Building social discourse around mobile photos: a systemic perspective

Camera phones have been viewed simplistically as digital cameras with poor picture quality while neglecting the utility of the two key functionalities of mobile phones: network connection and access to personal information. This is the first HCI paper to examine mobile photos from a systemic perspective: how assignment of phases of mobile photo lifecycle to different platforms affects social discourse around shared photos. We conducted a 6week user trial of MobShare, a tripartite system with dedicated functions and task couplings for a mobile phone, a server, and a PC browser. We analyze how MobShare’s couplings and distribution of functionalities affected the observed types of social discourse that formed around mobile photos: in-group post-event discourse, self-documents and reports, greetings and thanks. Several central design issues arising from the systemic view are discussed: heterogeneity of environments, integration and distribution of functionalities, couplings and decoupli...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: MHCI
• Authors: Risto Sarvas, Antti Oulasvirta, Giulio Jacucci
• Keywords: Human Computer Interaction, MHCI 2005, Mobile Phone, Mobile Photos, Systemic Perspective