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Connectibles: tangible social networks

Published: 18 February 2008 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents "Connectibles," a prototype instantiation of a tangible social network, a new type of social network application rooted in physical objects and real world social behavior. This research is inspired by theoretical work that suggests that gifts act as physical symbols of social relationships. The Connectibles system leverages gift-giving practices, presenting users with gift objects ("connectibles") that they exchange with one another. These objects automatically form always-on communication channels between givers and receivers. As a user collects more and more of these objects, he or she begins to acquire a dynamic, physical representation of and interface to her social network. The community of users' interactions implicitly represent the structure of the social network; these data can be accessed with a GUI application, allowing users to explore and interact with their social network. This system was implemented and subject to three user studies. The overarching goal of this work is to examine how a set of devices might naturally and harmoniously interface the physical, virtual and social worlds.

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  • (2015)Sensor-based and tangible interaction with a TV community platform for seniorsProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems10.1145/2774225.2774849(180-189)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2015
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cover image ACM Other conferences
TEI '08: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction
February 2008
267 pages
ISBN:9781605580043
DOI:10.1145/1347390
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • University of Duisburg-Essen
  • Nokia Corporation, Finland
  • Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK
  • Fraunhofer IAIS, Birlinghoven
  • Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (B-IT)

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 February 2008

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Author Tags

  1. PC-based social network
  2. communicative social object
  3. connectibles
  4. friendFrame
  5. gift
  6. social object
  7. tangible social network

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Cited By

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  • (2021)Fragments of the Past: Curating Peer Support with Perpetrators of Domestic ViolenceProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445611(1-14)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
  • (2016)PostBitsPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-016-0967-z20:6(1001-1014)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016
  • (2015)Sensor-based and tangible interaction with a TV community platform for seniorsProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems10.1145/2774225.2774849(180-189)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2015
  • (2015)CloudDropsProceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Pervasive Displays10.1145/2757710.2757718(47-53)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2015
  • (2014)An internet of social thingsProceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Designing Futures: the Future of Design10.1145/2686612.2686624(87-96)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2014
  • (2012)Tangible User InterfacesHuman–Computer Interaction Handbook10.1201/b11963-25(465-490)Online publication date: 14-May-2012
  • (2011)Do not disturbProceedings of the 13th IFIP TC 13 international conference on Human-computer interaction - Volume Part II10.5555/2042118.2042164(479-486)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2011
  • (2011)KeynectProcedings of the Second Conference on Creativity and Innovation in Design10.1145/2079216.2079265(347-350)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2011
  • (2011)Flow of electronsProceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces10.1145/2076354.2076389(182-191)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2011
  • (2011)Connecting visually-impaired people to friends through wireless sensor networks2011 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics10.1109/ICSMC.2011.6084166(3224-3229)Online publication date: Oct-2011
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