Abstract:
Our everyday lives are characterised by encounters, some are fleeting and ephemeral and others are more enduring and meaningful exchanges. Shared encounters are the glue of social networks and have a socializing effect in terms of mutual understanding, empathy, respect and thus tolerance towards others. The quality and characteristics of such encounters are affected by the setting, or situation in which they occur. In a world shaped by communication technologies, non-place-based networks often coexist alongside to the traditional local face-to-face social networks. As these multiple and distinct on and off-line communities tend to carry out their activities in more and more distinct and sophisticated spaces, a lack of coherency and fragmentation emerges in the sense of a shared space of community. Open public space with its streets, parks and squares plays an important role in providing space for shared encounters among and between these coexisting networks. Mobile and ubiquitous technologies enable social encounters located in public space, albeit not confined to fixed settings, whilst also offering sharing of experiences from non-place based networks. We will look at how to create or support the conditions for meaningful and persisting shared encounters. In particular we propose to explore how technologies can be appropriated for shared interactions that can occur spontaneously and playfully and in doing so re-inhabit and connect place-based social networks.
The workshop will investigate the following issues:
- identify the different types of encounters, and the characteristics which make an encounter a rich experience.
- understand the qualities of situations which can sustain shared encounters.
- investigate how sharing through personal media and mass media provide ways for people to communicate and engage with others.
- differentiate the relationships between the types of social groups in networked communities.
- determine the components and affordances of situated computing which enable them to act as key enabling platforms.
The actual workshop will be seen as a culmination of this process, and consist of two stages, the first an exploratory session where participants will briefly present their position papers. The second session will encourage active discourse on the issues raised by the position papers, where we will focus on drawing outcomes and discussing how the ideas of the workshop can be further developed. The outcomes of the workshop will be communicated to the CHI community by a poster at the conference venue and by engaging the CHI participants on the research issues of shared encounters.
