Happy Lunar New Year

The lunar new year is the most important holiday in Chinese calender. This celebration is shared among many nations in Asia, such as Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Taiwanese etc.



Not only in Asian cities, but also in many cities around the globe, the Chinese community with the local government arrange a local celebration of the holiday.

Yesterday, we had a quite big Chinese new year event in Lasipalatsi, Helsinki. There were many stalls and attractions related to Chinese culture. The event was not only attracted to Chinese community, but also to Helsinki community in general. It was so crowded that you would not miss the atmosphere of a Chinese market in Asia.

We saw a lot of interesting performances, such as dragon and lion dances. Everyone was so enthusiastic to watch and document the cultural performances. They tried hard to catch the best moments with their digital cameras and videos. Some people may forget to bring their cameras or videos, so they took their camera phones from their pockets and tried to take as much as pictures and videos from that event. What a jungle of devices above your heads.

Camera phones may not give the most satisfactory image or video results, but the devices help people to catch interesting moments that may happen unexpectedly in their daily life. It is more often that people forget their digital camera or video than their mobile phone.

I'll catch you with my "cam" phone

Recently, I have been observing the use of mobile phones by several children from 4 to 8 years old. They used different kind of phones, such as Nokia N70, Nokia 5140i, Nokia 6630 and Nokia 6680.

All of those children were very fascinated with camera functions of mobile phones. In the beginning, they thought that it was cool to take a picture with a mobile phone. It seemed for them that interacting with a camera phone was easier and safer than a digital camera. Their parents often warned them when they touched and played with digital cameras. Yet, nobody reprimanded them when playing with mobile phones. They could also use one hand to play with them as well as move easily while trying to catch pictures of their friends. Most of them have already got some interaction with phones, either to make a call, send SMS or just playing with them. None of them have used a mobile phone with a camera.

When they were about to take a picture, they faced difficulties because they did not know what to do/press. Some of those children did not yet read or read fluently. The user interface and interaction on the mobile phones were more complicated than a normal digital camera. Compared to one button to press in taking a picture with the digital camera, there are more steps to do with mobile phones. Those steps include defining buttons to press, scrolling down choosing the right function, defining whether they want to take “image” (photo) or video clip, pressing a button to take the image or video. What the children usually did was coming to me and asking what to press and choose, then they tried to remember the steps by hearts executed the actions and repeated the steps .

I also observed how a very young child used SMS to learn alphabets and numbers by pressing the buttons of the mobile phones. The child could also learn some metaphors from user interface of the mobile phones and their applications. During the process of writing an SMS, the child was suddently confused when they could not erase some words because there was no “C” button on Nokia 5140i, because the child had memorised that by using other phones that a mistake in writing SMS could be erased by pressing the C button.

I learn that it is important to design a consistent user interface and interaction of mobile devices and applications for children. A mobile phone usually has limited numbers and possibilities for physical interactions, yet a physical button could conveys multiple functions instead of one-to-one correlation. Young children may not be able to read, but they interact by memorising a set of procedures. Consistent graphical user interface, metaphor, physical and visual interaction are important in reducing cognitive burden of those children and developing more enjoyable experience when using mobile devices. These aspects are also worth to consider when designing a mobile learning system for this group of users.