Mobile communications: understanding users, adoption, and design

ABSTRACT

Mobile telephony adoption is on the rise, with industry projections suggesting that wireless subscribers will reach 1 billion worldwide by 2002 [3]. Recent technological innovations have also dramatically enhanced the capabilities of the wireless telephone [8]. No longer restricted to voice communications, wireless devices are now also able to transmit and manipulate data. Leveraging the power of these new technologies, various business sectors are working together to offer a wide array of services, including voice communications, short messaging, information services, web surfing, location-based services, and e-commerce. Each sector is looking for the next "killer application," yet we are still learning about people's information and communication needs while "on the go" [9, 10, 11]. Additionally, it is difficult to anticipate what new possibilities or challenges are created for the user upon the introduction of these new computational capabilities. An understanding of these issues is critical to the CHI community's ability to produce good technology -- technology that is innovative, useful, usable, and profitable.

REFERENCES

• 1: Brewster, S. (ed.) (August 1999). Second Workshop on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices. Edinburgh, Scotland. Available at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/mobile99/
• 2: Broersma, M. (July 18, 2000). "'Mobile Web' launches in US - without WAP." ZD Net UK News, http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/28/ns-16689.html.
• 3: Cahners In-Stat Group (May 2000). "Cellular Market Goes Ballistic, '00 Subscriber Forecast." Report GW00-04SU.
• 4: Harper, R. (April, 2000) Workshop on Wireless World: Social, Cultural and Interactional Issues in Mobile Communications and Computing. Surrey, England. CFP Available at http://www.surrey.ac.uk/dwrc/wireless.html
• 5: Johnson, C. (ed.) (May 1998). Proceedings of the First Workshop on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices, Glasgow, Scotland. CFP Available at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/papers/mobile/HCIMD1.html
• 6: James E. Katz , Mark A. Aakhus, Perpetual contact: mobile communication, private talk, public performance, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2002
• 7: Ling, R. (1996)."'One can talk about common manners!': the use of mobile telephones in inappropriate situations." Report 32/96, Telenor Research & Dev.
• 8: Meg McGinity, Staying connected: flying wireless, with a net, Communications of the ACM, v.42 n.12, p.19-21, Dec. 1999 [doi>10.1145/322796.322801]
• 9: O'Hara, K., Perry, M., Sellen, A, & Brown, B. (2000). "Exploring the relationship between mobile phone and document use during business travel." Proceedings of the Wireless World: Social, Cultural and Interactional Issues in Mobile Communications and Computing Workshop,, Surrey, England.
• 10: 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]
• 11: Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, K. & Ruuska, S. (1999). "Designing Mobile Phones and Communications at Nokia", in E. Bergman (Ed.) Information Appliances and Beyond: Interaction Design for Consumer Products, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, CA.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.4 Parallel Architectures
          Subjects: Mobile processors

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.3 Other Architecture Styles
          Subjects: Cellular architecture (e.g., mobile)

  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Human Factors