Implications of the socio-physical contexts when interacting with mobile media

Abstract

This Special Issue presents significant projects carried out in academia and in industry regarding the user experience with pervasive interactive audiovisual media systems such as mobile and pervasive iTV, cinema and video. Nomadic users such as commuters and travelers with purposes as diverse as entertainment, work and government are the main target users of these systems. In a nomadic life style, communication between individuals, groups and communities occurs over networks and devices that are most suitable for an individual’s location, time, and context in general. So, special attention must be given to the social and contextual usage of these kinds of mobile applications. The industry has often failed to identify the usage environments as well as to prospect users’ real needs and expectations. Many companies have developed mobile devices and products or applications using inappropriate ICT resources that imply massive modifications in users’ habits, thus resulting in perceptive and cognitive overload. Consequently, the market’s response to investments in developing new products and applications (e.g. mobile TV broadcasting) has generally not been positive to date. Rapid changes in users’ habits and technological advances have generated enormous uncertainties and call for innovative research and development methodologies. In fact, understanding user experiences that take place in different social contexts and physical and cultural environments is not an easy task for designers, who need to translate this information in design solutions. A cross-disciplinary approach that includes human factor studies, behavioral theories, socio-cultural and economic trends, technological developments and emerging technologies markets, interactive arts, and product design is necessary to take into account the diverse nature of the problem of designing for pervasive interactive audiovisual media systems. Moreover, several techniques such as collaborative and user-centered approaches that focus on users’ cultural, social, behavioral and ergonomic backgrounds must be combined. As a matter of fact, most of the scenarios that companies create are technology driven, and the challenge is to create scenarios that are enduser-driven. These scenarios should not consider what users currently can do with the new technological possibilities, but they need to identify future needs and expectations, and find out how they can be served with the help of some new technologies and devices. In social and contextual scenarios, successful examples of context aware applications show how users prefer methods of communication with capabilities that best meet a specific circumstance. For instance let us assume someone—interested in marine nature— when passing by chance near an important whale watching spot along the coast, receives in his/her mobile a movie that someone else had recently A. C. Roibas (&) SCMIS, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK e-mail: anxo.cereijo@polimi.it; A.C.Roibas@bton.ac.uk