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Nowadays, users are able to share their photos
on their mobile devices by using applications that
are essentially upload tools for certain Internet
services (Facebook, 2010; Share Online, 2010;
ShoZu, 2010). The upload tool applications are
usually add-ons to existing gallery applications
offering functionalities for separately uploading
and downloading images and their data. However,
the gallery application and the user's photo col-
lection are not fully integrated and synchronized
with the service. Also, the upload tool applica-
tions require account creation and configuration
of settings before they can be used. In the mobile
context, users who might be on the move and have
only a limited and possibly fragmented time to
spend on a task is unable to use a mobile applica-
tion that is hard and slow to use and configure.
Furthermore, the upload tools might be developed
by a different party than the developers of the
gallery application or the corresponding Internet
service. This might result in a mismatch between
the available functions and features on the mobile
gallery application and the Internet service. Thus,
the upload tool applications cannot guarantee a
deep integration of the gallery application and
the service.
Mobile photo gallery applications continue
to be stand-alone and offline, even though many
mobile devices today are connected to the Internet
with a flat-fee, always-on network connection.
The gallery applications have not yet utilized the
opportunity of integrating directly with a corre-
sponding Internet service and having user's images
in sync with the service. If the gallery application
was deeply integrated to the service, it would en-
able users to share images in real-time on the go
in an easy and fun way. Users would not need to
configure or separately synchronize their image
collection when they want to communicate using
images. Hence, we argue that as the overall user
experience improves via the deep integration of
a mobile gallery application and a corresponding
Internet service, it also facilitates the social in-
teraction among the users of the Internet service.
In this paper, we introduce Image Exchange,
a mobile gallery application that aims at offering
great user experience by being fully integrated to
a corresponding Internet service. The application
provides an easy and fun way for users to share
and interact with photos in real-time. We tested
Image Exchange in a field study of 1+1 weeks
(a test period of 1 week for each application) by
comparing it to a state-of-the-art mobile image
gallery application combined with an Internet
service upload tool. The goal was to investigate
whether the social interaction is best encouraged
when users are using a mobile service-integrated
gallery application compared to state-of-the-art
applications and tools existing on the market today.
RELATED RESEARCH
Mobile photo sharing has been an important topic
in the research literature. Many photo applications
have been developed around the topic of mobile
photo management and sharing process, but we are
not aware of any research on seamlessly integrat-
ing personal photo management and photo sharing
between a mobile device and a corresponding
Internet service and how that would affect the
user experience and social interaction. Instead,
the previous research on mobile photo applica-
tions can be divided into two groups: studies on
the usage and management of personal photos
and studies on sharing images.
The studies on personal photo collections have
revealed many ways to help users to organize
and locate their photos (Ames & Naaman, 2007;
Bentley et. al., 2006; Frohlich et. al., 2002; Gurrin
et. al., 2005; Jacucci et. al., 2006; Naaman et. al.,
2004; Wilhelm et. al., 2004). However, the research
has not focused on improving the photo back-up,
which is an important part of the management
process. Users would value a seamless process
where all the steps in mobile photo management
as designed to be as fluent and easy to use as pos-
sible (Ames et. al, 2010). Photo browsing (Harada
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