A digital photography framework supporting social interaction and affective awareness

Abstract

Photographs have significant social roles. For example, they help families and friends to preserve an affective link and provide support for communication. The increasing popularity of digital photography, combined with global networking, is likely to emphasize this function as sharing photographs will become cheaper, faster and easier. Based on this observation, we propose a framework that allows people to maintain mutual awareness by exchanging and annotating photographs. The framework components include digital cameras running specific software, a distributed communication and storage infrastructure, tools for watching and annotating photographs. The framework also includes tools for notifying photographers when their pictures are accessed.