| This thesis is an attempt to address the spontaneous, often unpredictable uses of technology that can foster feelings of social participation. A key idea is that social processes and dynamics advance technological design. Consider the most recent applications that are primarily focused on social interaction: social software (Allen, 2004), match-making and friend-finder websites (e.g. Orkut, Friendster), blogs and messaging systems (e.g. Instant Messaging, SMS, MMS etc). At the same time ubiquitous computing (Weiser, 1991) and mobile technologies have created new opportunities for ‘mixed reality’ social experiences, where information and virtual narratives can be superimposed on the real world and real people, blurring the boundaries between the physical and virtual world as never before possible. Being in a public space and communicating with a stranger nearby via one’s mobile phone is a new concept, associated with a lot of excitement but also with attendant fears.
The thesis investigates an opportunity space created by the ability to manifest our presence, both virtual and physical, in symbolic ways through the use of emerging technologies. One of the first problems the thesis tries to address is whether it is possible to harness the feel-good factor of group presence. In other words, how can the presence of large numbers of people be communicated and what kind of design can enhance the sense of participation and being part of a group. In this context, what is most inspiring is the possibility of emergent, spontaneous interaction that can spring from participating in some kind of large-scale, technology-mediated, social experience. Such a project has many unknowns and risks: there is no way to know in advance what these emergent behaviours and interactions will be like; neither can we ensure that these will occur in the first place. We capitalize on this uncertainty to bring the notion of emergence to the forefront and study it as part of an iterative design process. Creative and social uses of technologies have, to a large extent, formed our experience of the internet as a social medium. Many times these emergent uses, unintended by the designers, computer scientist and engineers have inspired and advanced technological innovation.
This thesis is indicative of a recent trend in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research in the last few years (Preece et al, 2002), to include work from the humanities disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, social psychology, arts as well as industrial design. HCI researchers have realised that including a broad spectrum of areas can benefit the field as a whole, addressing the limitations of traditional, task focused HCI problem solving and introducing a variety of research methods and creative design processes for emerging technologies. Already the term ‘interaction design’ is often used for HCI research to suggest that what is at stake is not only a user’s interaction with a computer, but a broader contextual framework, taking into account the environments in which people work, collaborate, learn and play, patterns of interaction and social processes that influence the way technology is being used. Understanding this contextual framework can support the design of successful interactive systems. |
