Understanding situated social interaction and a case study of public places

Abstract. Designing context-aware mobile information systems for supporting sociality requires a solid understanding of the users ’ context, situated interac-tions, and the interplay between the two. Currently such understanding is lack-ing in the field of HCI research and is sought after by several authors. Address-ing this gap we conducted a field study of small groups socialising in a public place. Based on a grounded analysis of our findings we present a conceptual framework of situated social interactions in public. Finally, we illustrate how this framework informed design of a mobile context-aware prototype.