DfIM Assignment 1: Reading a Research Paper

Research Area of Interest - Locative Media

Paper for Evaluation

Examining Mobile Phone Use In The Wild With Quasi-Experimentation.


The motivation for this work is for commercial (funded by Nokia Corporation) research into how users interact with mobile devices and they environment around them on the go as opposed to in a laboratory environment. One problematic issue has been that current methods are not suited for attempting to establish causal relationships between context variables and interaction. In the paper they describe an experimental method, called quasiexperiment, and apparatus for recording mobile phone usage and the environment in a mobile context.


The proposed solution for recording people’s interactions with mobile devices (in this case web browsing on a mobile phone) is to use a series of miniature cameras set up to record;
• The user’s face and eyes
• The phone display and keys
• The environment as seen from the users point of view
• The user and environment as seen by a moderator
Two of the cameras are attached to the phone, another is attached to the shoulder of the user, and the fourth is carried by the modulator disguised as a mobile phone. Images from the four different cameras are combined into one and time coded together to produce a complete record of the users interaction.


In terms of the evaluation of the proposed solution to recording mobile phone use in the wild, they conclude that their portable apparatus allowed them to gather multi-variable data from the different mobile contexts, and that no other study has captured as much data with such a wide range of variables.
They felt that their method would be suitable for other field experiments where device interaction and/or user behaviour and the environment have to be examined.
They claim to have managed to root out relevent and scientifically reliable data about user behaviour in the mobile context. So in terms of purpose they felt the research was a success.


I was persuaded of the merits of the proposed solution in that I agree that putting all 4 camera views together and having the time codes sync up would lend to you gathering all the relevent data you could get from the users interacting with the device. But I do feel that when people on the street question the users about what they are doing, this acts as an unwanted distraction and outside influence that could affect the results.


The future directions for this type of research is primarily to have more easily operated portable, light equipment to be able to record events and environmental circumstances automatically, thus minimizing the need for manual coding and time logging of data collected, which would make it less laborious and time consuming.

Because of cost constraints no portable eye tracking equipment was used in the experiments. Use of this technology in future experiments could provide useful extra data concerning eye movement and attention of the user.

The writers of the paper “hope that future work will hopefully be able to provide better and lighter-weight methodology for system developers and other practitioners to evaluate and examine their applications in the wild”. As I’ve said earlier this method of date collection would lend itself very easily to other field experiments using mobile devices.


While reading and re-reading the paper there were a few things that I didn’t understand:

• I didn’t know that quasi meant “used to show that something is almost, but not completely, the thing described”
• They didn’t explain their reasons for not telling the participants the real purpose of the experiment until the end of their participation.
• I didn’t understand what [Low Experimental Power “experiments in the world are susceptible to low power” page 13] meant.
• I didn’t understand what [The Reliability of Measures “Measures of low reliability may not register true change” page 13] meant.

Bibliography

Virpi Roto, Antti Oulasvirta, Tuulia Haikarainen, Jaana Kuorelahti, Harri Lehmuskallio, Tuomo Nyyssonen. (2004). Examining Mobile Phone Use In The Wild With Quasi-Experimentation. [online].
Available from: http://www.hiit.fi/publications/pub_files/hiit2004-1.pdf
[Accessed 15 Oct 2006]

Gaetano Borriello, Matthew Chalmers, Anthony LaMarca, Paddy Nixon. (2005). Delivering Real-World Ubiquitous Location Systems. [online].
Available from: http://www.lazowska.cs.washington.edu/gb.pdf
[Accessed 17 Oct 2006]

Anne Galloway, Carleton Matthew Ward. (2005). Locative Media As Socialising And Spatialising Practices: Learning From Archeology [online].
Available from http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/papers/galloway_ward_draft.pdf
[Accessed 17 Oct 2006]