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Music and online Social Network Sites (SNS) are closely intertwined in popular culture, but we know relatively little about how performers use and take advantage of such social systems. This paper investigates this space by exploring how professional DJs leverage SNS in their work. It adopts a long term mixed-methods ethnographic approach encompassing semi-structured interviews, supported by studio visits and participant observations. Results revealed that DJs used SNS for connecting to their audiences; promoting their work; receiving peer feedback; discovering content and keeping abreast of their field; and organizing and coordinating events. We further interpret our findings in the context of issues DJs highlighted about their professional practice and technology, and our observations; and draw out design implications for future music orientated systems and services.

This paper reports a 15 weeks study of artistic eco-feedback deployed in six houses with an innovative sensing infrastructure and visualization strategy. The paper builds on previous work that showed a significant decrease in user awareness after a short period with a relapse in consumption. In this study we aimed to investigate if new forms of feedback could overcome this issue, maintaining the users awareness for longer periods of time. The study presented here aims at understanding if people are more aware of their energy consumption after the installation of a new, art inspired eco-feedback. The research question was then: does artistic eco-feedback provide an increased awareness over normal informative feedback? And does that awareness last longer? To answer this questions participants were interviewed and their consumption patterns analyzed. The main contribution of the paper is to advance our knowledge about the effectiveness of eco-feedback and provide guidelines for implementation of novel eco-feedback visualizations that overcome the relapse behavior pattern.

This paper describes a novel art-inspired tangible eco-feedback system. The concept emerged from a workshop with researchers, designers and artists looking at innovative ways to provide more effective eco-feedback that engages users emotionally. The tangible aspect of the system is composed of a set of magnets that users can stick on their physical mailbox outside of their apartment building according to their average energy consumption. The magnets are a total of seven pieces, one for each day of the week. Each piece has a variation of three colors, from green (low consumption) to burning red (high consumption). The magnets are to be displayed in a sequence that represents a typical panorama of local nature. In this paper we report the design and the study we conducted to gauge preliminary results on the system usage and potential. Interviews with participants revealed that none of them felt uncomfortable having their consumption displayed outside. When children were involved in the process they “took control” of the task and pressured their families to perform better.

This paper presents HomeTree a prototype of an art-inspired mobile eco-feedback system. The system is implemented on a tablet PC and relies on a non-intrusive energy-monitoring infrastructure to access consumption and power event information. Our prototype addresses an important problem in eco-feedback, which is the fact that users loose interest about their energy consumption after a period of several weeks. To accomplish this HomeTree implements a dual visualization strategy. Initially HomeTree presents users with a screensaver that shows energy consumption mapped in a dynamic illustration of the local forest. Through this strategy we leverage the emotional connection between the short-term energy consumption and the long-term effects on nature through the local depicted landscape. In a second mode of operation users can interact with HomeTree directly by checking the historical records of their consumption data, and check which days or weeks they have reduced or increased consumption. Furthermore a comparison with a more objective baseline, such as the city of Funchal energy consumption is provided, in order to give users a sense of the level of their consumption in a wider context.

This paper describes the initial stages for the iLand project, a Location Aware Multimedia Story project that captures and exposes the rich oral culture and traditions at the Island of Madeira, using the Madeira main city, Funchal, as a setting to bring a new level of engagement of the audience with the city and its traditional stories. We developed high quality content to be used in an already existing platform to deliver location aware stories. With the story experience carefully designed, an evaluation was carried out in order to expose the opportunities where such systems can be improved. Finally we discuss the results from the evaluation and explain how we will address them in the design of our new system.

The processing power of mobile devices is increasing steadily; their screen size suffers more fundamental limits. Given this contrast, we identify mobile information visualization which maximizes the effectiveness of small screen displays as a key area for future development. To achieve this, we present an overview of Glaze, a plug-in based visualization framework for mobile devices based on the information visualization reference model. We discuss two prototype visualizations implemented using Glaze and designed based on the output of concept generation interviews with users.

As computing and communications technologies evolve, there is the potential for new forms of digitally orchestrated interactive narratives to emerge. In this process, balanced attention has to be paid to audience experience, creative constraints, and presence and role of the enabling technology. This paper describes the implementation of HopStory, an interactive, location-based narrative distributed in space and time, which was designed with this balance in mind. In HopStory, cinematic media is housed within wireless sculptures distributed throughout a building. The audience, through physical contact with a sculpture, collects scenes for later viewing. Inspired by the history of the installation space the narrative relates a day in the life of four characters. By binding the story to local time and space and inviting the audience to wander, we amplify the meaning and impact of the HopStory content and introduce an innovative approach to a day-in-the-life story structure.