies of mobile computing. These systems can be used to make mobile life more meaningful and interesting, yet present new challenges for understanding current practices. The focus for the mobility group within mobile life is currently the collaboratively producing and editing live video from mobile phones, as well as professional and amateur interfaces to interact with future immersive and ultra-high resolution video panorama. The two open positions are for a technical lead, and a social science lead:

Profile 1. Engineering and computer science background

You should have an experience of application development within the mobile sector or within media technology more broadly. You should have a high level of development skills for mobile systems (e.g. C++, Symbian or Objective C, iPhone) and have relevant academic skills to the masters level and be motivated to do academic research. Evidence in terms of existing publications and systems you have developed are key qualifications.

Profile 2. Social science background

Our design oriented research utilizes social science methods, and in particular ethnographic methods, to influence design of new applications. You will engage in studies of social properties of mobile leisure in general, and ethnographic studies of sport pub attendants; professional TV production, as well as video content analysis in particular. You should have evidence of your ability to organize, conduct and publish on your ethnographic research. Experience working in design orientated teams is particularly desirable. You should have PhD or equivalent qualification in a relevant discipline. A focus on practice orientated ethnographic work - ethnomethodological, conversational analytic or video analysis would be a plus. You will be employed by Interactive Institute in Stockholm. The interactive institute is an experimental IT-research institute that combines expertise in art, design and information technology to perform world leading applied research. We develop new research areas and new experience oriented products and services. You will work within the Mobile Life VinnExcellence Centre where several academic partners (also including Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Stockholm University) collaborate with industrial partners such as Nokia Research, Ericsson Research, SonyEricsson, Microsoft Research, TeliaSonera and the City of Stockholm.

Application deadline and appointment: Open

More info on the research group (the Mobility studio)

More info on the morevideo!-project

Contact person: Oskar Juhlin oskarj@tii.se

Collaborative Live Streaming from UNG08 with Instant Broadcasting System

We stream mobile video from multiple sources during the UNG08 youth festival in Kungsträdgården Stockholm. A Dutch and Swedish team of young camera men and a vision mixer from Kulturskolan provides two daily live broad casts in between 12.45 and 14.30.This is the first large scale test of Instant Broadcasting System in front of a large crowd! The live broadcasts can be followed here.

Mobile Glasnost panel on YouTube

For those who missed the Mobile Life Open House, the panel on Mobile Glasnost is now available on YouTube - click here to see the first part! The panel was moderated by Lars Erik Holmquist of Mobile Life and featuring Martin Vendel (Squace), Troed Sångberg (Sony Ericsson), Martin Körling (Ericsson) and Johan Wickman (TeliaSonera). The panelists talked about the new openness in mobile services and networks, and discussed future business models and trends. The movie is split into several parts with each following segment posted as a response to the previous. Thanks to Bo Larsson for filming the panel!

Mobile Life is being refurbished

We are looking forward to lots of more space in August 2009. Until then - enter at your own risk!

Dr Liselott Brunnberg gets 2 year Post Doc from the Swedish Research Council

Liselott Brunnberg, Experience Designer and researcher at the Interactive Institutes Mobility Studio has been granted a two year fellowship from The Swedish Research Council for Postdoctoral research at Tongji University, The College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The research will be design-oriented and focus on interactive media in a city like Shanghai, which is in a strong growth. A short description of the project is available on The Swedish Research Council´s website. For more information about Tongji University please klick here.

Dr Alexandra Weilenmann gets Post Doc from Vinnova

Fil Dr Alexandra Weilenmann has been awarded with a three year post doc grant in the VinnMer program. The post doc is a collaboration between the Interactive Institute, the Mobile Life Centre and the Lincs program at Göteborg University. Alexandra will start to work in Studio and in the Centre the 1st of January 2010.

Talk at the European Location Based Entertainment Summit

Liselott Brunnberg was invited to speak about Backseat Playground at the European Location Based Entertainment Summit, May 18th at Malmö Exhibition & Convention Center. She also presented her dissertation at the Department of Media studies and Communication at Karlstad University in May.

The Rise of a Ludic Society

Written by Annika Waern in Mobile Life

During 150 years, the western world has been occupied with an artificial division of work and leisure. This division worked in the old industry society, where work was situated in dedicated work space and the home was reserved for family and leisure. However, due to modern mobile and internet technology this becomes less and less true; work mixes with leisure, private with public. This is not inherently bad, but it becomes problematic when we adopt a ‘work’ lifestyle throughout all aspects of life, when every part of private and leisure life needs to be as polished and efficient as your work performance. The counterreaction is the rise of the ludic society – a society where enjoyment, experience and play are adopted into all aspects of life. Again, modern mobile and internet technology supports also this. The pictures from the company karaoke session are shared over facebook, an edited Obama video spurs instantaneous followups, reality soaps become the normative form of TV entertainment.

Maria Håkansson on Swedish Radio

Swedish Radio (SR). Maria Håkansson talks about the Push!Music system and music sharing on mobile phones in the weekly music documentary "Mitt i musiken", broadcasted on April 3 in P2:

Listen
http://www.sr.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1012&artikel=2745547

Kristina Höök at KVIT in Linköping

Kristina Höök talks at the 16th annual Cognitive Science Symposium

Abstract

Digital products that attempt to set the scene for emotional experiences, bodily interactions, persuasive processes, aesthetic experiences and other experiential qualities, are gaining grounds both in the commercial world and in the so-called “third-wave of HCI”-movement within academia. While a typical HCI-goals used to be ease of use or learnability, we now discuss design qualities such as suppleness, game play, embodiment, reflection, affective loops or pliability. In this talk, I will discuss these new design qualities and the kinds of challenges we meet when designing for physical, emotional, and bodily involvement. I will examplify with systems that we have built (or are building) in my lab, such as eMoto, mobile emotional messaging using gesture, Affective Diary, a way to remember your bodily and social experiences, and Affective Health, a mobile service empowering users to deal with stress.

Josefin Karlsson - a new member in the Centre

We welcome Josefin as a new member in the Mobile Life Centre. She has a recent exam from KTH in media technology, which will be useful when working in the morevideo!-project with the planning of two broad cast productions with the City of Stockholm, as well as with research in the project.

Postdoc Positions Available

We are pleased to announce the availability of a number of postdoctoral positions at the Interaction Design and Innovation Lab at SICS, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. The lab is closely associated with Mobile Life, a research centre at Stockholm University in cooperation with the telecom industry.

We are looking for recent Ph.D. graduates from all over the world with a strong interest in mobile technology and interaction design, who want to work in a dynamic research environment in Sweden. You can contribute in many different ways: by inventing and implementing new and exciting technologies and interfaces; by performing user tests and ethnographic studies; by running design workshops and creating novel concepts for mobile interaction; and much more. The lab is organized in two groups: the Future Applications Lab, led by Professor Lars Erik Holmquist; and Involve, led Professor Kristina Höök. In the Future Applications Lab, we use an approach called grounded innovation to invent and test new technology that could become products in 5-10 years time, including context-aware mobile services and social robots. In Involve, we are interested in exploring affective and bodily interaction, and involving users both physically and cognitively in what we call an affective loop.

The positions are offered through the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) Fellowship Programme. Positions are typically for 12 months, or 18 months when the fellowship is split between two of the ERCIM institutes. The fellow at SICS will receive a monthly allowance of 2 580 Euro. Costs for travelling to and from the institutes will be paid.

To apply, you need to go through the ERCIM application page:
http://www.ercim.org/activity/fellows

This page also contains detailed application requirements. Make sure to mark your field of interest as "E-Mobility -> Mobile Applications and Human-Computer Interaction for mobile devices" and your desired host institute as SICS. In addition to applying through the ERCIM web page, you should also inform us of your application by e-mailing your CV and a cover letter stating your research interests to Lars Erik Holmquist (see below).

The deadline for applications is April 30; successful applicants should be able to start in the summer of 2009.

MORE INFORMATION

The Interaction Design and Innovation lab at SICS is located in Kista, Sweden, about 20 minutes by subway from the centre of Stockholm. For more information about us, please refer to:
http://www.sics.se/groups/interaction

The Mobile Life Centre is also located in Kista. For more information, please refer to:
http://www.mobilelifecentre.org

ERCIM aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry; c.f.
http://www.ercim.org/

For questions, please contact:
Lars Erik Holmquist, lab manager
Interaction Design and Innovation, SICS
leh@sics.se -- +46 703 55 85 00

Presentations and party at CHI 2009

Mobile Life will have a strong presence at the ACM Computer-Human Interaction conference in Boston, with many papers, posters and other presentations. We will also have an exclusive party - talk to one of us and you will get an invitation...

Below is the complete list of Mobile Life presentations at CHI 2009.

Tuesday, April 7
11:30 AM–1:00 PM: Passive Photography from a Creative Perspective: “If I would just shoot the same thing for seven days: it’s like... What’s the point?” Full paper presentation by Sara Ljungblad. Session: Art Creation.

Wednesday, April 8
10:30 AM–11:30 AM: See You on the Subway: Exploring Mobile Social Software. Work-in-progress by Nicolas Belloni, Lars Erik Holmquist, and Jakob Tholander.

10:30 AM–11:30 AM: Mirroring bodily experiences over time. Work-in-progress by Elsa Kosmack Vaara, Kristina Höök and Jakob Tholander.

11.30 AM–1.00 PM: The three-sixty illusion: Designing for Immersion in Pervasive Games. Full paper presentation by Annika Waern, Markus Montola och Jaakko Stenros. Session: New Gaming Experiences.

2:30 PM–4:00 PM: At Home and with Computer Access – Why and Where People Use Cell Phones to Access the Internet. Note presentation by Stina Nylander, Terés Lundquist and Andreas Brännström. Session: Studying Cell Phone Use.

Thursday, April 9
11:30 AM–1:00 PM: On Being Supple: In Search of Rigor without Rigidity in Meeting New Design and Evaluation Challenges for HCI Practitioners. Full paper presentation by Katherine Isbister and Kristina Höök. Session: Reflecting on Design.

2.30 PM–4.00 PM. Lean Collaboration Through Video Gestures: Co-ordinating the Production of Live Televised Sport. Mark Perry, Oskar Juhlin, Mattias Esbjörnsson and Arvid Engström. Session: Gesture UIs. Best of CHI nominee.

Workshop presentations

Fragments of Companionship – design insights from a blog study by Mattias Jacobsson at the Reign of Catz & Dogz.

Engaging the whole body in mobile interaction by Jakob Tholander, Jarmo Laaksolahti, Elsa Kosmack-Vaara, Pedro Ferreira, Tove Jaensson and Ylva Fernaeus at the Whole Body Interaction.

Studying A Novel Mobile Music Sharing System by Maria Håkansson at the Mobile User Experience Research: Challenges, Methods & Tools.

Mirror bodily experiences over time by Elsa Vaara, Kristina Höök and Jakob Tholander at the Interacting with Temporal Data.

300 visitors at Mobile Life's Open House

The Mobile Life VINN Excellence centre’s Open House was a success. 300 visitors from industry, government and academia gathered to take part of what has happened since the centre started two years ago.
Kristina Höök held an introductory presentation followed by a panel discussion with representatives from Ericsson, TeliaSonera and Sony Ericsson, on the theme Mobile Glasnost. "Our goal is to shape and be a part of the mobile revolution" said Kristina Höök. Keynote speaker was William Gaver from Goldsmith University of London. After the presentations the crowd moved to Mobile Life's and the Interactive Institute's premises to see the demonstrators and, eat from the well-stocked buffet and mingle.

Succesful defence of Ph.D. thesis

Maria Håkansson successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis Playing with Context - Explicit and Implicit Interaction in Mobile Media Applications on February 26. The thesis contributes with insights into how aspects of the surrounding physical and social context can be exploited in the design of mobile media applications for playful use. The opponent was Eric Paulos of Carnegie Mellon University. You can download the thesis here.

Open job position in the morevideo! project

We are looking for a researcher in Media Technology or Interaction Design to the Mobile Life VinnEcxellence Center!

We are looking for a young and talented media engineer or interaction designer with an interest in research and development of new mobile applications. You should have an experience of interaction design and/or application development within the media sector or the telecoms sector, and master some programming (e.g. C++, Symbian). You should have relevant academic exams on a master level and be motivated to continue doing research.

Our research take as a starting point people’s increasing mobility and the continuously improving means for mobile computing. This technology can be used to make mobile life more meaningful and interesting. Our current area of interest, investigated within the morevideo!-project, concerns the possibility to collaboratively produce and edit live video from mobile phones. We envision a type of applications that squeezes some of the functionality of an entire professional TV-bus for live broadcasts into a mobile platform.

You will be employed by Interactive Institute in Stockholm. It is a Swedish experimental it-research institute that combines expertise in art, design and information technology to perform world leading applied research. We develop new research areas and new experience oriented products and services.

You will work within the Mobile Life VinnExcellence Centre where several academic partners (also including Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Stockholm University) collaborate with industrial partners such as Ericsson Research, SonyEricsson, Microsoft Research and TeliaSonera.

Application deadline: 31st of March

Appointment: April 2009

More info on our research group

More info on the morevideo!

More info on the Mobile Life VinnExcellence Centre

Contact person: Åsa Enger, asae@sics.se

Mobile Life Open House

Two years ago, the Mobile Life Centre opened its doors in Kista. At the time, we talked about a coming second IT revolution, made possible by a new generation of mobile services and ubiquitous technology. The first IT-revolution, the introduction and deployment of the internet and the World Wide Web during the 1990’s, had a major impact on all parts of our society. We postulated that as mobile, ubiquitous technology was becoming widespread, the design and evaluation of mobile services – i.e. information technology that can be accessed and used in virtually any setting – should represent a vital area for every aspect of the IT- and telecom industry. We wanted to help the industry to design services for the sustainable web of work, leisure and ubiquitous technology we call the mobile life.
Today, the landscape is already vastly different. For instance, when we wrote the first research plan for Mobile Life, neither Google nor Apple were in the mobile phone business. We have also seen the marketplace become more dominated by high-end phones and advanced user interfaces such as touch-screens. But two other recent developments may well have more importance for the long-term development of mobile services. First, the increased availability of flat-rate data plans will lead to users adopting mobile services much like they have already got used to having the stationary internet as an essential part of their lives. Second, the new openness for external application development, exemplified both by successful applications stores and the open-sourcing of several major operating systems, means that there is potential for a slew of new and innovative mobile services to appear. In fact, many of the applications that have recently been launched by start-ups are very similar to projects we were working on at the start of the Centre – location-based, social, high-bandwidth, media-rich and user-friendly mobile services available at the click of a button (or touch of a screen!)
This does not mean our work is done – it has only started! Most of the new services we have seen so far are technically innovative, but designed based on stationary computing as the dominating interaction paradigm. In a truly mobile life, we not only need access to people and activities in other locations – we must also always consider the things at hand. We believe that next generation of mobile services should provide better means for exploring and engaging with unplanned activities, unfamiliar places, and brief encounters – in other words the world as it is right here and right now. As work, leisure and social activities blend together, this shift to services that provide both global and local access become important both to support work-oriented tasks and to emerging leisure-oriented activities. This requires a new approach to how mobile services are designed and evaluated – not remote and disconnected, but right here, right now.
As you will see at this Open House, The Mobile Life VINN Excellence Centre has, together with our partners, already become a hotbed for research and development of this next generation of mobile services. Welcome to the mobile revolution!