Clique here : exploring the use of mobile multi-media to support connectedness

Abstract

The practical demands of modern life obligate people to spend time physically seperated from the people they care about. To cope, people turn to communications technology like the telephone, e-mail, and instant messaging (IM) to maintain a connection with social contacts. These communication modalities are limited in their ability to provide social-connectedness by their failure to balance expressiveness, overhead, and social obligation. Clique Here is a mobile communications platform that attempts to address this limitation and support a higher degree of social-connectedness by complementing mobile telephone capability with media rich awareness and multiple lightweight communication modes. The Clique Here system consists of a mobile client, implemented on a camera embedded mobile handset, a home client, implemented on a wireless web tablet, and communication between clients is facillitated by an application server.