Exploring video streaming in public settings: shared geocaching over distance using mobile video chat

Our research explores the use of mobile video chat in public spaces by people participating in parallel experiences, where both a local and remote person are doing the same activity together at the same time. We prototyped a wearable video chat experience and had pairs of friends and family members participate in 'shared geocaching' over distance. Our results show that video streaming works best for navigation tasks but is more challenging to use for fine-grained searching tasks. Video streaming also creates a very intimate experience with a remote partner, but this can lead to distraction from the 'real world' and even safety concerns. Overall, privacy concerns with streaming from a public space were not typically an issue; however, people tended to rely on assumptions of what were acceptable. The implications are that designers should consider appropriate feedback, user disembodiment, and asymmetry when designing for parallel experiences.