Designing for Mobile Co-located Collaborative Interaction

Summary

The students are introduced to the concept of designing for co-located collaborative interaction mediated by technology. This includes how technology can be a tool to enhance co-located interaction rather something that hinders communication. A framework for designing co-located mobile interactions is presented that can be a useful tool for work in this area. The framework consists of four perspectives each outlining relevant factors for design. The students get to practice how the framework can be used both as an analytical and a generative tool when designing for co-located mobile interaction.

Learning Outcomes

On completing this module the students should be able to:

• recognize the need and possibilities for co-located interactions.
• describe relevant factors for mediating co-located interactions
• analyse the design of technologies for co-located interactions
• reflect on the consequences of using technology to support co-located interaction
• recognize how a design framework can be used as a generative design tool
• analyse how the use of a framework can influence the design process
• reflect on how a design tool can influence the resulting design

Teacher Guidance

This teaching activity consists of two main components, a lecture and an accompanying exercise. The expected length of the lecture is 30-45 minutes. The exercise can be given varying amount of time, but a couple of hours is recommended giving a total duration of about 3 hours.

1. In the lecture (40 min), the teacher introduces students to relevant factors in designing mobile co-located experiences.
2. For the exercise (60), the students in small groups practice using a framework for designing mobile co-located experiences as a source of inspiration for design.
3. The teacher checks what the students are doing (3 minutes / group) and advises on aspects to consider.  
4. The students share their practice outputs with peers (20 minutes), and gain access to peers’ outputs as a model for their practice. 
5. The teacher chairs a class discussion (30 minutes), asking for reflections on experiences, and consolidating the lessons learned.

It is recommended that students read the recommended literature before the teaching.

Recommended Readings

• Lundgren, S., Fischer, J. E., Reeves, S., & Torgersson, O. (2015). Designing Mobile Experiences for Collocated Interaction. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, Vancouver, BC, Canada. https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675171
• Olsson, T., Jarusriboonchai, P., Woźniak, P., Paasovaara, S., Väänänen, K., & Lucero, A. (2020). Technologies for Enhancing Collocated Social Interaction: Review of Design Solutions and Approaches. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 29(1), 29-83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-019-09345-0