Mobile phone usage of young adults: the impact of motivational factors

ABSTRACT

To increase marketability in a competitive and technologically evolving market designers are compelled to add new features to mobile phones. This often leads to 'featuritis' with hit-and-miss success rates. Our research goal is to find a more informed point of departure for feature addition activities that will improve design and maximise return on investment. We argue that a human motivational factor focus could provide a solid grounding for judging whether features are likely to be used, or not. In this paper we address the motivational factors that underlie mobile phone use by young adults aged between 18 and 30. We consider models for motivational factors from psychology and consumer science, as well as mobile phone usage space models, including the mobile phone usage space model (MUSM). MUSM proposes linking usage spaces to motivational factors, but does not explicitly investigate the mapping of features to the identified usage spaces. In this paper we investigate the features associated with individual MUSM usage spaces as well as the ranking of the usage spaces for our specific target group.

REFERENCES

• 1: Alahatuha, P., Ahola, J., Hakala, H.: Mobilizing business applications: a survey about the opportunities and challenges of mobile business applications and services in Finland. Technology Review of Tekes. 167/2005 (2005), 1--54.
• 2: Chung, K. H.: A Markov Chain Model of Human Needs: An Extension of Maslow's Need Theory. Academy of Management Journal. 12(2) (1969), 223--234.
• 3: Croasmun, J.: Are Ergonomists Really Consulted in Mobile Phone Design? Ergoweb. July 16, http://www.ergoweb.com/news/ (2004).
• 4: Deci, E. L., Ryan, R. M.: The "What" and 'Why" of Goal pursuits: Human Needs and Self-Determination of Behaviour. Psychological Inquiry. 11(4) (2000), 227--268.
• 5: Deckers, L.: Motivation: Biological, Psychological, and Environmental. Second ed. Allyn & Bacon, (2005).
• 6: Jonathan Donner, Microentrepreneurs and Mobiles: An Exploration of the Uses of Mobile Phones by Small Business Owners in Rwanda, Information Technologies and International Development, v.2 n.1, p.1-22, September 2004 [doi>10.1162/1544752043971198]
• 7: Sung H. Han , Kwang J. Kim , Myung H. Yun , Sang W. Hong , Jongseo Kim, Identifying mobile phone design features critical to user satisfaction, Human Factors in Ergonomics & Manufacturing, v.14 n.1, p.15-29, January 2004 [doi>10.1002/hfm.v14:1]
• 8: Herzberg, F.: One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review. 46(1) (1968), 53--62.
• 9: Institute for Manufacturing: Innovation and Design Management. (2006) {cited 2006 2006/10/04}; Available from: http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/ctm/idm/tools/-definition/kano.html.
• 10: Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa , Karl Reiner Lang , Yoko Takeda , Virpi Kristiina Tuunainen, Mobile commerce at crossroads, Communications of the ACM, v.46 n.12, December 2003 [doi>10.1145/953460.953485]
• 11: Timo Jokela, When good things happen to bad products: where are the benefits of usability in the consumer appliance market?, interactions, v.11 n.6, November + December 2004 [doi>10.1145/1029036.1029050]
• 12: Kano, N., Seraku, N., Takahashi, F., Tsuji, S., Attractive quality and must-be quality. In: J. D. Hromi, (eds.): The Best on Quality. ASQC Quality Press, Milwaukee, 1996.
• 13: Kano, N., Tsuji, S., Seraku, N., Takahashi, F.: 'Miryokuteki Himshitsu to Atarimae Himshitsu' (Attractive Quality Mustbe Quality). "Hinshitsu" (Quality), Japan Society for Quality Control. 14(2) (1984), 147.
• 14: Kiljander, H.: Evolution and Usability of Mobile Phone Interaction Styles. Thesis, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, 2004.
• 15: Kleijnen, M., Wetzels, M., De Ruyter, K.: Consumer acceptance of wireless finance. Journal of Financial Services Marketing. 8(3) (2004), 206--217.
• 16: Hyosun Stella Kwon, A Test of the Technology Acceptance Model: The Case of Cellular Telephone AdoptionLaku Chidambaram, Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences-Volume 1, p.1023, January 04-07, 2000
• 17: Lindgren, H. C.: An introduction to Social Psychology. second ed. John Wiley & Sons, New York, (1969).
• 18: Ling, C., Hwang, W., Users satisfaction with five new cell phone features. In: C. Stephanidis, (eds.): HCI International - 11th international Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 2005.
• 19: Ling, R., Haddon, L., Mobile telephony, mobility and the coordination of everyday life. In: (eds.): Machines That Become Us. Leto, New Brunswick, NJ, 2001.
• 20: Ling, R., Yttri, B.: Nobody sits at home and waits for the telephone to ring: Micro and hyper coordination through the use of the mobile phone. Telenor Research and Development, Kjeller, Norway, (1999).
• 21: Löfgren, M., Witell, L.: Kano's Theory of Attractive Quality and Packaging. Quality management journal. 12(3) (2005), 7--20.
• 22: Aaron Marcus , Eugene Chen, Designing the PDA of the future, interactions, v.9 n.1, p.34-44, January 2002 [doi>10.1145/503355.503356]
• 23: Maslow, A.: Motivation and Personality. Harper, New York, (1954).
• 24: Maslow, A., Lowery, R.: Towards a Psychology of Being. Third ed. Vol. Wiley & Sons. New York, (1998).
• 25: Mike Mohageg , Eric Bergman, Information appliance design at Sun Microsystems, CHI '00 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 01-06, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/633292.633331]
• 26: Norman, D. A.: The Psychology of Everyday Things. Basic Books, New York, (1988).
• 27: Leysia Palen , Marilyn Salzman , Ed Youngs, Going wireless: behavior & practice of new mobile phone users, Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.201-210, December 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/358916.358991]
• 28: Qualasvirta, A.: Grounding the innovation of future technologies. Human Technology. 1(1) (2005), 58--75.
• 29: Thecla Schiphorst, Affectionate Computing: Can We Fall in Love with a Machine?, IEEE MultiMedia, v.13 n.1, p.20-23, January 2006 [doi>10.1109/MMUL.2006.2]
• 30: Steverink, N., Lindenberg, S.: Which Social Needs Are Important for Subjective Well-Being? What Happens to Them With Aging? Psychology and Aging. 21(2) (2006), 281--290.
• 31: The Institute for Management Excellence: Basic human needs. Online Newsletter. Volume(June 1997) (1997),
• 32: Van Biljon, J., Kotze, P., Marsden, G.: Motivational needs-driven mobile phone design. Lecture Notes in Computer Science - Human Computer Interaction INTERACT 2007. LNCS 4662 (2007), 523--526.
• 33: Van Biljon, J. A.: A Model for Representing the Motivational and Cultural Factors that Influence Mobile Phone Usage Variety. PhD Thesis, School of Computing, University of South Africa, Pretoria, 2007.
• 34: Ziefle, M., Bay, S., Mental Models of a cellular phone menu. Comparing older and younger novice users. In: S. Brewster and M. Dunlop, (eds.): Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Mobile Human-Computer Interaction --- MobileHCI 2004. Springer, Berlin, 2004, 25--37.
• 35: Ziefle, M., Bay, S.: The Complexity of Navigation Keys in Cellular Phones and their Effects on Performance of Teenagers and Older Adult Phone Users. In HCI International 11th international conference on Human-Computer Interaction. 2005. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.m Miscellaneous

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
mobile phone features, mobile phone usage, motivational factors