Smartphones for Improved Co-Located Interpersonal Communication

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Smartphones have become a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. They have vastly changed the way we communicate by enabling access to information anytime and anywhere. This convenient capability for immediate access to information, in many cases, contributes to a lack of co-located interpersonal communication. Smartphone users often can't resist the temptation to check their device for updates and may be absorbed in the virtual world, thus ignoring people around them even in a face-to-face conversation. Consequently, such behaviour may lead to distractions in co-located collaborative activities and undermine interpersonal communication as people feel less connected to each other. To ease this issue, my proposed program will explore means to strengthen co-located interpersonal communication by extending smartphone capabilities, both from hardware and software perspectives. I will take a multifaceted path, which includes three major approaches that could each help to improve co-located collaborative interactions. First, I will investigate ways to enhance smartphones' capabilities with new input and output mechanisms that would allow the devices to have extended interaction space beyond its physical boundary. I will explore sensing solutions to track hand and finger activities and investigate information projection capabilities in the region around the smartphone. With these capabilities, smartphones would support a larger interaction space for co-located collaborative interactions. Second, I will explore solutions to make context-aware smartphones to track the current usage context and surrounding people. This includes examining solutions to make the smartphone `smarter' to monitor the current usage context with advanced sensing solutions such as using 360° camera inputs and voice localization and classification methods. I will also design application frameworks aiming to strategically present information on smartphones to minimize interruptions between co-located persons to support collaborative activities. Third, I will investigate how to leverage persuasive techniques to improve interpersonal engagement with smartphones. These techniques have been shown effective in motivating people to reach their behavioral goals - mostly for health and fitness conduct (e.g., encouraging users to take 10,000 steps per day). I will explore how to leverage such techniques for the presentation of smartphone information in different social contexts to change users' attitudes through persuasion. I will design, develop, and evaluate persuasive smartphone apps to study whether such applications can be useful to form an enhanced interpersonal relationship, in both the short and long-term. In summary, my proposed program aims to enrich individuals' interpersonal communication experiences with those co-located with them through enhanced smartphones.