Activités (Apr 2014)
L’organisation temporelle des engagements visuels dans des situations de multi-activité équipée en milieu urbain
Abstract
To understand how the temporal management of activities which characterize multi-activity situations is organized, we report on the development of a method for recording the different uses of mobile phones in situations of mobility. The method is based on the synchronization of captures of video screen activity and videos of user activity made using camera glasses. This will allow us to analyze how users appropriate their smartphones during daily commutes. These data show the temporal organization of gaze switching (towards and away from the mobile screen) and provide crucial empirical information to understand how users actually manage mobile communications and other activities in everyday multi-activity settings. To speak of multi-activity is to reflect a particular stance that actors take in respect of the potential sequential implications which emerge from the temporal intrication of events relating to the use of mobile devices and to the mobility environment; these events create occasions to visually switch from one field of activity to another. We discuss how the ‘pragmatic texture’ of interfaces should be structured to offer such sequential opportunities so as to project a temporal organization of uses which is better suited to multi-activity settings.
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