Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 13
Improving the User Experience
of a Mobile Photo Gallery by
Supporting Social Interaction
Elina Vartiainen
Nokia Research Center, Finland
ABSTRACT
Today, photo gallery applications on mobile devices tend to be stand-alone and offline. For people
who want to share photos with others, many add-on tools have been developed to connect the gallery
applications to Internet services to enable photo sharing. The author argues that photo-centric social
interaction is best supported when the gallery application is fully integrated with an Internet service.
In this case, no additional tools are needed and the user's image content is fully synchronized with the
service. To research the topic, Image Exchange, a service-integrated mobile gallery application with a
corresponding Internet service, was designed and implemented. Moreover, a field study was conducted
with 10 participants to compare Image Exchange with a state-of-the-art gallery application combined
with an add-on photo sharing tool. Image Exchange was preferred by most participants and it was
especially appreciated because of the user experience. Above all, the results show that social activity
increased amongst the participants while using Image Exchange.
INTRODUCTION
ing to the Internet, they can be used to publish
photos to photo sharing Internet services and
also browse and comment the photos hosted by
those services. However, photo sharing on mobile
devices still tends to be a laborious task and on
that account users might not be able to share their
mobile photos at all.
People are starting to use their mobile devices
as their primary cameras because the quality of
mobile cameras is improving (Nokia, 2008). As
most mobile devices are also capable of connect-
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