[chisigmail] IDG seminar: The experience of random encounters with personal digital photos - Tuck Leong

[Imalka Nilma Perera]

(apologies for cross posting)

You are cordially invited to the IDG Seminar ...


PRESENTER:    Tuck Leong

TITLE:  The experience of random encounters with personal digital photos

VENUE: University of Melbourne, IDEA LAB, level 4, 111 Barry Street,
Carlton

DATE and TIME: Friday 2nd May  2008, 3-4 pm

ABSTRACT:
Many people today have access to vast libraries of personal digital content
which they consume often to meet non-instrumental needs. But designing
technologies to support such interactions and needs whilst optimizing for
user-experience (UX) can be problematic. Having too much to choose from may
be unpleasant especially in the absence of strong preferences. Yet studies
of people¹s experiences with digital music listening have revealed that a
shuffle-based approach ­ whereby people can abdicate choice to a random
process not only mitigates the unpleasantness of choosing but also supports
their non-instrumental needs while fostering engaging and even rich
experiences such as serendipity.

It appears that shuffle is a good example of an approach suited to support
interactions whereby users¹ goals are fuzzy and further goal definition
would require too much effort whilst being supportive of user-experiences.

To explore randomness¹ utility beyond that of supporting digital music
listening experiences, I built a photo display system, deployed it in three
households, and examined people¹s experiences when interacting with digital
photos in a random manner. A dice input Œdevice¹ was given to the
participants to heighten their awareness of randomness and to understand
their sense-making process when interacting with randomness.

Some findings arising from the study include:
(i) What kinds of experiences do people encounter?
(ii) To what extent does such a system support people¹s non-instrumental
needs?
(iii) Are these experiences desirable? If so, what elements are involved and
to what extent are they particular to this media type?
(iv) How do these experiences compare to that of shuffle listening?

BIO:
Tuck Leong is currently working on a PhD supervised by Steve Howard and
Frank Vetere.



Please forward to others if interested. All are Welcome.
http://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/research/groups/interactiondesign/seminars.htm
l
---------------------------------------
 Nilma Perera
 PhD Candidate 
 Interaction Design Group
 Department of Information Systems
 The University of Melbourne
 VIC 3010

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/chisigmail/attachments/20080428/3562c8bc/attachment.html>