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Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface
This dissertation develops a material perspective on Information & Communication Technologies and combines this perspective with a Research through Design approach to interrogate current and develop new mobile sharing interfaces and datastores. through this approach I open up a line of inquiry t...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of Computer Science
2019
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| _version_ | 1867613240428593152 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Reitmaier, Thomas Oliver |
| author2 | Blake, Edwin |
| author_browse | Blake, Edwin Reitmaier, Thomas Oliver |
| author_facet | Blake, Edwin Reitmaier, Thomas Oliver |
| author_sort | Reitmaier, Thomas Oliver |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | This dissertation develops a material perspective on Information & Communication Technologies and combines this perspective with a Research through Design approach to interrogate current and develop new mobile sharing interfaces and datastores. through this approach I open up a line of inquiry that connects a material perspective of information with everyday sharing and communication practices as well as with the mobile and cloud architectures that increasingly mediate such practices. With this perspective, I uncover a shifting emphasis of how data is stored on mobile devices and how this data is made available to apps through sharing interfaces that prevent apps from obtaining a proper handle of data to support fundamentally human acts of sharing such as giving. I take these insights to articulate a much wider research agenda to implicate, beyond the sharing interface, the app model and mobile datastore, data exchange protocols, and the Cloud. I formalise the approach I take to bring technically and socially complex, multi-dimensional and changing ideas into correspondence and to openly document this process. I consider the history of the File abstraction and the fundamental grammars of action this abstraction supports (e.g. move, copy, & delete) and the mediating role this abstraction – and its graphical representation – plays in binding together the concerns of system architects, programmers, and users. Finding inspiration in the 30 year history of the file, I look beyond the Desktop to contemporary realms of computing on the mobile and in the Cloud to develop implications for reinvigorated file abstractions, representations, and grammars of actions. First and foremost, these need to have a social perspective on files. To develop and hone such a social perspective, and challenge the assumption that mobile phones are telephones – implying interaction at a distance – I give an interwoven account of the theoretical and practical work I undertook to derive and design a grammar of action – showing – tailored to co-present and co-located interactions. By documenting the process of developing prototypes that explore this design space, and returning to the material perspective I developed earlier, I explore how the grammars of show and gift are incongruent with the specific ways in which information is passed through the mobile’s sharing interface. This insight led me to prototype a mobile datastore – My Stuff – and design new file abstractions that foreground the social nature of the stuff we store and share on our mobiles. I study how that stuff is handled and shared in the Cloud by developing, documenting, and interrogating a cloud service to facilitate sharing, and implement grammars of actions to support and better align with human communication and sharing acts. I conclude with an outlook on the powerful generative metaphor of casting mobile media files as digital possessions to support and develop human-centred computer architecture that give people better awareness and control over the stuff that matters to them. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/29531 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:32:58.612Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publishDateRange | 2019 |
| publishDateSort | 2019 |
| publisher | Department of Computer Science |
| publisherStr | Department of Computer Science |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/29531 Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface Reitmaier, Thomas Oliver Blake, Edwin Computer Science This dissertation develops a material perspective on Information & Communication Technologies and combines this perspective with a Research through Design approach to interrogate current and develop new mobile sharing interfaces and datastores. through this approach I open up a line of inquiry that connects a material perspective of information with everyday sharing and communication practices as well as with the mobile and cloud architectures that increasingly mediate such practices. With this perspective, I uncover a shifting emphasis of how data is stored on mobile devices and how this data is made available to apps through sharing interfaces that prevent apps from obtaining a proper handle of data to support fundamentally human acts of sharing such as giving. I take these insights to articulate a much wider research agenda to implicate, beyond the sharing interface, the app model and mobile datastore, data exchange protocols, and the Cloud. I formalise the approach I take to bring technically and socially complex, multi-dimensional and changing ideas into correspondence and to openly document this process. I consider the history of the File abstraction and the fundamental grammars of action this abstraction supports (e.g. move, copy, & delete) and the mediating role this abstraction – and its graphical representation – plays in binding together the concerns of system architects, programmers, and users. Finding inspiration in the 30 year history of the file, I look beyond the Desktop to contemporary realms of computing on the mobile and in the Cloud to develop implications for reinvigorated file abstractions, representations, and grammars of actions. First and foremost, these need to have a social perspective on files. To develop and hone such a social perspective, and challenge the assumption that mobile phones are telephones – implying interaction at a distance – I give an interwoven account of the theoretical and practical work I undertook to derive and design a grammar of action – showing – tailored to co-present and co-located interactions. By documenting the process of developing prototypes that explore this design space, and returning to the material perspective I developed earlier, I explore how the grammars of show and gift are incongruent with the specific ways in which information is passed through the mobile’s sharing interface. This insight led me to prototype a mobile datastore – My Stuff – and design new file abstractions that foreground the social nature of the stuff we store and share on our mobiles. I study how that stuff is handled and shared in the Cloud by developing, documenting, and interrogating a cloud service to facilitate sharing, and implement grammars of actions to support and better align with human communication and sharing acts. I conclude with an outlook on the powerful generative metaphor of casting mobile media files as digital possessions to support and develop human-centred computer architecture that give people better awareness and control over the stuff that matters to them. 2019-02-14T13:16:56Z 2019-02-14T13:16:56Z 2018 2019-02-14T11:23:12Z Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/29531 eng application/pdf Department of Computer Science Faculty of Science University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Computer Science Reitmaier, Thomas Oliver Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface |
| thesis_degree_str | Doctoral |
| title | Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface |
| title_full | Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface |
| title_fullStr | Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface |
| title_full_unstemmed | Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface |
| title_short | Human-centred computer architecture: redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface |
| title_sort | human centred computer architecture redesigning the mobile datastore and sharing interface |
| topic | Computer Science |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/29531 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT reitmaierthomasoliver humancentredcomputerarchitectureredesigningthemobiledatastoreandsharinginterface |