Today I read a paper titled “A Longitudinal Study of Non-Voice Mobile Phone Usage by Teens from an Underserved Urban Community”
The abstract is:
We report a user study of over four months on the non-voice usage of mobile phones by teens from an underserved urban community in the USA where a community-wide, open-access Wi-Fi network exists
We instrumented the phones to record quantitative information regarding their usage and location in a privacy-respecting manner
We conducted focus group meetings and interviewed participants regularly for qualitative data
We present our findings on what applications our participants used and how their usage changed over time
The findings highlight the challenges to evaluating the usability of mobile systems and the value of long-term methodologies
Based on our findings, we analyze the unique values of mobile phones, as a platform technology
Our study shows that the usage is highly mobile, location-dependent, and serves multiple social purposes for the participants
Furthermore, we present concrete findings on how to perform and analyze similar user studies on mobile phones, including four contributing factors to usage evolution, and provide guidelines for their design and evaluation