Supporting Social Interaction with the Smartphone – Designing Pervasive Systems
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Supporting social interaction with the smartphone – designing pervasive systems Introduction The smartphone represents the current pinnacle of mobile phone development, coupling the abilities of a phone with the additional functionalities of the PDA. In this convergence between phone and handheld computer, it is the phone that has the dominant genes – smartphones are generally closer in looks to phones than to the PDAs who functionality they have subsumed. This historical development has influenced how users tend to think of these devices, and the design of the handsets tends to reflect this. They are predominately communication devices, with additional computing power built in. This is clearly seen if one looks through current catalogues of phones – they range from almost only phone functionality all the way though to complex smartphones – whereas PDAs tend to be very similar; they have the same functionality, differing in computational power, but with broadly similar connectivity. With a smartphone, the primary purpose is communication, with the other functionality being a less critical consideration. Compare this to PCs – originally developed from the larger computers that were pure calculating machines, PCs were initially desktop systems used for content creation and information storage, and it was only with the advent of the internet and browsers that they became stronger communication tools. Now highly capable at communication, offering systems as diverse as email, web publishing, instant messaging, voice over IP and so on, the combination of computing power and communication allow us to envisage pervasive environments in which we can interact with and exploit the advantages of digital systems. But it has been the advent of the smartphone that has allowed us to realize some of these visions. If smartphones are to become successful components in pervasive systems, they must be able to support and enhance the uses that people want to put them to, and offer useful, effective functionality. Given the historical route through which smartphones have evolved, it would seem to be clear that they have to focus on supporting interaction and communication between people. In the pervasive environment, they exist in a social setting that focuses their domain on communication, and not on computation. We are not arguing that they should not undertake computation, or information storage, or other typically computing-related tasks – more that they are likely to best succeed if they do these things to augment what many see as their primary purpose, communication. This perception has guided our research into the design of pervasive systems; smartphones currently offer us the most capable terminals for interfacing to a ubiquitous digital world, they are regarded as communication devices firstly and computers secondly, and so the systems we design and build will focus on augmenting and enhancing communication. Our research has focused on how we can support social interaction and communication between people, since we believe that if smartphones and pervasive systems in general are to be useful and accepted, they must support these activities and enhance them. In all of our experiments, we have been keen to try and design new systems that support forms of interaction between people that are not otherwise so easy, or even possible, without the technology. This endows the systems with a degree of utility that drives their effectiveness, necessary for pervasive system usage to increase. Social interactions Communication between people is a core feature of human life, and we have been interested in understanding how we can support this with smartphones and other pervasive technologies. We have been looking at a range of social interactions, and this paper describes the design of a number of systems each of which examines one approach to augmenting social communication. We can produce a shorthand notation for these interactions, loosely based on the number of people involved. 1 represents an individual, N for a group, and ∞ for the world. We have looked at how we can support person-to-person communication, on an individual basis (1-1); person-to- group communication, in which individuals communicate with a group of others (1-N); within-group communications, in which a group of people share information together(N-N); and person-world (1-∞) and group-world (N-∞) communication, in which an individual or group communicates with the wider world. One of the reasons for considering all these styles of communication is to see whether we can support all these forms using the smartphone as the main user device – if we can, this collective result provides us with strong evidence that it is indeed a useful device for pervasive computing, allowing it to support a multitude of communication approaches. It is the collective effect that is important; the smartphone can hardly be said to be a truly pervasive device if it only supports one form of interaction. We will describe the design and usage of each of these systems, and report on their acceptance or otherwise by the users, and then draw together the experiences to provide our conclusions. If we compare the interactions we have considered, they form the table shown below – the entries in the table are the names of the systems we have developed, placed according to their instigator/recipient relationship. Since smartphones are predominantly personal devices, we would expect a bias towards individuals communicating with others (either singly or to groups or to the wider world), but we also have examples of smartphones being used to mediate group to group and group to the wider world communications. This is a feature of our focus on interaction being focused around communication, which in general requires a coherent desire to move information, and so is less likely to be instigated by an amorphous entity such as the outside world. Therefore, we see entries in all the spaces except for those instigated by the outside world – there are certainly applications in these domains, but they do not form part of our research focus. Recepient Individual Group World Instigator Individual Bluedating IMMS SmartBlog BT communities Jokeswap, Chat Group BT share Shared space World Bluedating (1-1) In designing an application to support interaction between individuals, we wanted to try to provide a system that would offer a new experience to people, or at least to provide them with an easier solution to an old problem. We decided to look at the features of the smartphone system, and to match them onto an interaction need that wasn’t well supported in conventional systems. The characteristics of smartphones are easily identified: they have acceptable screens with sufficient screen estate and resolution to show information (though nothing like that found in notebooks or PCs), some processing power, some memory, short-range free and (with a cost) long-range connections. Significantly, they are personal devices, with private information stores, almost always used by only one user. They are text and image compatible, and because of their size and battery life they offer permanent availability, attached to the user. Almost all smartphones support bluetooth communication, a wireless standard which offers local (10- 100m) connectivity for free. The bluetooth protocol allows for devices to discover each other, and to exchange data, with differing levels of input from the user, and it is often used to communicate between the phone and a bluetooth headset, allowing hands-free operation of the phone, or to exchange data between the phone and a user’s PC. However, our aim was to support 1-1 interaction, so we looked for opportunities to provide new forms of support for individuals. We decided to support dating. The rationale behind this is clear. Fining new people to date is something that appears to be increasingly difficult, especially as electronic entertainment replaces social groupings, so that it becomes more and more difficult to identify people with similar interests. There is clearly, at least within some of the user groups we were working with, a need for supporting this. The technology maps onto this well: bluetooth requires that people be in close physical proximity, and can be configured to allow information exchange without user input. Because they are personal devices, they can contain personal and private information, and so they are a clear choice for selectively sharing this with other devices. The system was designed to allow users to enter a profile of their interests and desires, and a profile of the partner they wish to meet. This information (and only this information) is then advertised over bluetooth. The other part of the application continually searches for other profiles over bluetooth; when one is found, it is compared to the desired profile. If the two profiles match up, then both users are informed (usually though vibrating the phone discreetly) that a potential match is very nearby. The rest is up to the users….. This system is designed to utilize the local nature of the bluetooth protocol, alerting you to people nearly who are also looking for a date. This is quite different from the internet dating approaches which work on a similar profile system, but can identify a potential partner who is many kilometers away. This means that the users have to undergo a potentially embarrassing first date, when they first get to see their prospective partner – with a more localised system, people can see who they have been matched with and decide whether to pursue it or not. It also makes use of people’s familiarity with keeping personal information on their phone, rather than asking them to adopt a new piece of technology. And by utilizing systems they already possess, and increasing their functionality, we get much closer to the dreams of pervasive computing. The Bluedating system, as it has been termed, has been trialled with a few users around the University.