Personal or social? Designing mobile interactions for co-located interaction

Paper in proceeding, 2014

Personal mobile devices such as mobile phones, tablets, fitness wristbands, and smart watches are becoming ubiquitous and widely involved in our daily activities. However, these devices are designed and considered by the users as personal-not as shared or collaborative. As a response to this, the workshop aims to explore the design of new application ideas for mobile devices that explicitly encourage users to engage in face-to-face interaction. The research question is firstly how to design for face-to-face interactions. Secondly, it is how we can utilize various possibilities e.g. combining mobile devices (e.g. phones + tablets); extending commercial mobile-devices with hardware peripherals; utilizing social networks, geo-location services or proximity-based connections; or utilizing software to turn the personal devices into tools of face-to-face interactions. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).