Paper Reading #2: Timid Encounters

'Timid Encounters': A Case Study in the Use of Proximity-Based Mobile Technologies

CHI 2012, May 5-10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA
Session: Me & My Mobile

	[no picture locatable]
Christian Licoppe	Yoriko Inada
Professor of Social Science at the Paris Institute of Technology Mostly does work on social interactions through media and mobile devices.	No information found. Associated with the Paris Institute of Technology, Department of Economics and Social Sciences.

Summary

Figure 1: a meeting between players demonstrating unusual interactions (Licoppe et al).

Licoppe and Inada constructed a study on proximity-based mobile encounters, specifically in Japan with the game called "Dragon Quest 9."  They studied the effects of a gaming environment on public social interactions that somewhat requires more interaction than normal in a public setting.  E. Goffman coined the term 'civil inattention' to describe public social interactions as "an exchange of gaze to manage the embodied encounter that acknowledges the mutual proximity but evades any further involvement and singularization of the encounter and its participant" (Licoppe, 2761).  Basically, current public interactions between strangers merit a mutually understanding gaze that requires no action beyond the simple recognition of proximity.  When a new ecology (that of a social game) is added to the mix, how to people act?  They study this 'hybrid ecology' of a mix between typical public social interactions and that of acquiring a sense of singularity about a person to gather information about these new games that require physical proximity.  Their study reveals a unique form of interaction they call a 'timid encounter,' the most popular form of encounter for strangers in the game.  It involves arriving at a preset location at a preset time, but not directly interacting with the other players and instead staying far enough away to keep to oneself.  The hybrid ecology seems to yield a hybrid interaction.

Related Work

• Extending cyberspace: location based games using cellular phones, Rashid et al.
• Pirates: proximity-triggered interaction in a multi-player game, Falk et al.

There seems to be little or no directly related work, but much has been researched regarding proximity-based games and how to make them fun and useable.  This new research by Licoppe and Inada should further discussion on exactly how to implement proximity-based games and what kinds of functionality to provide to the players.

Evaluation 

Licoppe and Inada seemed to be fairly thorough and objective with their research, but provided much qualitative data and no quantitative data.  They researched small numbers of groups in France and Japan (only two in Japan) and they only visited them each about three times.  Much of their conclusions and understanding of situations came from interviews with some players as well as observations of the meetings and conversations on online forums.  They based a lot of their understanding on previous social understandings regarding public interactions.

Discussion

I think the research is fairly novel and useful but could go more in-depth and cover more ground.  With the limited amount of research done, it seems near impossible to draw definite conclusions, but then again it is only the beginning of future research.  As noted in the article, too, the research seems location-based as it is very specific to Japanese interactions.  The French interactions came to the same conclusions most of the time, but there were large difference. Licoppe and Inada's research will hopefully pave the way to providing robust proximity-based games which seem to become more and more popular as mobile devices reach more people and become more capable of handling such complicated game-play.