Work or leisure? Designing a user-centered approach for researching activity “in the wild”

Abstract

Mobile devices have conquered nearly all parts of the daily life. These devices support their owners in specific situations, both at work and in leisure contexts, and therefore make it increasingly difficult to keep work and private life separated. Examining the practices around the use of mobile technology has become a topic of some interest as issues around ''work-life balance'' emerge. Although the field of HCI provides different approaches for capturing people's activities in situ, we will show that an additional value can be obtained from a consideration of the ''situated'' view of contextuality, one which incorporates concerns of privacy and which identifies the reasons people might have for long-term user participation in this kind of study. Despite the undoubted sophistication of existing platforms, the issue of how to provide for dynamic adjustment to meet emerging research questions over time remains challenging. In this paper, we examine how one might approach the design of an observation environment that includes methods for understanding the way of how users reason about research, based upon the context they find themselves in. We have developed a research framework called ''PartS,'' which captures in situ information about the individual as well as his/her (work/personal) context and offers functionality for collaborative discussions about the information collected. Based on its evaluation, we outline six lessons that need to be considered when designing a study for capturing the subjective context and related activities from an individual user's as well as a researcher's perspective.

End-User Development in Social Psychology Research: Factors for Adoption

“…Allowing researchers to directly prompt lapsing participants, and participants to report issues to researchers, has been identified as useful for studies in individuals with mental illness, for example [20]. Participatory sensing literature suggests that feedback from researchers could act as a non-monetary incentive mechanism, motivating participants as active contributors to a study [21]. Indeed, employing participatory design as part of an ESM app could enable researchers to immediately address study design issues through direct participant feedback [22].…”

“…PartS additionally provides a visual interface for specifying objective context triggers. [34] Ohmage [35] Sensus [36] PartS [21] 2) Subjective Context: None of the tools surveyed allow for subjective context triggering, such as performing actions that are contingent on participants' responses to surveys. Such functionality would be necessary in order to provide tailored intervention feedback to participants.…”

CAUX Tool for Supporting Diary Studies

“…Brandt proposed a "snippet-based" diary collection technique [5], and Karen also used this technique to study mobile needs which can not ensure the effectiveness of user diarie s [6]. Benjamin proposed an application called "Storytelling" that allows users to recall according to the early entries [7], Chang used a tool called "Catch Note" to collect diary [8], Ludwig summarizes the advantages of the traditional diary method [9]. However, these diary tools are still in developing stage, and they still have some shortcomings: the first is that users often forget to record the diary.…”

Personal artifact ecologies in the context of mobile knowledge workers

“…Despite insights being generated about the mediational roles played by ICTs, these studies, with few exceptions (e.g., Oulasvirta & Sumari, 2007;Rossitto et al, 2014) tend to dwell on the relationship between the use of isolated technologies and mobile work practices. For example, many investigate how the use of mobile devices underlies the mobility of work (e.g., Axtell, Hislop, & Whittaker, 2008;Beurer-Zuellig & Meckel, 2008;Brown & O'Hara, 2003;Hislop & Axtell, 2011;Ludwig, Dax, Pipek, & Randall, 2016;Perry, 2007;Väätäjä, 2012), which may gloss over the multiplicity of technologies used in mobile work and the activities that take place across technologies. The vast majority of mobile workers-and workers in general-employ suites of devices, tools, and technologies in their daily work (de Carvalho et al, 2011;Rossitto et al, 2014).…”