Interaction between nearby strangers: Serendipity and playfulness

Paasovaara, Susanna; Lucero, Andrés; Porcheron, Martin; Paavilainen, Janne; Aliakseyeu, Dzmitry; Olsson, Thomas

Abstract

“Nearby strangers” provides an interestingly paradoxical space for interaction design. There are various social norms, cultural practices, and privacy concerns hindering interaction with nearby strangers, but by ignoring them, people constantly miss social opportunities. Technology enabling ad-hoc interactions between co-located people has been explored for years in research but real-life applications are still rare. The potential focus areas include increasing awareness of social possibilities; light-weight playful interactions, play and gaming; serendipitous and ad hoc social interaction; anonymous exchange of content; matching interests for various purposes; icebreakers and provocation to interact, and ambient representation of the nearby strangers.
This workshop convenes researchers and practitioners to gather and advance the state of research on interactions between nearby strangers. We aim to explore this design space and collaboratively identify new research and design opportunities that novel communication technology creates.

Citation

Paasovaara, S., Lucero, A., Porcheron, M., Paavilainen, J., Aliakseyeu, D., & Olsson, T. (2016). Interaction between nearby strangers: Serendipity and playfulness. In NordiCHI '16: Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (1-3). https://doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2987674

• Conference Name: 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI '16)
• Conference Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
• Start Date: Oct 23, 2016
• End Date: Oct 27, 2016
• Acceptance Date: May 26, 2016
• Publication Date: Oct 23, 2016
• Deposit Date: Aug 3, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 3, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-3
• Book Title: NordiCHI '16: Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2987674
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/822138
• Publisher URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2971485.2987674
• Related Public URLs: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2987674; https://doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2987674; https://nearbystrangersworkshop.wordpress.com
• Additional Information: Published in: Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, article 135. New York : ACM, 2016. ISBN 978-1-4503-4763-1. doi:10.1145/2971485.2987674