The Collaborative Work of Producing Meaningful Shots in Mobile Video Telephony Christian Licoppe Department of Social Science Telecom ParisTech 46 rue Barrault, 75013 33 1 45818116 christian.licoppe@telecom-paristech.fr Julien Morel Department of Social Science Telecom ParisTech 46 rue Barrault, 75013 33 1 45817108 julien.morel@telecom-paristech.fr ABSTRACT In this paper we report on the first study of the uses of mobile video telephony based on the collection and analysis of naturally occurring mobile video telephony. We show how a characteristic feature of mobile video telephony, which makes it differ from any other kind of mediated interaction, is that: a) the participants may orient the camera at will to shoot almost any feature within their environment; and b) what they actually show at a given moment may be (and usually is) inspected by the recipient for its relevance to the ongoing interaction, and is produced with an orientation towards such scrutiny. A specific concern of mobile video call users at any time is therefore what they should or should not show. We demonstrate how a partial solution to that problem is the reliance on a particular (full) portrait-like ‘talking heads’ format as an expected default mode for interaction in mobile video calls. Finally, we discuss the implications, for design, of such an empirically grounded understanding of the specific practical concerns of mobile video telephony users. Categories and Subject Descriptors H5.m [Information interfaces and presentation]: (e.g. HCI). Miscellaneous General Terms Human factors. Keywords Mobile phone, video telephony, video mediated communication, mobility, conversation analysis, privacy 1. INTRODUCTION Since the development of third generation (3G) mobile networks, service providers have made mobile videophony services available. This marks a ‘mobility turn’ in videophony, which was initially developed for professional applications [13] – though with limited success [10] – and then recently extended to larger audiences and different uses with online services (via webcams and instant messaging or VoIP services that enable video communication). In these settings video communication relies on fixed cameras (orientable to some extent) rather than handheld devices which can easily be oriented at will and in any direction with one hand. The uses of videoconference systems and media spaces have been studied extensively since the early 1990s, with several different orientations: a) investigations into how video links support distributed team collaboration and informal professional meetings [8, 5, 2, 1]; b) analysis of the problems raised by video communication in the organization of interactions, such as the turn-by-turn organization of talk [21], ‘frailty of the interaction frame’ [4] or the difficulties raised by pointing in ‘fractured ecologies’ [14]; c) analysis of the tension between using video calls for interaction between ‘talking heads’, versus showing relevant features of the environment, or ‘video as data’ [17], or the consequences of video images providing access to a shared field of interaction [9, 23, 16]. These studies suggest that showing things may be more relevant and useful to collaboration than showing people in video-mediated settings. Most were carried out in professional settings, with the experimental study of home video communication in Biarritz (France) being one of the only exceptions [3, 4]. Mobile video telephony marks a ‘ubiquitous computing’ [22] turn in the field of video telephony in two senses at least: a) users can engage anytime and anywhere – at least theoretically – in video telephony-based interactions; and b) the use of handheld communication devices allows them to orient the camera in (almost) any direction and to show any feature in their current environment to a remote recipient. However, making video telephony ubiquitous has not made it a market success yet. Mobile video calls are still a new and emergent practice with few users. Although this type of service has been offered for two or three years, there has been little research on the uses of private mobile video calls. An exception is a recent study based on interviews and diaries which showed that 50% of calls were for ‘small talk’ (i.e. social calls), 28% were to show something and talk about it, and 22% were to achieve a particular goal such as coordination or practical arrangements [18]. To our knowledge, there has not been any study of the way participants manage mobile video interactions, based on the recording and analysis of actual mobile video calls. The aim of this article is to provide such an analysis, based on a collection of naturally occurring mobile video calls. We show how a characteristic feature of mobile video telephony, which makes it differ from any other kind of mediated interaction, is that: a) the participants can orient the camera at will, to shoot almost any feature in their environment; and b) what they actually show at a given moment may be (and usually is) inspected for relevance by the recipient with respect to the ongoing interaction, Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). MobileHCI'09, September 15 - 18, 2009, Bonn, Germany. ACM 978-1-60558-281-8. 1