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Traffic encounters and Hocman: Associating motorcycle ethnography with design

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Abstract

Brief encounters between acquainted and unacquainted motorcyclists are enjoyable moments. This truly mobile form of social interaction is difficult to study through traditional ethnographic fieldwork. However, the method is applicable when integrated into a design approach where the participants collaborate to integrate the field study, the design, and the evaluation. This has made it possible to generate a novel mobile service. The service, named Hocman, is a peer-to-peer application with mobile wireless ad hoc networking for PDAs. It enhances brief traffic encounters between bikers by playing a sound clip and automatically exchanging personal HTML pages. We have positively demonstrated through performance tests and field trials that it is successful in doing this, and that bikers enjoy such added value to biking, especially hearing the sound clip when meeting other bikers.

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Acknowledgements

The Swedish Research Institute for Information Technology (SITI), Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova) and Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) funded the research. For valuable comments that helped us improve the paper we wish to thank Barry Brown, Kia Höök, colleagues in the Mobile Services project and in the Mobility Studio, as well as the anonymous reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mobility, Interactive Institute, P.O. Box 240 81, 104 50, Stockholm, Sweden

    Mattias Esbjörnsson, Oskar Juhlin & Mattias Östergren

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  1. Mattias Esbjörnsson
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  2. Oskar Juhlin
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  3. Mattias Östergren
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Correspondence to Mattias Esbjörnsson.

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Esbjörnsson, M., Juhlin, O. & Östergren, M. Traffic encounters and Hocman: Associating motorcycle ethnography with design. Pers Ubiquit Comput 8, 92–99 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0260-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0260-4

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