Edited by: Alessandro Vinciarelli, University of Glasgow, UK
Reviewed by: Katayoun Farrahi, Goldsmiths – University of London, UK; Jacopo Staiano, Sorbonne Universités, France
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Human-Media Interaction, a section of the journal Frontiers in ICT
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The ubiquitous use of smartphones has brought enormous changes to our everyday life. Many applications, that explore the ever-increasing capabilities of mobile devices, have been designed to make our life easier, facilitating the completion of numerous tasks, stimulating social relationships by connecting people in remote locations, promoting behavior changes, and entertaining us. However, there are still many challenges to overcome when designing mobile user experiences that provide non-intrusive natural interfaces, as well as opportune interaction. Moreover, new smart mobile devices are generating additional expectations. This paper builds on the current use of mobile applications and reviews some of the challenges involved in creating smarter mobile user experiences.
Mobile devices are increasingly dominating the digital world. In October 2014, The Independent alerted us to the fact that the number of mobile devices had already exceeded the number of humans in the world (Boren,
In the beginning, Internet access was established through desktop or laptop computers, but gradually online experiences are shifting to mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). Smartphones are now ubiquitous, especially in the developed world, where they have become true personal computers that we can (and do) carry everywhere. They offer an unprecedented combination of features, such as computational power, autonomy, size, and sensing capabilities, which gives them a “magical” power. Smartphones keep us connected with the rest of the world, no matter where we are or what we are doing, and they became addictive for a significant number of users.
Some people seem to be enchanted by smartphones, never putting them away, like little children do with their favorite toy. For them, the smartphone is the last thing they interact with before going to sleep and the first thing they grab in the morning. It is true that smartphones can stimulate social relationships by connecting people in remote places through text or image messages, voice communication, video conferencing, and social networks. But care must also be taken to avoid them becoming so intrusive that they start to restrict traditional interaction between humans when they are together. In the possession of so many digital devices with communication capabilities, some people tend to shut themselves away in their own digital bubbles and stay connected with the outside and distant world while disconnecting from their surrounding environment.
That is when direct human-to-human communication fades out and mediated communication moves in. Yvonne Rogers in her TED Talk
Research and industry are constantly finding new uses for these powerful “magical” devices. In the last few years, a panoply of applications have been created to support users in a plethora of tasks, exploring the advances and the ever-increasing capabilities of mobile devices. Most applications are devoted to make our lives easier, improving our well-being, supporting our everyday life tasks, or entertaining us. However, there are still many challenges to overcome, as we will discuss ahead.
Many applications have been designed to monitor (Han et al.,
More “outside the box” alternative solutions can be devised, such as the Imaginary Friend (Reis and Correia,
Moreover, the contextual moment whereupon a message is delivered assumes primordial relevance in the field of persuasion, when communication aims at provoking attitude or behavior changes. Cardoso and Romão (
When developing mobile applications with UX in mind, yet another relevant challenge consists in ensuring that those applications, while omnipresent and knowledgeable of the user context, remain non-intrusive. How to determine the most appropriate time to provide the user with an advice or a suggestion without being intrusive or disruptive? When designing mobile applications for users’ advice and self-management, UX is affected by opportunity. A message or advice can only be effective when conveyed in an opportune moment in terms of the user’s needs (i.e., does the user need the message?) and convenience (i.e., would the message be disruptive?). These considerations are relevant for many areas besides health, such as tourism, marketing, or entertainment.
Some time ago, companies noticed that users needed innovative ways to interact with the TV and game consoles that would provide more natural or immersive experiences. New devices appeared, such as the Nintendo Wii with the revolutionary Wiimote, the Microsoft Kinect, and the Sony Playstation Eye, which transformed the users’ gaming experience from passively sitting down on the couch, watching a video game on TV and controlling it through a set of buttons in a traditional game remote control, into a more dynamic, natural, and realistic experience, where control could be performed through gestures. These devices with their plethora of sensors allow the development of new experiences not only for entertainment purposes but also applied to health and education (e.g., rehabilitation and gamification of physical activities); not only for individual use but also for collaborative and sometimes remote interaction between users. However, these new experiences require the acquisition of additional hardware and, in some cases, a complex setup.
Once more, the idea of using smartphones, as a ubiquitous device, originated the concept of second screen, which involves the use of a second electronic device by television viewers to connect and interact with the program they are watching. There are already several second-screen applications on the market that allow TV viewers to interact in real time with the broadcast they are watching. Mobile applications, such as Game of Thrones (Hachman,
But we can go even further and promote social interaction and user engagement with live TV sports broadcasts by bridging the gap between “mindless isolation” and “mindful connection.” When sports fans attend live sports events, they usually engage in social experiences with friends and other fans at the venue sharing the same affiliation. However, fans watching the same event through a live television broadcast end up not feeling as emotionally connected with the performers and other fans as they would if they were at the venue watching it together with thousands of other fans.
Aiming at enhancing spectators’ experience when watching live sports TV broadcasts, Centieiro et al. (
Furthermore, Centieiro et al. (
Smartphones and tablets have been replacing feature phones (the traditional mobile phones) at a fast pace, but now they have a competitor: the smartwatch. While it is not foreseeable that smartwatches are set to replace smartphones, at least in the near future, they will surely force smartphones to share the users’ attention with them. They bring about new promises and challenges. How can they help us to overcome the aforementioned challenges? How will the mobile user experience cope with this new class of device? Will we use each type of mobile device for different kinds of activities? Will we stick to one of them, smartphone or smartwatch, and make full use of their possibilities? Or will the latter become a second screen for the former?
Smart is more, so developers need to smartly design UX, and users need to smartly use and enjoy their smart devices. As Rogers2 stated, it is our choice to focus on the inside of our digital bubbles, looking at our phones, and having mindless interactions or to be mindful of others and the environment around us. Mobile devices can make us oblivious of others, but they can also allow us to live vicariously and experience life through the feelings or actions of others, whenever a live experience is not viable. With mobile applications, such as Periscope,
Since smartphones (and emerging wearables) are increasingly becoming part of our lives, it is crucial to provide the users with the best experiences for a given context. This paper unfolds some developments pursuing this goal and shows that further effort is need to convert smart devices into our perfect companions in different situations. They could become smart advisers that automatically come out with adequate solutions for our current problems, turn our once passive TV-watching activity into a highly interactive and engaging experience, help us to improve our health, or simply entertain us without disconnecting us from the surrounding environment, among many other possible life enhancing features.
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and approved it for publication.
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
This work is funded by FCT/MEC NOVA LINCS PEst UID/CEC/04516/2013.
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2Society Minds, Technology Doesn’t, TEDx Barcelona, 2013:
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