08: Collaborate with your friends

Learning with camera phones

Fumitoshi Kato (Keio University)

Home > 08: Collaborate with your friends

Collaborate with your friends

Over the past few years, the idea of “mobile research” is gaining attention in the area of marketing research. A technique called “experience sampling method (ESM: Experience Sampling Method)” proposed by Csikszentmihalyi can be understood as a leading attempt of “mobile research.” By utilizing mobile phones (camera phones) for data gathering, we can access to one’s day-to-day activities, by reducing physical and psychological burden of the researcher, as well as the researched.

By utilizing the specific features of camera phones, take a set of pictures simultaneously, through collaboration with your friends.

  1. Organize e-mail addresses of the participants (researchers) in advance, and send out cues. You can send a cue regularly (e.g., at every hour with a time signal, or at three points such as in the morning, noon, and evening), or can send it in a random fashion.
  2. Take a photo whenever you (and other participants, too) receive a cue.

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This is a simple way to take multiple photos at the same time, by using camera phones. Through this attempt we can visualize a streams of “life in a day.” They sometimes intersect on a certain time or location, and still others flow independently without any association.

For inquiries please contact:

Fumitoshi Kato
Keio University • Faculty of Environment and Information Studies
5322 Endo Fujisawa, Kanagawa 252-0882 Japan
fk [at] sfc.keio.ac.jp