WHAT’S IN A (DIGITAL) PICTURE? An interview with Siân Lindley (Microsoft Research)

Is digital photography improving our ability of keeping and enjoying memories of our past, or are we losing something with respect to the old printed pictures? How should technology change to make digital pictures more useful and fun for people?

I’ve discussed about these issues with Siân Lindley, who is part of the Socio-Digital Systems Group at Microsoft Research, Cambridge (UK). At CHI 2008, she is primary organizer of the workshop on Collocated social practices surrounding photos, which is taking place today.

Digital photography is a very popular subject. What aspects of it are you discussing in your workshop today?
“We are discussing how photos reflect social relationships and drive social activity. The social aspects of photos are most evident when they are used as prompts for conversation, but they are also manifest in the way that friends and families work together during editing, or in how they make choices about which photos to display and which to store out of sight. At the workshop we are thinking about how technology can be designed to make it easier to talk about and edit digital photos in a social context. We  also explore some new possibilities for displaying photos, and discuss what the social implications of these might be.”

What are the major limitations of the current devices and tools used to take, store or share digital pictures?
“The major limitations of current devices are probably familiar to most users! People tend to have difficulties with storing digital photos – they find it time-consuming and uninspiring creatively, they find it hard to organize their photos in a meaningful way, and are often concerned about how best to back them up. Often one family member is responsible for uploading the photos, meaning that other family members can find it difficult to understand the way the information is organised. When sharing photos, technology is associated with a lack of intimacy. Even digital photo displays have their problems. Daniela Petrelli and Steve Whittaker (who will be presenting today) have found that digital frames are perceived as being too ephemeral: they suggest that the point of displaying photos is that one chooses special images that are worthy of display rather than having images appear at random.”

Could you give me a few examples of particularly interesting work that will be presented at your workshop today?
“There is a number of presentations on how people share photos, either in different cultures (e.g. China, presented by Connor Graham and Mark Rouncefield) or by using technologies such as mobile phones. These obviously open up new possibilities for sharing immediately after the event and in public places, and this has implications for how easy it is to have a discussion around the images. A couple of presentations  also touch on how we might support the serendipitous discovery of photos as a way of making photo sharing more spontaneous, something which is often reported as lacking when photos are displayed on screens.
Mobile phones and digital cameras have also obviously had a massive influence on the way that photos are taken, and have allowed for the emergence of the ‘snapshot video’ (so-called by Risto Sarvas et al.). These are short video clips that sit somewhere between photos and home movies, and which allow for a new approach to the use of video in a social context. The workshop also includes a presentation of a mobile photo-conferencing system (Kharsim Yousef), which supports photo sharing and voice calls across mobile devices to bridge the gap between collocated and remote speakers. It also allows for the joint creation of photo albums, with friends being able to contribute, select and organise images from their own mobiles to create a single album.
The workshop also includes two presentations about how a sense of community can be supported through the public display of digital photos: one in a UK village and one in a USA workplace. The first piece of work involves a study of a public photo display that was placed in a village hall, which resulted in villagers uploading photos in the hope that this would help integrate new members of the community (Nick Taylor et al.). The second was a study of a display situated in a workplace communal area, which displayed photos from the Flickr streams of those present (their mobile phones were detected using a Bluetooth connection). This was found to have a positive impact on personal relationships within the workplace.”

What sorts of new applications do you imagine for the future, thanks to the research that is being discussed today at your workshop?
“A good deal of research is ongoing to support the development of tables with interactive touch screens, and a common application of these is photo sharing and editing. Two tabletop interfaces for the collocated sharing of photos will be discussed at the workshop, PhoTable (Trent Apted and Judy Kay) and Photohelix (Otmar Hilliges). PhoTable allows for users to browse and edit their photos on an interactive table, and also creates an audio recording of the stories that are told to allow the photos to be annotated – these annotations can then be used as a basis for tags to support future sorting and searches. Photohelix [see illustration above] incorporates a physical device, or ‘helix’, that is placed on top of the table to support interaction. Collections of photos are arranged in a circle from oldest to newest around the helix, which can then be spun to allow easy access to individual images. It seems likely that on the back of work such as this, and with current advances in tabletop technologies, interactive tables will be used to edit and share photos in the future.
Other possibilities for the future include applications to support the joint editing and archiving of photos, and digital photo frames that are more sensitive to the social connotations of how and why images are displayed. “

© 2008, Il Sole 24 Ore. Web report from CHI 2008.