Title: Towards Proxemic Mobile Collocated Interactions,
Abstract: Research on mobile collocated interactions has been exploring situations
where collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their personal
mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets), thus going from
personal/individual toward shared/multiuser experiences and interactions. The
proliferation of ever-smaller computers that can be worn on our wrists (e.g.,
Apple Watch) and other parts of the body (e.g., Google Glass), have expanded
the possibilities and increased the complexity of interaction in what we term
mobile collocated situations. Research on F-formations (or facing formations)
has been conducted in traditional settings (e.g., home, office, parties) where
the context and the presence of physical elements (e.g., furniture) can
strongly influence the way people socially interact with each other. While we
may be aware of how people arrange themselves spatially and interact with each
other at a dinner table, in a classroom, or at a waiting room in a hospital,
there are other less-structured, dynamic, and larger-scale spaces that present
different types of challenges and opportunities for technology to enrich how
people experience these (semi-) public spaces. In this article, the authors
explore proxemic mobile collocated interactions by looking at F-formations in
the wild. They discuss recent efforts to observe how people socially interact
in dynamic, unstructured, non-traditional settings. The authors also report the
results of exploratory F-formation observations conducted in the wild (i.e.,
tourist attraction).