ZoneTag's Collaborative Tag Suggestions: What is This Person Doing in My Phone?

We describe ZoneTag, a camera phone application that allows users to capture, annotate, and share photos directly from their phone. We describe the simple mechanism for deriving tag suggestions and the ensuing interaction design for presenting these suggestions to the user. We also discuss quantitative and qualitative results from an 18-months deployment of ZoneTag, emphasizing the way people use and understand tag suggestions. In addition, we highlight several emerging issues that could play an important role in the collaborative tagging for multimedia as well as other resources. While the quantitative study on the use of the suggested tags feature implies clear benefits for tag suggestions, a set of qualitative studies imply that while tag suggestions are helpful, there are multiple issues that arise and require careful consideration.