What is Convergence of Technology

This chapter discusses research initially supported by the Vodafone Group Foundation and the British Royal Academic of Engineering, and subsequently by the BT Mobility Research Centre. It aims to unfold the user experience in future scenarios of mobile interactive multimedia systems, such as mobile iTV with plausible significance in entertainment, work, and government environments. Consolidated and experimental ethnographic data gathering techniques have been used to understand how peripatetic and nomadic users such as commuters and travelers interact in real contexts, taking into account their physical and social environment together with their emotions and feelings during interaction with the system. This approach potentially enhances the consistency and relevance of the results. This chapter also envisages how mobile users could become a sort of ‘DIY producers’ of digital content, prompting the emergence of mobile communities that collaborate to create their own ‘movies’ and exchanging them not only with other users but also places (real and virtual environments) and objects (intelligent objects and other digital-physical hybrids). This work illustrates that mobile and pervasive TV would go further than merely broadcasting TV content on handhelds; it will be a platform that will support collaboration and enhancement of creative skills among users.