The mobile search space has witnessed phenomenal growth in recent years. As a result there has been a growing body of research aimed at understanding why and how mobile users search the Web via their handsets and how their mobile search experiences could be improved. However, much of this work has focused on addressing the many challenges of the mobile space. In this short position paper argue the need for more casual, shared, social mobile search experiences. We outline a number of open and challenging research questions related to shared, social mobile search. Finally, we present our ideas through a proof-ofconcept mobile paper prototype designed to support causal mobile search and information sharing with co-located groups of friends.
Mobile phones, once deemed as simple communications devices, have now evolved into sophisticated computing devices, offering users the ability to access a wealth of online information, anytime and anywhere.
As mobile Internet usage has increased, there has been a growing body of research aimed at understanding why and how mobile users search and browse the Web via their mobile handsets as well as how their mobile search and browsing experiences could be improved [2, 4–9, 13, 17]. However, much of this work has focused on addressing the challenges of the mobile space and enabling mobile users to find the information they need as quickly and effectively as possible.
While past research has shed key insights into mobile Web
behaviours and lead to a number of great advances in mobile Web
services, recently there has been a shift in the mobile world,
which we believe will force the community to re-think the mobile
Web and mobile search space. In the past mobile meant
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move, portable, personal and dynamic. However recent research
has highlighted that (
In this short position paper we motivate and argue the role of shared, social search experiences in the mobile space. We highlight what we think are important and fruitful areas of research related to this new direction in mobile search. Finally, to illustrate our ideas we present examples of a proof-of-concept mobile paper prototype, which is designed to support causal search and information sharing with co-located groups of friends via their mobile handsets.
The gaining momentum of mobile Web and mobile search usage has also resulted in a growing body of interesting research related to understanding mobile users, mobile information needs [3, 16] and mobile Web behaviours [2, 4–6, 9, 13, 17]. In this section we highlight key takeaway messages extracted from this past work that we believe motivate a rethinking of the mobile search experience we provide to users. 2.1
Recent findings suggest that mobile users often access online content in non-mobile settings. For example, a one week diary study of mobile Web access carried out by Nylander et al. [13] shows that mobile Internet access occurs mostly at home (31%). A more recent study by Church & Oliver shows that > 70% of mobile Web accesses are recorded when users are in familiar, stationary settings like at home and at work [2]. Cue & Roto [5] discovered a similar trend emerging in a series of studies they carried out between 2004-2007. That is mobile Web access is becoming a more stationary activity. These findings point to the changing pace of the mobile Web. Location-dependency isn’t the only factor to consider when designed mobile services. With more and more mobile users connecting to online content while engaging in their everyday lives, we need to focus on how we can build innovative services that integrate seamlessly into their world.
Mobile phones have always been deemed as intimate, personal communications devices. They tend to be owned by one individual and do not tend to be shared. Despite this trait, recent studies show that there is a social, shared aspect to consider in mobile environments. For example, two studies of mobile information needs have highlighted that conversations have a significant impact on the types of information needs that arise while mobile and how users choose to address those needs [3, 16]. The same is true for mobile Internet behaviours. For example, Church & Oliver have shown that in > 65% of cases, mobile search was conducted in the presence of other people [2]. Likewise, a recent study of local mobile search has shown that in 63% of cases, mobile searches took place within a social context and were discussed with someone else in the group [18]. While research on the social context of mobile search and tools to facilitate collaboration in mobile search have been limited to date [10, 11], the same is not true for general Web search [1, 12, 14, 15, 20]. Going forward we believe there will be a need to support social, collaborative online experiences in mobile environments.
Although research has shown that mobile Web access is motivated mainly by awareness [17], curiosity and diversion also account for a significant proportion of mobile Internet motivations [2]. These motivations relate to the users desire to kill time, to alleviate boredom and to find out something about an unfamiliar topic (normally encountered by chance).
Searching the Internet has traditionally been viewed as driven by a specific information need in which search is considered successful if the information the user is looking for is found in a minimal amount of time. However, in casual search scenarios finding the right answer to a given query and finding that answer as quickly as possible may not be the main goals [19]. In fact, in casual search settings, the search may be considered successful even if the information the user is looking for is not found. In casual search scenarios people may browse the Web to pass time while they are idle, e.g. waiting for the bus. The information need may be vague or even nonexistent. Therefore, the measure of success of a casual search process is typically based on the level of user enjoyment during the search activity and/or on how long the user has been entertained for. Given that recent research in the mobile search space highlights that more and more users access content to kill time, to eliminate boredom, to satisfy their curiosity, we believe there is more opportunity to support casual search scenarios in mobile settings.
In this section we briefly outline results of a survey we conducted to understand more about social mobile search behavior. Survey participants were asked to recall their most recent social mobile search experience, i.e. a search conducted in a co-located group, to address a shared information need, and answer a series of questions. The questions we asked included: what they searched for, their information need, their motivation, who they were with, their relationship(s) to the people present, where they were located, what they were doing before and after the search activity, if and how they shared the search results, and if the search had any effect on their future plans. 193 participants were recruited from internal and external mailing lists, online social networks and discussion forums. All participants had to own an Internet-enabled mobile phone and must perform mobile web searches at least a few times per month. Participants ranged in age between 18-61 (average: 31, SD: 6.9). Responses were provided by 134 men (69.4%) and 59 women (30.6%) and users came from a diverse range of backgrounds, e.g. IT, engineering, sales, telecommunications, education and customer service. The majority of our participants were residents of Spain (68%) and respondents primarily used Android (40.4%) handsets to perform their searches. Finally we found that the majority of participants (87%) stated that they used mobile search in social settings at least once per week, with 54.9% of participants using it at least once a day.
Three key findings from this survey that are relevant to this
position paper are as follows: (
In this section we outline a set of open research questions to frame the challenges and opportunities of developing applications to facilitate casual, shared, social mobile share: § § § § § § § § §
What types of mobile interfaces and interactions would support or enrich the “sharing experience” during social mobile search? How can we enrich shared search experiences in relaxed social scenarios? Can we make shared mobile search experiences more entertaining for end-users? Will users share more search experiences if the sharing process was simple, quick and easy? Does the type of content have any impact on the sharing experience? That is, will users share differently if the content is dynamic (e.g. a mobile map) versus static (a simple webpage), or if the content is textual versus visual.
Do users have preferences in terms of how they share contents? Do users prefer to share entire pages, snippets of pages or a “print screen” type view of the page in question? Would users enjoy and like the ability to re-visit shared mobile search experiences? How could shared search experiences be presented to users? Does time, group size or the relationships within the group impact on the sharing experience? Do users need to share remotely, i.e. beyond co-located groups? How might this physical distance impact on the experience? What are the technological challenges in building services to support casual, shared, social mobile search? We are currently working on an early stage prototype designed to facilitate shared social mobile search in casual settings. By designing, building and evaluating this prototype, we hope we will be able to answer some of the research questions outlined previously. In the following section we present our initial ideas to support causal search and information sharing with co-located groups of friends via their mobile phones.
To illustrate our ideas we present details of an early stage mobile
prototype, the design challenges we face and our plans for future
evaluations of this novel mobile search service. The prototype is
designed to enhance social mobile search by facilitating (
As a first step we worked on a number of iterations of a paper prototype. The prototype focuses on three main components, each with its own design challenges:
Information sharing on mobile phones is currently a complicated process and results of our survey reveal that this is the main reason that people do not share results with one another at present. Existing mobile browsers tend to require the user to click several times in order to finally share a web page. And this sharing is normally supported via email, SMS/MMS or social media like Facebook or Twitter. Each time a user wants to share another page, the same long sequence of clicks has to be repeated all over again. Other approaches to content sharing on mobile phones rely on Bluetooth, which is well known to be a cumbersome communication mechanism for end users. The goal of our application is to make the process of mobile Web information sharing as simple as a single click.
The first step to achieve this goal is to detect which phones are
associated with the shared search experience/session. At present
we’re focusing our efforts on using (
Our goal is to enable mobile users to share all Web search related
content with the members of their group. Figure 2 illustrates a
simple paper prototype with our main thoughts on how to
approach this task. Given it’s likely that users will want to share a
range of content types we want to provide the users the ability to
(
(a)
(b)
Finally, our prototype will enable users to access their past shared social search sessions. While our survey did not reveal a large proportion of users expressing a need for revisiting past sessions, this need was expressed by a few users and it’s a feature we’d like to implement and explore to see if it is in fact deemed useful by end users. A past shared social search session is any session for which the user instigated a “share” or was the recipient of a “share”. We are currently playing with different forms of presenting past shared search experiences to the end user. The first method is by time. Figure 3 illustrates two potential approaches to grouping shared experiences by time. We could show a small thumbnail for each past share, the name of the shared content and the name of the person who shared it (Figure 3 (a)) or a larger set of thumbnails to support a more visual UI (Figure 3 (b)). Another means of showing past shared search sessions is by group, that is allow users to view all shared searches carried out with or among a certain group of people or with an individual. Finally, we could show past shared search sessions by location, that is, allow users to view all shared searches carried out at a specific place. It’s likely that the choice of interface will depend on a range of factors including personal preferences.
To date, we have developed a number of iterations of a paperbased prototype and carried out design reviews with 6 users inhouse to gain feedback and insights on the interface, the interaction and the core functionality. We are currently working on implementing an Android application, however, we still have a number of technological challenges to overcome. Our plan is to deploy and evaluate the application in-the-wild, among groups of friends, to learn more about shared, social mobile search behaviours in the real world.
In this position paper we motivate the need to support casual, shared, social search experiences in the mobile space through a review of past work and an outline of key findings from a recent survey of social mobile search. We highlight a set of open research questions that we think will be important for the community going forward. Finally we illustrated our initial ideas by presenting examples of a work-in-progress mobile prototype, which is designed to support causal search and information sharing with co-located groups of friends.
This work is funded as part of a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship for Career Development (IEF) award held by Karen Church. Sofia Reis is currently an intern in Telefonica Research. As such this work was partly funded by Telefonica Research and by FCT/MCTES, through grant SFRH/BD/61085/2009. Note that the survey portion of the work was conducted with Antony Cousin of University of Nottingham while he was an intern at Telefonica Research in Autumn 2011.