Search

There have been many large-scale investigations of users' mobile app launch behaviour, but all have been conducted on Android, even though recent reports suggest iPhones account for a third of all smartphones in use. We report on the first large-scale analysis of app usage patterns on iPhones. We conduct a reproduction study with a cohort of over 10,000 jailbroken iPhone users, reproducing several studies previously conducted on Android devices. We find some differences, but also significant similarities: e.g. communications apps are the most used on both platforms; similar patterns are apparent of few apps being very popular but there existing a 'long tail' of many apps used by the population; users show similar patterns of 'micro-usage'; almost identical proportions of people use a unique combination of apps. Such similarities add confidence but also specificity about claims of consistency across smartphones. As well as presenting our findings, we discuss issues involved in reproducing studies across platforms.

We describe work in progress on tools and infrastructure to support adaptive component-based software for mobile devices 'in our case, Apple iPhones. Our high level aim is 'design for appropriation', i.e. system design for uses and contexts that designers may not be able to fully predict or model in advance. Logs of users' system operation are streamed back in real time to evaluators' data visualisation tools, so that they can assess design problems and opportunities. Evaluators and developers can then create new software components that are sent to the mobile devices. These components are either integrated automatically on the fly, or offered as recommendations for users to accept or reject. By connecting developers, users, and evaluators, we aim to quicken the pace of iterative design so as to improve the process of creating and sustaining contextually fitting software.

Recent advances in mobile device technology have opened up new possibilities in enhancing the experience of spectators at stadium-based sporting events. In creating novel applications for use in such settings, designers must be aware of the current practices of spectators and of features of the environment at such events that novel applications may seek to exploit. This work forms an early part of the Designing the Augmented Stadium project. Data sets have been collected from spectators, logging the results of Bluetooth scans alongside GPS location. This paper presents an information visualization tool that can be used in the analysis and exploration of this data, to provide insight into the activities of spectators, the relationship between an individual spectator and the crowd as a whole and the suitability of stadium environments for applications based on infrastructure such as mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and wireless mesh networking. Various visualization tools are described and example cases are illustrated, using several real-world data sets recorded at football matches.

Sharing events with others is an important part of many enjoyable experiences. While most existing co-presence systems focus on work tasks, in this paper we describe a lightweight mobile system designed for sharing leisure. This system allows city visitors to share their experiences with others both far and near, through tablet computers that share photographs, voice and location. A collaborative filtering algorithm uses historical data of previous visits to recommend photos, web pages and places to visitors, bringing together online media with the city's streets. In an extensive user trial we explored how these resources were used to collaborate around physical places. The trial demonstrates the value of technological support for sociability - enjoyable shared social interaction. Lastly, the paper discusses support for collaborative photography, and the role history can play to integrate online media with physical places.

Social Proximity Applications (SPAs) are a promising new area for ubicomp software that exploits the everyday changes in the proximity of mobile users. While a number of applications facilitate simple file sharing between co–present users, this paper explores opportunities for recommending and sharing software between users. We describe an architecture that allows the recommendation of new system components from systems with similar histories of use. Software components and usage histories are exchanged between mobile users who are in proximity with each other. We apply this architecture in a mobile strategy game in which players adapt and upgrade their game using components from other players, progressing through the game through sharing tools and history. More broadly, we discuss the general application of this technique as well as the security and privacy challenges to such an approach.

Outdoor multi-player games are an increasingly popular application area for ubiquitous computing, supporting experimentation both with new technologies and new user experiences. This paper presents an outdoor ubicomp game that exploits the gaps or seams that exist in complex computer systems. Treasure is designed so that players move in and out of areas of wireless network coverage, taking advantage not only of the connectivity within a wireless ‘hotspot’ but of the lack of connectivity outside it. More broadly, this paper discusses how the notion of seamful design can be a source of design ideas for ubicomp games.

In this paper, we question the assumption that seamless integration of computer system components is necessarily a design requirement for wearable computing and for ubiquitous computing. We explore Mark Weiser's notions of seamlessness and `seamfulness', and use them in discussing the design and use of wearable and ubicomp systems. The physical nature of the systems we design reveals itself in, for example, uncertainty in sensing, limited coverage of communications infrastructure and the transformations needed to share data between heterogeneous tools and media. When such seams show through, as they inevitably do, users perceive and appropriate them for their own uses. We suggest that new opportunities for system design arise if we take fuller account of this process, and consider making it a deliberate policy to reveal and use seams. We offer examples of seams and some suggestions for seamful design, drawing from the Equator interdisciplinary research collaboration's work on ubiquitous computing and mixed reality systems. More particularly, we focus on our work in Equator's City project, on a system that lets a visitor using a PDA in a museum exhibition or cultural institution co-visit with people using virtual reality and Web versions of the same institution. Our work is strongly influenced by the vision of ubiquitous computing presented by Mark Weiser.

Mobile and wearable computers present input/output prob-lems due to limited screen space and interaction techniques. When mobile, users typically focus their visual attention on navigating their environment - making visually demanding interface designs hard to operate. This paper presents two multimodal interaction techniques designed to overcome these problems and allow truly mobile, 'eyes-free' device use. The first is a 3D audio radial pie menu that uses head gestures for selecting items. An evaluation of a range of different audio designs showed that egocentric sounds re-duced task completion time, perceived annoyance, and al-lowed users to walk closer to their preferred walking speed. The second is a sonically enhanced 2D gesture recognition system for use on a belt-mounted PDA. An evaluation of the system with and without audio feedback showed users' ges-tures were more accurate when dynamically guided by au-dio-feedback. These novel interaction techniques demon-strate effective alternatives to visual-centric interface de-signs on mobile devices.