Planning ahead: techniques for simplifying mobile service use

ABSTRACT

Interacting with mobile applications and services remains difficult for users because of the impact of mobility on both device capabilities and the cognitive resources of users. In this paper we explore the idea that interaction with mobile services can be made faster and more convenient if users are allowed to speculatively prepare in advance the services they wish to use and the data they will need. Essentially we propose to enable users to offset difficult interactions while mobile with a larger number of interactions conducted in the desktop environment. To illustrate the concept of offsetting we have developed a prototype we call the 'context clipboard'. Early feedback suggests that a majority (70%) of the participants are in favour of the concept and that they (80%) may be prepared to use explicit preparation behaviour to simplify future interactions. We close with our reflections on key implications for systems design and challenges for taking this work forward.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
caching, clipboard, context, mobile HCI, mobile computing, mobile internet services, offsetting interaction