Surfing in the crowd
Chao-Lung Lee, Yun-Maw Cheng, Ching-Long Yeh, Li-Chieh Chen, Wai Ming Yu, Kuan-Ta Chen · 2008
Social Proximity Applications (SPAs) have prompted a promising opportunity for mobile services that utilize the changes in daily life in the proximity of mobile users. This paper describes our research-in-progress about designing and developing a mobile SPA, which facilitates social interaction among visitors in a night market crowd. This application allows night market visitors to share their experiences in photos with nearby others via their Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. The design was based on a two-week field observation in an attempt to investigate the motivations and attitudes towards applications of this type. After a three-night extensive trial we found the value of the application - privacy-sensitive, playful, and enjoyable, yields high consistency with results from field observation. The ultimate goal is to identify potential engaging design extensions to the current prototype.