Mobile Awareness

Abstract

Awareness is a significant aid in understanding the activities of others, as well as creating a context of ones own activities. For example, being aware of each otherâs presence, or absence, provides important information for people who work together in collaboration. As the majority of awareness applications of today are stationary and dedicated to the tasks people are assumed to conduct at their desks, they are insufficient in mobile situations. In this thesis, we propose one solution to the problem: How can we, through information technology, pro-vide awareness support for mobile users? Inspired by existing ideas and appli-cations, we have drawn design implications for a novel approach to mobile awareness support. We propose the Interpersonal Awareness Device (IPAD) concept, which accommodates a class of information technology devices with the aim to strengthen awareness between people in a mobile setting. To explore the IPAD concept, we constructed a prototype, the Hummingbird. This is a small portable device designed to support awareness of presence between group members frequenting the same physical space. In doing this, we faced challenges in both conceptual and physical design issues. Our method incorporated a prototyping approach, allowing us to model our ideas and per-form hands-on evaluations of their validity during the entire development pro-cess. When we performed user evaluations of the Hummingbirds, the objective was to incorporate them into various real-life situations and study how they affect groups. Our results clearly show that they effectively contribute to the group membersâ awareness of each other, but also that they were used differently depending on the setting they were used in.