Generalized Interaction Models

This theme project explores future interaction models of mobile phones and mobile devices, with the long-term ambition of developing "the desktop metaphor for the mobile phone" but not imitate the models invented for stationary workstations, so that mobile services find their own shape and nature. This is especially important due to the fundamentally social character of mobile technology use where communicative action rather than information handling is at the core. User-interfaces to mobile technologies today differ across devices and applications which set users in situations where they have to frequently adapt to these shifting circumstances leading to processes that are potentially costly both for users and actors of the mobile industry. To address this situation, the project will attempt develop models for how users can interact efficiently and intuitively with a wide range of mobile services, applications and devices without having to learn new interfaces, actions, and metaphors for each one. However, we would like to emphasise that this does not necessarily mean that we will adopt a standardization approach to these issues. Rather, we will focus on understanding the basic actions and the basic usages that people take with mobile technologies and how these can be generalised to a set of properties that are generally applicable across devices and application.

In line with current developments towards embodied and experience-oriented forms of interaction where an expanded range of human qualities get involved in engagement with mobile technology, we will particularly address interaction models that involve physical, bodily, emotional, and affective aspects in interaction with and around mobile devices. Especially, since mobile applications are increasingly moving towards social and leisure-oriented settings these experience-oriented qualities will be particularly important to explore.

Questions What kind of actions and interactions are supported by mobile devices? What kind of actions and interactions are people expecting from mobile devices? How can we integrate subjective experiences and bodily engagement and communicative action, with new forms of input, output and sensor technologies.

Method and expected results: To address the general issues of mobile interaction we will adopt a broad approach that allows us to take the factors such as social context, other devices, other people, and physical settings into account in the development of such interaction models

 

  1. Analysis of the forms of interaction used in the applications developed within the different domain projects of the Mobile Life center, for instance through brainstorming with the partners.
  2. Analysis of key interaction properties of state of the art research and industry technologies, for instance through repertory grid studies.
  3. Analysis existing interaction patterns of mobile use within specific physical and social contexts in order to understand how these can be generalised into basic actions and usages of mobile devices, for instance through ethnographic field studies.
  4. Investigation of the role played by bodily-engaging aspects in interaction can be taken into account in interaction models, for instance through development and application of techniques for analysing the role of bodily movement and bodily action in human sense-making and human experience.
  5. Design and implementation of novel interaction models that picks up on the qualities identified in the previous four steps. These implemented systems will in turn be tried out with users, initially in long-term qualitative studies to determine how their dynamic gestalt arises over time, and later in larger scale experiments.

 

Expected Results The project will result in two main kind of results: studies of existing practices and designs of potentially new ways of interacting with mobile devices.

 

Any new interaction model will not stand a chance unless it becomes accepted in the commercial world. In parallel to exploring different ways of interacting with mobile technology, we will collaborate closely with our partners to find the routes to reaching out with results. TeliaSonera's Innovation World is one such venue, but we will also look into the work done in standardisation bodies.