Mind the whisper: enriching collocated social interactions in public places through audio narratives

Abstract

The quality of social interaction has great importance for psychological and physiological health. Previous research indicates that smartphones have adverse effects on collocated social interactions. Most HCI works addressed this issue by restricting smartphone use during social interactions. Diverging from previous work, we designed WHISPER, an audio narrative box that aims to enrich collocated social interactions without restricting mobile technology use. We conducted a user study in a café environment with 21 participants to understand how users react to WHISPER and how it would influence their social interactions. In this paper, we present the result of this study and discuss four implications for technologies designed to enhance collocated social interactions (Respectfulness, Balanced Ambiguity, Adaptability, and Being Targeted) and two implications for research touching upon the HCI work on Design for Behavior Change and Collocated Interactions (Designing responsible interventions for accommodating unintended outcomes and Quantifying the quality of social interactions).