Getting Sidetracked: Display Design and Occasioning Photo-Talk with the Photohelix

  • Otmar Hilliges ,
  • David Kirk

Proceedings of the 27th International CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |

Published by Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

In this paper we discuss some of our recent research work designing tabletop interfaces for co-located photo sharing. We draw particular attention to a specific feature of an interface design, which we have observed over an extensive number of uses, as facilitating an under-reported but none-the-less intriguing aspect of the photo-sharing experience – namely the process of ‘getting sidetracked’. Through a series of vignettes of interaction during photo-sharing sessions we demonstrate how users of our tabletop photoware system used peripheral presentation of topically incoherent photos to artfully initiate new photo-talk sequences in on-going discourse. From this we draw implications for the design of tabletop photo applications, and for the experiential analysis of such devices.