Redefining the fundamentals of photography with cooperative photography

Cooperative photography redefines some fundamental notions of the photographic process by using mobile devices to synchronously coordinate multiple parties in a collaborative image capturing task. Using wireless communication and geo-location technologies, the photographer takes on a support role as content enabler rather than as the content creator, opening up creative possibilities. However, unreliable wireless networks and misunderstandings between users can make the coordination challenging and lead to a premature termination of the task. We present the evolution of the iterative design process we used to find a suitable set of interactions to encourage users to complete cooperative photography tasks. We report on our design motivations and their associated user studies, which suggest that user experiences dealing with higher level user behavior rather than lower level system awareness may be central in facilitating the successful completion of cooperative photography tasks.