H.-H. Chen and G. Chowdhury (Eds.): ICADL 2012, LNCS 7634, pp. 106–115, 2012. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 Social Interaction Patterns during Mobile Information Seeking Esther Meng-Yoke Tan 1 , Dion Hoe-Lian Goh 2 , Yin-Leng Theng 2 , and Schubert Foo 2 1 Institute of Systems Science National University of Singapore, Singapore isstane@nus.edu.sg 2 Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information Nanyang Technological University, Singapore {ashlgoh,tyltheng,sfoo}@ntu.edu.sg Abstract. Mobile applications now incorporate features for communication and collaboration. One way that such applications are being used is in collaborative information seeking. There is, however, a lack of understanding of users’ social interaction needs when performing such tasks. To address this gap and using tourism as the domain, we conducted a diary study to examine tourists’ colla- borative information seeking activities during their trips. These collaboration patterns were analyzed using the BIG6 information seeking process. Results showed that tourists were more influenced by their inner circle of social con- tacts such as family during the task definition, information seeking strategies, and location and access phases as compared to strangers. Conversely, strangers were more influential during the use of information, synthesis and evaluation phases. Implications of these findings are also discussed. Keywords: Collaboration, information seeking process, social interaction patterns, social context, mobile tourism. 1 Introduction Many mobile applications now include features sensitive to the social context, tailor- ing their functionality and information displayed according to users’ social settings such as needs and preferences of people close to them [1]. These applications may also support the sharing of content and tracking of social contacts’ statuses such as friends who are currently available. For example, [2] developed a mobile application, SmartCampus, for students to support their social networking activities. The applica- tion helps students find friends who want to study together, arrange common studying areas, and share study materials. Using the application, students can initiate commu- nication with their friends whenever needs arise. Mobile applications adopting social context sensitive features usually support ad- hoc communication, but they may not always support more structured task-oriented activities. The latter typically includes solving complex problems which can only be resolved by executing a series of small, manageable tasks. Put differently, mobile