PHOto MAil REsearch Group

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Everyday Contexts of Japanese Camera Phone Use
Daisuke Okabe Mizuko ItoKeio University Docomo
House
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Presentation Overview

• Camera Phone Adoption and Usage
• Our Studies and Research Framework
• Camera Phone Usage Patterns
• Personal Archiving
• Intimate Visual Co-Presence
• Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting
• Emergent Uses
• Conclusions and Next Steps

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Camera Phone Adoption

• Camera Phone Adoption
• Sha-mail (photo mail) function launched in
  November 2000 by J-Phone (now Vodafone)
• 76.3 of all mobile phones in use in Japan (2005)
• high-end terminals 3-mega-pixel level, auto
  focus, optical zoom, removable memory card

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Motivations

• Research Goals
• Ongoing ethnographic research on portable
  communications and media technologies in urban
  Japan
• Tracking emergent behaviors in the use of
  portable technologies
• Tracking the convergence of visual communication
  and portable devices
• Research Questions
• What new social practices and relations are built
  up through camera phone use?
• How are these changing with convergence in
  technologies and practices?
• How is visual communication evolving with the
  adoption of camera phones and tools for visual
  archiving and sharing?

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Our Studies

• Diary study of camphone use, 2003-04
• Diary of mobile phone use in-depth interviews
• 13 users ranging from age 17-34
• Pilot studies of intimate visual sharing tools,
  2003-present
• Private moblogs 1 peer group and 2 couples
  (college students)
• Community moblog for 30 seminar members
• Current research on mobile kits
• Longitudinal diary-based study of portable
  devices and objects
• 4 families, 4 young professionals, 4 students (24
  total)

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Conceptual Framework

• Technosocial situations are emerging through
  mobile phone usage
• where users assemble social situations as a
  hybrid of virtual and physically co-present
  relations
• mobile phones brings together social functions
  of extended and augmented being together
• full-time intimate community (Nakajima et al,
  1999)
• Extend technosocial situations to visual
  exchange
• practices of capturing/sharing visual information
  are inseparable from social relations and contexts

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Camera Phone Usage Patterns

• Personal self-authoring practice unique to the
  visual medium of photography
• Personal Archiving
• Notes (book titles, articles, commodities)
• Visually appealing objects (friends, pets,
  children, scenery, food)
• Extensions of existing social situations sharing
  of information among close friends/families
• Intimate Visual Co-Presence
• Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting
• News
• Tabloid Journalism

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Personal Archiving---notes
Recording book titles and publisher
information Browsing a specialty bookstore, she
sees some books that she would like to read.
They are expensive, so she decides she would like
to look for them at the library. She snaps a
photo of the titles. (Female college student, age
23)
Okabe Is this at a bookstore? Interviewee Um,
it is at a used book district. Each copy was
really expensive, about 4000. I thought These
I will borrow from the library, so this photo is
really a memo to myself. Lately I take photos of
things I want to buy. Like, I want to buy this
book. Okabe Did you really do that? Interviewee
Yes, I did look for the book in the library.
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Personal Archiving---viewpoint on everyday life
Female high school student, age16. She usually
takes photos of her family pet dog, when it acts
cute.
Female college student, age20. She took pic (a),
a shell, because it was so big. Pic (b) is the
escalator at the station.
pic (a)
pic (b)
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Personal Archiving ---viewpoint on everyday life
View of Yokohama Bay taken when out with a
friend Pictures are snapped casually, with the
intention of possibly looking at them a little
later, recording a momentary slice of a viewpoint
on everyday life. (Female college student, age21)
Okabe This is the ocean, or rather the
bay? Interviewee Yes Okabe Were you out with a
friend, just hanging out and it was like okay,
Ill just snap a photo? Interviewee Yeah, I
think we were just hanging out. Okabe How casual
was the photo? Interviewee I was just walking
along and thought, oh, this looks nice. Okabe
And you got your mobile out. Interviewee I
thought if I snapped it I might remember it just
a little later.
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Personal Archiving ---viewpoint on everyday life
Omamori (good luck amulet) photo This is her
professor. During Professors farewell party
before his sabbatical, she took this photo. She
calls this an omamori photo. (Female college
student, age23. )
Interviewee There are seven students at that
farewell party. I took the photo of my
professors profile while he was talking. Okabe
Did you send or use this picture? Informant No,
this photo is just an omamori.
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Personal Archiving

• Compared to mobile e-mail
• Camera phones have a personal collection and
  archiving function
• Most photos are not sent, but are captured more
  as a personal visual archive
• Camera phones enable
• Personal visual archiving on a street level
  everyday viewpoint
• To bring photos as collection, memory and
  omamori (amulet)

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Intimate Visual Co-presence

• Photo exchange much more restricted than text and
  voice exchange
• Technical and economic reasons
• Generally, photos cannot be sent between
  different carriers
• Packet fees for sending photos are expensive
• But also interesting social reasons

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Intimate Visual Co-presence

• Sharing photos (Compared to email exchange)
• Showing photo on the mobile phone screen is a
  common practice
• Sending photo is more intrusive, push
  modality than e-mail, and tends to feel more
  narcissistic
• Photos are generally emailed only to intimates
• lover, spouse, very close friend
• the circle of exchange is smaller and the content
  more selective

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Intimate Visual Co-presence
A new hairstyle After bleaching and getting a new
haircut, she wants to send a photo of herself to
her friend. How does this look? (Female
college student, age 20)
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Intimate Visual Co-presence
Interviewee I might take a quick photo of my
hairstyle and check if it looks okay. This is
at home. Id take 2 or 3 and pick one that
looks good and send it out asking if it looks
okay. Okabe To who? Interviewee I guess to my
boyfriend. I had plans to see him the next day
If my boyfriend had a camera phone I would send
it, saying What do you think? But he doesnt
have one now. I could never send a picture like
that to a friend. Theyd think I was an idiot.
What point is it to look at friends face like
that?
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Intimate Visual Co-presence
Steamed sweet bean buns she made She made steamed
manju and sent a picture of them to her friends
with the text look, look, what I have cooked!!.
(Female college student, age20)
manju
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Intimate Visual Co-presence ---distributed
co-presence
Interviewee This is a picture of some hamburger
steak I made. Okabe Can you tell me the context
for this photo? Interviewee This onea professor
that I am close to sent me an amazing photo of a
flying Frisbee. I felt like I needed to send
some kind of image in return. I happened to be
making hamburger steak, so I thought I would
just send this off to him. Okabe When that first
frisbee photo arrived, you didnt think it was
annoying? Interviewee Not at all. I thought it
was really fun and it made me happy.
Home-made hamburger steak (male college student,
age 22)
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Intimate Visual Co-presencemoblog system

• Private moblog enabled higher frequency sharing
• Couples posted images more frequently, peer group
  sporadically
• Couples make their location and activity visible
• I wanted my partner to know what I am
  doing. Its not really worth sending text to
  explicitly communicate this, but with this system
  he can look when he feels like it. I had this
  feeling that I wanted him to know what I was up
  to at that time.

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Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting
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Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting
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Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting

• Camera phone are used to capture/share neta
  picture
• materials for news and stories is called
  neta,
• What people consider more interesting events
  worthy of sharing and conversation
• Journalistic usage
• neta pictures can become the topic of
  conversation among friends or family.

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Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting
Male professor, age 29. At a lab party, one
student got drunk and wrapped toilet paper around
his waist and stuck on a beginner driver
sticker. The professor snapped this photo and
sent it to another professor at the lab.
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Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting--- neta
picture (tabloid news)
A can of beer stuck to a forehead without the use
of adhesives He describes how he captured the
image intending it to share with others in the
near future. (Male college student, age 23)
Interviewee This onewhen I was fooling around
with a friend a can got stuck to his forehead
laugh. Okabe What happened to this photo? Did
you send it to someone? Interviewee I did. This
is kind of interesting so I held on to it. Its
an interesting image. Okabe Did you show it to
anyone? Interviewee Yes, I did. I showed it to
some friends.
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Peer-to-Peer News and Reporting--- neta
picture (tabloid news)
A panda ride at an amusement area on the roof of
a department store She has an online photo
journal site sends her camera phone photos to.
The site is public, so could be viewed by
anybody. (female college student, age 22)
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Interviewee This is of a really scary panda
ride. It is a panda with sunken eyes at an
amusement park at the top of a department store.
This one was on its way to the photo journal
site yapeus. It was really scary. Okabe Were
you thinking of yapeus when you took the
photo? Interviewee Yes. Okabe Is this more like
neta than just a regular everyday photo? When
you send a photo are you selecting things that
some anonymous viewers might think is
interesting? Interviewee Yeah. I think of if
people will get it, things that I want to say
Look! Look! Okabe Is your own personal
viewpoint important? Interviewee Yes, that is
the key thing.
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Implications

• Visual capture and sharing becoming more
  everyday, pervasive, and mundane
• Becoming part of the everyday authoring of
  viewpoint, self, and storytelling
• Visual access to others as a pervasive
  potentiality
• Appeal of first-person style of visual
  communication
• Seeing through the eyes of others

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Trends and Emergent Uses

• Shifting from individual-to-individual to group
  sharing modalities
• Linked to convergence between handheld and PC
  Internet
• Growing connections between devices and locations
  - eg. Purikura
• Migration from personal to professional and
  institutional uses - eg. school, work

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Group/institutional use Seminar moblog

• Settings
• Movable type 2.6/moblog gateway
• 30 students in research seminar
• Engaged regularly in f2f communication in
  classroom
• Site can be accessed both by keitai and PC
• Data overview
• 5463 entries in 1 year (444.1/month, 14.5/day)
• The student with the most entries, 606/year
• Institutional relations and accountabilities made
  visible
• Relations to peers and professor
• Bridging gap between seminar meetings
• Making informal and personal part of group
  dynamics

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• Non-intrusive sharing of feelings/situations to
  group members
• Thank you for your souvenir!
• To make a confession

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Sharing news
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Seeking validation from professor
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Visibility of status within group
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Puri-kura as locative media

• Print club (puri-kura)
• Since 1995, produced by Atlas
• Take ones own portrait with friends and then get
  a photo sticker and distribute among friends
• Located at sites of play and tourism
• Cost 400 yen (about 3 dollars)
• Puri-kura notebooks articulate networks of
  intimates/friends
• Now, you can send puri-kura picture to a keitai
  from a puri-kura machine

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Workshop fieldwork untethered
Nov 2nd3rd, 2005 _at_ Keio University, Japan
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how to put on
Global Positioning System
Temperature and Humidity Sensor
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Figure5. Example Output
Color changes depending on temperature.
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