SESSION 3

3A – DESIGN & METHODS

- Many seemingly simile questions for social scientists are multi-m/billion dollar questions for tech companies
- The basic point is simple, what comes to design research you need to inform design – to study a possibly future/world. To do that, you need technology (or at least, scenarios) and people to study. A good framework helps.
- The problem is publishing. Creating a methodology is hindered by this lack of channels
- A few examples have been successful: conversation analysis at PARC, for example. Are there others to be “benchmarked”?
- How to study cross-cultural issues – by building platform & studying them in seminal cultures simultaneously? Risks involved: you just replicate the same results & cant publish as a consequence
 

We started with a recap of some of the issues that arose in the session on social science methodologies. Then we moved into a discussion of different modes of collaboration between social scientists and technologists.

Some models discussed:
- Traditional scholarly publication that technologists might read
- Field trials and evaluations of specific technologies
- Integrated corporate strategy for bringing in market research, design research, and statistical measurement
- Project-based extended collaboration between designer and social scientist
- Presenting models of diversity to sensitize design – not everyone is a 25 year old male engineer

We are moving into an era where we need to understand large scale and international social deployment of technology, and we need to develop methods of social science reporting that reflect this scale and diversity. How can we design projects that identify ther right variables across different countries, ages, infrastructures, etc?
 

The role of social science methods in the design process?

Using social science research to inform future design: no existing methods…

‘Located accountability’ by Lucy Suchman

We talked about interdisciplinary and cross-cultural design. We shared various models of and attitudes toward interdisciplinary research. The more successful interdisciplinary efforts seemed to come from collaborations in which the research could yield insights for both disciplines in publications from both fields. They seemed to be rooted in collaborations in which collaborators viewed others as specialists and knew that they did not know everything. Other strategies for interdisciplinary research cam from academic institutions which attracted individuals with interests that inandof themselves crossed disciplinary boundaries.

We discussed the need for shared research design & frameworks for beginning to understand cross cultural implications.

 

3B METADATA

3B: Metadata - Contextual, Environmental, Biological metadata - Motivation to input metadata -- For early adapter, just for fan -- How about for common people? -- Community photo sharing - annotation could be fan - How to get metadata "people in the photo". -- Bluetooth beacons + Orientation sensors. - Higher-order metadata is depending on personal interest i.e. just *Tokyo* for tourist, but we need "Prince-Hotel, Shinagawa, Tokyo" for Tokyo-people - Automatic appended metadata is lower-order Geocoordinate to the location. - How to visualize metadata -- iTunes style selectable columns -Motivation to add annotation or metadata is really required. egg-chicken problem - motivation and application --I feel Automatic attach of biological metadata is good challenge We can attach "feelings" to the photo.

 - the info that the camera provides
- social information
-

How to preserve metadata across image edits/crops/versions?

Extending the imagination

Idea: use the annotations of the other people from a group activity
in order to annotate my own photos

Interesting question: WHY do we want to add more information to our images?
- in the future, we'll have more and more digital media, so we are looking
for better ways to search
- there are more exciting possibilities for applications, the better annotated
out (collective) photos are

Question: Do people's collections of (annotated) photos become accessible
to all? What are the reasons why we would want to have access to everyone's
images?
- pulling images out of a historical archive
-

Often forgotten : metadata is related to the application. Have to have the
application in mind, rather than just collecting metadata "just because"

Interesting idea: Give the *subject* of the photo some control over how
a photo is shared.

Look at Marc's work around this area: gleaning people in the photo from BT
id's, and suggesting shares based on (a) location, (b) personal history,
etc..

Old photos : there is sometimes a mystery about who is in the photo.

Ontologies:
- should we make a clearly defined ontology for annotating photos? rules
that people have to follow in order that their pictures can "participate"
in some larger community? or in order to be effectively searched?
- or should we explore photos based on a "semantic neighborhood" surrounding
photos?

Main themes:
- how to get more information about our photos?
- are there any cases where we don't want more information about our photos?
- how can we get people to annotate? immediate benefit, or enjoyable activity?
- can we learn anything from the ways in which people manage their music?
- the better annotated our photos are, the more exciting applications are
possible.
- old photos: is there anything about paper photos that people will *really*
want over the years? or will it be all-digital soon enough?

 

Definition of metadata. Information attached to the media (pictures). Should we define that metdata is searchable? What about structured?

Extending imagination of what kind of metadata? Weather and other sensory data. Social history metadata. Metadata on the metadata, like when did this person get her own tag in my personal archive.

What metadata is useful? The EXIF type of metadata (e.g., exposure) is probably not useful. Timestamp seems to be currently the most useful. Locations is discussed a lot - will it be very useful? Even time has its problems (technology related), e.g., timezone shifts, accuracy, and the camera having the clock in right time.

How could we make the annotation effort more enjoyable so that people would do more annotations? Visualization and social play-like activity?

why in our culture we have this need for more and more information? Why should pictures have all possible data? Is there a drive for some worldwide historical archive?

If the metadata would be standard we could have some kind of a historical archive.

What other applicaitons are there for metadata than searching & browsing? Is the need for metadata originally from having old photos and wondering about who, what, and where it was taken?

People have metadata in their musci archives and spend lot of time annotating. They also have a clear benefit in having the annotaions done well. Is there something there that could be applied to photo metadata.

Could there be some ontology or other kind of universal way of describing photos? What if it were two-layered, so that there would be a layer for unambigious metadata (location coordinates) and one for personal "expression" of that metadata (name of location).
 

3C GROUPS

Non-communicative students can be m-blog leaders.

At the moment the m-blogs only include still images. As the technological capacity increases to include video and sound, will sound-bytes and music become a part of the image sharing experience?

Q: How can people that don’t know each other well, yet who are co-present, learn about each other.
A: People are conscious about what they post but this also an incentive to contribute. The classroom environment is the ideal situation for this type of m-blogging to occur. You might not be the best of friends but this will facilitate the process.

Q: Is cultural difference reflected in image sharing practices?
A: In Australia there is a trend for young people to want to put strict controls over who access their digital pictures and control what part of their digital identity they reveal. This is potentially different from Japanese practices where there is greater inclination to post private pictures.

Q: How has technology that pre-dated camera phone messaging influenced current practice?
A: In Australia there was in place the wide use of sms to form social networks. This practice was augmented by the use of pictures to gather friends together. Eg, a picture of a beer was added to the text and sent around to get friends to come to the pub. Eventually the text dropped off all together and the practice of sending images took over. The images were disposable. IN this sense the photo message dominates over the text in the forms of social communication. This points to PICS as social networking versus archiving.

The nature of the service provider structure dictates practices. Can images be sent seamlessly across networks. If not, this is a huge barrier to sharing amongst groups.


Mobile blogging can be considered to strenghten a community, which has been constructed for other reasons. Students, colleagues and other can bond through mobile blogging. Action and social interaction matters more than content.

Practices of young generations are not likely to be transferred to older generations or even remain as they are today.

There might be a case for shifting from text to pictures in personal communication. MMS is less clear than SMS, which is great for many purposes.

 

I am intrigued by the investment in extending the possibilities for acquiring/identifying (new categories of) metadata. Specifically, I am curious about the underlying social/cultural motivations for attaching an increasing quantity of information to an image. Not only is there a desire to have access to time stamp and location coordinates, but also people are inclined to annotate their images with other identifying details (which is not necessarily new, since analog camera photographs have frequently been annotated on their back sides). But also, there is a desire to include other statistical information, e.g., environmental information, e.g., temperature, humidity, air pressure, light, etc. And potentially, biological information, e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, etc., will be seen as potentially relevant. Is it possible to assert that metadata compensate for a certain lack of materiality of the (digital) image produced via mobile-imaging? That is, do metadata provide a sense of substance? Might metadata function to contain an ever-increasing proliferation of images (by making them subject to sorting and re/combination)? Does this desire for ever increased quantities of metadata speak to a need for a functional archive (not only personal but public)? Ultimately, what are the personal, social, cultural, etc. implications for such expansion? What do we imagine we gain/lose (if anything) in attaching more information to images?