The document analyzes mobile application usage data collected from over 4,000 users over 127 days using an "App Sensor" tool. Some key findings: 1. Average app usage time is 71.56 seconds per launch and 59.23 minutes per day. Usage varies by app category and time of day. 2. App usage follows circadian rhythms, with peaks during the day and longer usage sessions at night. Communication apps are most common during the day while games peak at night. 3. 73% of app usage sessions involve only one app. The most common first app in usage chains is communication apps.

1. Falling Asleep with Facebook, Angry Birds
and Kindle — A Large-Scale Study on
Mobile Application Usage
Matthias Böhmer
Brent Hecht
Johannes Schöning
Antonio Krüger
Gernot Bauer
MobileHCI 2011
Stockholm, Sweden

2. Mobile phones evolved
from communication devices...

3. ... to devices supporting various tasks.

4. Kray and Rohs, 2007; Satyanarayanan, 2005

6. How do people use their apps?

7. Related Work
Girardello and Michahellis, 2009
McMillan et al., 2010 this paper
Number of users
Henze et al., 2011
Duration
Verkasalo, 2009
Demieux and Losquin, 2005
Froehlich et al., 2007
Number of apps

8. # App Sensor

9. being used
open close
not being used
install uninstall
update
App Lifecycle

10. being used
open close
not being used
App Lifecycle

11. Idea of App Sensor
# Virtual sensor
# Measuring app usage
- When did user launch an app?
- For how long did user use an app?

12. Deployment of App Sensor
# Implementation within appazaar*
- Context-aware recommender system
- Suggests apps to users
- Uses App Sensor to inform its algorithms
# 2Hz sampling rate
# Collecting additional context information
(location, time, and previously used apps)
* you will find it on the Android Market

13. Gathered data
# 4,125 users from various countries
# 22,626 apps from 20 categories (crawled from Market)
# 4.92 million data points
# 127 days

14. # Basic Findings

15. Usage time per launch (seconds)
50
100
150
200
250
300
unknown
Finance
Travel
Comm.
Product.
Shopping
Basic findings
Social
Sports
News
Settings
Browser
Entertain.
# 59.23 minutes of app usage per day
Multimedia
Comics
Games
# 71.56 seconds per app launch on average
Health
Lifestyle
Reference
# Average app usage time differs between categories
Tools
Themes
Lib. & Demos

16. # Application Usage over Time

17. App launches during course of the day
12 am
1 am
2 am
3 am
4 am
5 am
6 am
7 am
8 am
9 am
10 am
11 am
12 pm
1 pm
2 pm
3 pm
4 pm
5 pm
6 pm
7 pm
8 pm
9 pm
10 pm
11 pm
# App usage correlates with circadian circle
# During the night usage time per launch is 6 times higher

18. Probability of app launches per category
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# Type of used apps changes during the course of the day
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Figure 5.During day:app usage by category in terms of launches. Each cell value refers to the percentage of app launches d
# Hourly relative primarily communication apps
within each hour for each category. Colors are normalized by row, with green indicating each category’s maximum percentage of
and white indicating each category’s minimum. For example,heterogenous in the evening (green) and trough in the morn
# During night: scope of apps more games reach their peak

19. # Chains of App Usage

20. Categories of first apps in chains
Tools
9.2 %
Browser
7.2 %
Social
Communication 5.0 %
49.6 % Comics
4.9 %
Productivity
4.3 %
other
19.9 %
# 73% of app chains only have one app

21. Transitions
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22. # Specific App Usage

23. 12 am
1 am
2 am
3 am
4 am
5 am
6 am
7 am
8 am
9 am
10 am
11 am
12 pm
Launches of Facebook
1 pm
2 pm
3 pm
4 pm
5 pm
6 pm
7 pm
8 pm
9 pm
10 pm
# Using Facebook on mobile seems to be primarily an evening activity
11 pm
Facebook (normalized)
Basic population (normalized)

24. 12 am
1 am
2 am
3 am
4 am
5 am
6 am
7 am
8 am
9 am
10 am
11 am
12 pm
1 pm
Launches of Foursquare
2 pm
# People seem to check-in when having a meal
3 pm
4 pm
# Foursquare has peaks around lunch and dinner time 5 pm
6 pm
7 pm
8 pm
9 pm
10 pm
11 pm
Foursquare (normalized)
Basic population (normalized)

25. 12 am
1 am
2 am
3 am
4 am
5 am
6 am
7 am
8 am
9 am
10 am
Alarm
11 am
12 pm
1 pm
2 pm
Launches of ??? Clock
3 pm
4 pm
5 pm
6 pm
7 pm
8 pm
9 pm
10 pm
11 pm
# Some apps have spikes, others are used more broadly throughout the day
Alarm Clock (normalized)
Basic population (normalized)

26. # Discussion

27. Discussion
# Menus should adapt to time, location, previously used apps
# App design should incorporate apps‘ transition patterns
# App Sensor can provide additional context information
tourist using city guide shopper using shopping list

28. # Conclusion

29. Conclusion
# App Sensor: a virtual sensor for measuring app usage
# Findings based on public deployment
- App usage is approx. 1h per day and 72sec per launch
- App usage differs between categories
- There is a functional cohesion between apps
# Future Work
- Better understand how context influences app usage
- Access to anonymized data available for collaboration