Michael Voong HCI Researcher @ Birmingham University

Social Courtesy: Inspiration for an Underground Project

Motivated by the social courtesy of people "neatly folding Metro newspapers and leaving it on the side of their seat next to the window", researchers want to apply it to music sharing. They want to explore the social and cultural phenomena of music sharing through bluetooth-enabled access points which afford short-term, spontaneous interaction. This project is interesting because it uses an existing social practise (interaction with strangers through social courtesy) and tries to apply it to one which has to be computer-supported.

Links:

• undersound UbiComp 2006 Short Abstract (Presented as a Poster)
• undersound website

This is a nice project! I don’t remember - did we talk about the CHI2007 student design competition? The project reminded me a bit of this year’s design challenge. If you don’t know it yet, you should have a look at it, it might be interesting for you, and it’s a nice way to participate at CHI. (I did this myself three years ago.)