Eyal Eshet, Åbo Akademi University: Contextual considerations for mobile situations - insights from academic explorations

1. Contextual Considerations for
Mobile Situations
Eyal Eshet
TUCS
Department of IT
Åbo Akademi
eyal.eshet@abo.fi
Yritystä kehiin
26.02.2014

2. Contents
§ Background
§ Context matters
§ Contextual considerations

3. BACKGROUND

4. Background
§
§
§
§
Grew up in a kibbutz in Israel
Moved to Finland on 2001
Tradenomi@Turun AMK, KTM@ÅA
Software designer

5. Background
Nörttien valtakunta
Miksi
korkeateknologiatuotteet
saavat meidät sekaisin ja
kuinka palauttaa järki

6. Current
§ Research on mobile application development
– Design practice in organizations
• UX, interaction design, strategic management
– Context
§ Aim to graduate this year J

7. CONTEXT MATTERS

10. What is Design?
Google

11. Design
Convert an undesired
situation into a desired
one"
Simon, 1969"

12. Design
Design is about creating
a fit between form and
context"
Alexander, 1964"

13. Design
§ Design is about creating a fit between form
and context
– Form: the solution, part of the world over
which we have control and decide to shape
– Context: the problem, anything in the world
that puts demands on the form
– Fit: mutual acceptability between the two

14. ISO 9241-210:
Human-centered design for interactive systems
Plan
Solution meets
requirements
Understand and specify
the context of use
Iterate, where appropriate
Evaluate design against
requirements
Specify requirements
Produce design solutions

15. Context matters
§ Better-informed design decisions à more
likely to meet user expectations
§ Designers need implicit understanding of the
context (at least to some extent)
– and … how it affects the design

16. Context matters, but…
§ Context is complex and in most cases obscure
§ Nearly impossible to have a complete
description of the demands made by the
context

17. Mobile shift
§ Context in stationary computing
– Fairly stable, homogenous, predictable
§ Context in mobile computing
– Dynamic, heterogeneous, unpredictable
– Elimination of time and space restrictions

18. Mobile shift
Elimination of time and space restrictions
§ Changes the framework in which society is lived
§ Emphasize the importance of temporal, spatial,
and social aspects and their interrelation
§ Call for studies of users in actual contexts of use

19. Mobile strong characteristics
§ Mobile as 1st personal mass media
– Print, recordings, cinema, radio, TV, Internet
§ Always carried
§ Always connected
§ Built-in payment system
§ Available at the point of creative inspiration
§ Most accurate audience measurement
§ Captures the social context of media consumption
§ Enables augmented reality
Ahonen, 2011

20. Mobile
http://www.kpcb.com/insights/2013-internet-trends

21. CONTEXTUAL
CONSIDERATIONS

22. Context - properties
§ Emergent: actively arises in the course of the
activity
§ Relational: relevance to particular activity and
circumstances
§ Personal: relates to how one makes sense of
the world
§ Evolving: experienced over time
– Longitudinal observation of factors that affect the
holistic user experience

23. Emergent, relational, personal
Individuals
Places
Activities

24. or that impacts the user experience as illustrated in Figure 2. People’s expectations from
ertain device lead to the perception of the device. An increasing list of factors which
y have an influence on the perceptions by people, in which Hiltunen et al. (2002)
Evolving - UX
mmarized into five main groups: utility, usability, availability, aesthetics, and offline
es (e.g. company brand, back-end processes). Expectations and perceptions eventually
ate interpretations of the device and a variety of emotions that form the user experience,
ch further impact future expectations. Hence, user experience is about designing an
fact to match with, or exceed beyond, user expectations.
Expectations
Perceptions
Directs
Directs
Information
Gathering
Utility
Usability
Availability
Aesthetics
Produces
Affects
User Experience
Offline Issues
Forms
Interpretations
Figure 2: Expectations drive the user experience (Hiltunen et al. 2002, p. 14)
Hiltunen et al. 2002
Roto et al. 2011

25. Mobile context - components
§ Users
– Goals, skills, motivation
§ Task-related
– Frequency, duration, dependencies
§ Technology
– SW, HW, materials
§ Physical context
– Spatial location, light, sound, motion
§ Social context
– Collaboration, sharing
§ Information context
– AR, interoperability
§ Temporal context
– Time, hurrying, before and after usage

26. Temporal context
Fragmentarians
§ Momentary use sessions (e.g. news, weather)
§ Short use + small screen à few, well focused
tasks
§ Temporal considerations
– Time – of day, week, holiday, etc.
– Actions expected before and after usage
– Time related states – hurrying, waiting
– Save time vs. waste time
– Frequent vs. one-time
– Synchronous vs. asynchronous

27. Spatial context
Context-awareness
§ Uses context characteristics to provide relevant
information and services to the user
§ Partly addresses the emergent property
§ Factual data: location, time, light, device
§ Opportunities
– Presentation of information and services
– Automatic execution of services
– Tagging information to support later retrieval
§ Common activities and their relation to places

28. Task-related context
One eye, one thumb
§ Selective attention due to multitasking with the
real world
– Public space in the background
– Interruptions switch user attention
§ Size and location of interactive elements
§ Consume vs. produce information
§ Goal- vs. action-related tasks
§ Static vs. dynamic activities

29. Social context
Chosen over chance socialness
§ Mobile phone strengthen the most intimate personal
relationships in individual life
§ “Pacifier for adults” – reduces feelings of loneliness and
vulnerability
– Sharing of moments
§ People in the social circle are more likely to influence the
use than those in the proximity à develop dependency
on them
– Help in unpredictable or new situations
§ Less planning and scheduling, more spontaneous and adhoc actions based on current whims
– Collaboration, coordination of actions

30. Information context
Content first, navigation second
§ People want quick answers to questions
§ Time and screen space are precious assets
– Get straight to the content
– Information needs

31. Technological context
Cross-channel user experience
§ Multiple channels for users to interact
– TV, Web, mobile, tablet, IM, physical office
– Second screen solutions (e.g. YouTube pair)
§ Interoperability between different mediums
§ Dependencies
§ Understand common activities for each channel
– Each channel has unique strengths and specific
contextual considerations
– Customer journey / context mapping

32. Tesler’s Law
Conservation of complexity
§ Some complexity is inherent in every process
§ There is a point beyond which you cant
simplify the process any further – you can only
move the inherent complexity from one place
to another
– Human vs. system
§ E.g. email, mobile payment

33. TS 4.2.2014

34. Kiitos!