On the practice of queuing and new forms of interaction

Sammanfattning: The practice of queuing is a daily experience for most of us and it is usually difficult to combine it with other activities. This indicates that people involved in the act of queuing become a bit too occupied with maintaining one's position in the queue. Despite that queuing is a common phenomenon, queuing situations are now often equipped with aids based on numbers that help regulating the queuing order. Still, the practice of queuing includes several nuances of social interaction that demands careful attention from its participants for it to work. Based on cases and concepts with varying levels of viability, this thesis investigates the practice of queuing as a design space. The thesis further suggests how a more flexible queue could be designed. An overall aim is to examine how to provide greater action space for participants in a queue and enable for new forms of interaction. In order to queue from a distance, much of what traditionally constructs the queue is redesigned. To address these issues from a usability point of view, it is a challenge to create an interaction design that allows different ways of queuing, without deviating too much from features that are evaluated as decisive to maintain.