Research Methods in Mobile HCI: Trends and Opportunities

In considering what to study in HCI, we argue that there is no lack of research breadth in HCI: it could be argued that very few topics within HCI do not receive enough attention. However, in this paper we question the way research has been conducted within the HCI community, and propose a new ethos for evaluating research within our field. Our community should consider as valuable research outcomes tools, data or theory. In light of this, we describe a platform we have developed that brings together tools, data and theory in the context of mobile devices.

Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, 2008

1998

The turn of this century marked an increased focus on mobile usability studies for research in the field of Human Computer Interaction. Such studies offer practitioners the needed insight to deliver usable mobile products and services adopted by consumers at increasing rates contributing to a $20 billion industry. Scholars also benefit by identifying new questions that need to be addressed, thereby enriching our understanding of this dynamic domain within HCI. A challenge for both of these groups exists in that many scholars define and operationalize usability differently. This paper presents a roadmap for future usability research that consists of two parts. First, a framework is adapted for the taxonomy of empirical mobile usability studies. Second, results of the qualitative review of 45 empirical mobile usability studies include: i) the contextual factors studied; ii) the core and peripheral usability dimensions measured; and iii) key findings. Expected contributions of the completed research are also outlined.

2005

Mobile devices, applications and services have become integrated into people's daily lives on a personal and professional level. Although traditional research methods are being used to understand the use of mobile devices and applications, methodological challenges still exist. Researchers have responded to these challenges in a range of ways, with an emphasis on developing methods that enable new ways of accessing, making available and collecting, data about mobile technology use. This paper identifies, defines, describes and presents, a preliminary framework for understanding the methodological responses emerging in current Mobile Human Computer Interaction (Mobile HCI) research.

Culture has various definitions, but regardless of discussions about its concrete definition, the importance of cultural differences has been recognized in areas such as Human Computer Interaction (HCI). In the context of mobile HCI, this importance can be viewed from various perspectives such as usability and ergonomics, business advantages and social sustainability. This study investigated mobile HCI research in order to identify common patterns of approaches, tools, methods, results and findings in current research and then compared the strength of each pattern in both mobile HCI and HCI. After a discussion concerning some problematic issues in the current literature in relation to the research questions, target points for further research in mobile HCI are itemized in the conclusion.

2010

Abstract. Human Computer Interaction has been largely focused on the design, implementation and evaluation of productivity software. Yet many recent 'killer apps' are not about productivity, but arise from an amorphous area somewhat characterized as social, ubiquitous and/or domestic computing. The problem is that the methods developed within HCI do not fit this new genre. We need to develop new ways to do requirements analysis, design, and evaluation.

2000

The widespread use of mobile devices, like smart phones and PDAs, in domains like mobile work, mobile learning, and emergency services envisions a growing market for new applications. Such applications re- quire usability testing with particular focus on constantly changing environments and interactions. Desktop ap- plications are usually tested in laboratory environments in order to restrict influencing factors during the

2007

Welcome to the joint MobileHCI 2007 workshop of “Mobile Interaction with the Real World”(MIRW 2007) and “HCI in Mobile Guides”(MGuides 2007). We accepted 13 papers that will be presented within the workshop. We hope that the union of these two individual yet complementary topics will provide interesting insights for the combined audiences and create a lively discussion.

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Proceedings of the 1st European Workshop on HCI Design and Evaluation

We present a methodological framework aiming at the support of HCI practitioners and researchers in selecting and applying the most appropriate combination of HCI methods for particular problems. We highlight the need for a clear and effective overview of methods and provide further discussion on possible extensions that can support recent trends and needs, such as the focus on specific application domains.

The mobile phone can be seen as the only truly ubiquitous computing platform today. Because of this, the mobile environment will serve as a spring board on which many new ubiquitous services will grow. This paper raises a number of questions which we think need to be addressed in the process of designing, implementing and testing such services. Apart from helping in the process of creating new, useful and usable services, we hope to generate a critical dialog about issues that must be solved at the design stage before any real implementation actually occurs. It is our hope that through the dialog these issues will be focused on in a critical manner and some of the questions might be answered, others edited and new questions might arise.

2008

Enabling seamless and intuitive interaction is a long cherished objective of the HCI community. In classic desktop situations, the constituent processes have been studied over a long period of time and a mature understanding of the essential components has been obtained leading to broad agreement on bestpractice principles and what constitutes good design. Though this endeavour has been of incalculable benefit, recent patterns of computer usage raise a new series of challenges that must be addressed.

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services - MobileHCI '09, 2009

The Mobile HCI community is moving beyond the interaction between a single user and her mobile device taking the users environment into account. Mobile interaction with the real world concentrates on using mobile devices as tools to interact with real world objects. This workshop continues the successful mobile interaction with the real world workshops 2006 and 2007. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to) mobile interaction with the real world; mobile devices as user interfaces for terminals; and Frameworks, middleware and APIs for the development of applications that take mobile interactions with the real world into account. The workshop combines technical presentations with the presentation of prototypes and focused discussions to drive interaction between participants.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2009

We present the extensions to a software framework which supports the construction and evaluation of mixed-fidelity prototypes for mobile devices. The framework is available for desktop and mobile devices and allows designers and users to test the prototypes on actual devices. Additionally, the extensions aim at allowing designers to gather usage information, both passively and actively, tailoring the used techniques to users or project's goals. It supports contextual and ubiquitous evaluation also including in-situ prototyping and participatory design on-the-go. We address the evaluation's features and their contribution to the field of mobile interaction design, presenting real-life case studies and achieved results.