Exploring user contexts - a qualitative study of everyday activities

Abstract

The physical, social, and computational context of people affect their choice of activity, thus also their need for and use of mobile services. It is quite easy to find likely examples of situations where this would be true. For example, a person who is standing on a subway station on the way home from work, waiting for a train that does not appear to be on time, is more likely to feel a need for a subway time table or traffic information than someone who is driving a car. To what degree does context matter is however not easy to answer precisely. Which context parameters matter for which activities, and in which combinations? This report describes a study with the aim to draw a map of user activities and context parameters, as well as combinations of context parameters. The study is based on a qualitative method with only 10 study participants, and thus, no precise answers can be given to any question regarding which context parameters matter more than others when trying to predict what user activity is needed the most for every given situation. However, the intention is that the report will assist in determining which context parameters and user activities are the most interesting to take a closer look at.