Despite the widespread use of mobile devices, details of mobile technology use 'in the wild' have proven difficult to collect. This paper uses video data to gain new insight into the use of mobile computing devices. Our new method combines screen-capture of iPhone use with video recordings from wearable cameras. We use this data to analyse how mobile device use is threaded into other co-present activities, focusing on the use of maps and internet searches. Close analysis reveals novel aspects of gestures on touch screens, how they serve 'double duty' - both as interface gestures but as as resources for ongoing joint action. We go on to describe how users 'walk the blue dot' to orientate themselves, and how searches are occasioned by the local environment. In conclusion, we argue that mobile devices - rather than pushing us away from the world around us - are instead just another thread in the complex tapestry of everyday interaction.

This paper examines mobile internet search, presenting search not as a process of information retrieval, but as part of conversation and talk. Through video extracts of mobile search we explore how mobile phones are interwoven into talk, and how searchers manage the participation of other conversationalists alongside the search itself. We introduce the notion of a 'searchable object' -- an object that arises in conversation that can be searched for online -- and document how such an object occasions a search. In turn we discuss the differing roles of the device 'driver' and 'passenger', and how participation is managed through questions and narration. Rather than search being solely about getting correct information, conversations around search may be just as important. We conclude by critiquing some of the pessimistic views of interaction around mobile phones and their use in ordinary life and talk.

This paper advances the study of batteries in everyday life. We provide a situated understanding of smartphone battery care based on a qualitative user study involving device logging and behavioral tracking to support our inquiry. Our findings depict how caring for batteries fits into everyday routines, the work that is done to prepare and maintain an infrastructure that supports mobile energy needs, and the ways in which batteries are monitored and preserved. Moreover, they illustrate what happens when everyday routines are disrupted and when planning or infrastructure fails, causing flat batteries and the need to apply mechanisms for coping. We build on these insights to propose shifting the research focus from user and device centric approaches towards more contextualized understandings of situated practices. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for two increasingly important topics within HCI, personal informatics and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Personal assistants using a command-dialogue model of speech recognition, such as Siri and Cortana, have become increasingly powerful and popular for individual use. In this paper we explore whether similar techniques could be used to create a speech-based agent system which, in a group meeting setting, would similarly monitor spoken dialogue, pro-actively detect useful actions, and carry out those actions without specific commands being spoken. Using a low-fi technical probe, we investigated how such a system might perform in the collaborative work setting and how users might respond to it. We recorded and transcribed a varied set of nine meetings from which we generated simulated lists of automated ‘action items’, which we then asked the meeting participants to review retrospectively. The low rankings given on these discovered items are suggestive of the difficulty in applying personal assistant technology to the group setting, and we document the issues emerging from the study. Through observations, we explored the nature of meetings and the challenges they present for speech agents.

While lightweight text messaging applications have been researched extensively, new messaging applications such as iMessage, WhatsApp, and Snapchat offer some new functionality and potential uses. Moreover, the role messaging plays in interaction and talk with those who are co-present has been neglected. In this article, we draw upon a corpus of naturalistic recordings of text message reading and composition to document the face-to-face life of text messages. Messages, both sent and received, share similarities with reported speech in conversation; they can become topical resource for local conversation-supporting verbatim reading aloud or adaptive summaries. Yet with text messages, their verifiability creates a distinctive resource. Similarly, in message composition, what to write may be discussed with collocated others. We conclude with discussion of designs for messaging in both face-to-face, and remote, communication.

In this paper, we examine how two chat apps fit into the communication ecosystem of six large distributed enterprises, in India and Kenya. From the perspective of management, these chat apps promised to foster greater communication and awareness between workers in the field, and between fieldworkers and the enterprises administration and management centres. Each organisation had multiple different types of chat groups, characterised by the types of content and interaction patterns they mediate, and the different organisational functions they fulfil. Examining the interplay between chat and existing local practices for coordination, collaboration and knowledge-sharing, we discuss how chat manifests in the distributed workplace and how it fits – or otherwise – alongside the rhythms of both local and remote work. We contribute to understandings of chat apps for workplace communication and provide insights for shaping their ongoing development.