During this time of rapid adoption of mobile web technology, we have experienced many changes in our life. This thesis gives weight to how new communication experiences influences on the ways people perceive, behave and construct their social network. Through contextual inquiry, we found that current mobile blogging activities have enhanced people’s social life and created new type of communication. People expect that future mobile communication can provide a rich and diverse mobile life.
We recruited our informants according to their blogs fell into quadrant I of Krishnamurthy’s classification of blogs, a type also known as ‘online diaries’. In this contextual inquiry, we observed that users’ blogging purposes are similar to Nardi et al’s results, including recording life events, announcements of recent situations, sharing experience, and gathering information, release of emotional tensions, expressing opinions to influence others, and seeking others’
feedback.
We found that blogging is the content-depended, and limited interactive characteristic of users’ current experience. The “intermediate” characteristics of blogs make them attractive to users. (Herring, 2004) Blogging is as much about writing as reading, as much about talking as listening. Blogs allowed users to experience social interaction while giving them control over the commentary. Users also try to maintain a delicate balance between satisfying themselves and their readers with their post content. (Gumbrecht, 2004)
Our findings are used to discovery possibilities of future mobile communication through design process. We found four communication characteristics existed in the present blogging activity: personal space, self-expression, life record, and social extension. Blogs, web-based communication platforms, act as personal spaces, enables people to share experiences, to discuss a wide range of topics, and most importantly to make and receive comments. Blogging enables people to get to know another group of people and to seek out affiliation, companionship, and support. People need to record more detail events happened in mobile context and to share what
they saw and heard on their blogs effectively. At that time people can use blogs to make social connection with large or dispersed groups of people.
For communication purpose, there are some similarities between mobile devices and blogs.
People sort out different contact groups according to the level of intimacy on mobile devices;
they also create different subjective blogs for each different group. Furthermore, Mobile devices are physical communication channels; and blogs are virtual communication platforms. Based on our observation on blogging experience in mobile context, we claim that good experience that blogs bring people should convert into the new directions of future communication. Future mobile devices should coordinate the physical space of the mobile user and the virtual space of the conversation to create new communication experience.
Therefore, we proposed three design guidelines for reference: mobile devices must show its user’s current identity, mobile devices must enhance users’ social relationships, and mobile devices must promote users to communicate with others actively. These design guidelines can be generally applied to the design of mobile devices. In addition to basic communication functions, mobile devices can do more on expanding people’s social interaction, establishing diverse identities of selfhood, even more on encouraging people to express themselves with positive attitude towards interpersonal relationship. It is our hope that documentation of users’ existing communication experience supports new theoretical insights, and helps ground the design and users’ needs of future mobile communication.
The contextual inquiry method is mainly qualitative in its nature of data gathering and analysis.
Beyer and Holtzblatt suggest observing 15 to 20 people, but that can be prohibitive because of the amount of interview and analysis time it requires. Kuniavsky recommend that 5 to 8 potential users should be enough to give researchers a pretty good idea of how a big chunk of the target users blog. As time and resources are limited, we only have 6 users match our recruiting criteria.
Users’ information about blogging experience in mobile context is limited. We more and different users can be added later on to create a more complete picture of the users’ needs and requirements for the mobile communication.
blogging proliferates, more new communication experiences will derive from versatile blogging activities adopted by people. The related services of combining mobile devices with blogging increase recently. In this thesis, we only discuss the existing phenomenon that individual blogging behaviors made a great impact on personal communication and social network. Our research is a step in the direction of Taiwan user’s communication experiences within the blogging events. Based on our findings, further research on various blogging types, like group blogging, can clarify the association of communication experience and social interaction within mobile environment.
REFERENCE
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[7] Lamming, M., Eldridge, M., and Flynn, M., et al., “Providing access to any document, any time, anywhere,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (March 2000): pp 322–
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[8] Tokuhisa, S., Kotabe, T., and Inakage, M. “atMOS: Self Expression Movie Generating System for 3G Mobile Communication”, MUM 2004, Maryland, USA, October, 2004.
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[10] Mark W. “Log your life via your phone,” BBC NEWS, UK, 10 March, 2004
[11] Blood, R. “We've got blog” in How Weblogs are changing our culture, ed. John Rodzvilla (Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 2002), pp 7-16.
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<http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/6497/print> (18 Mar. 2005).
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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moblog><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audioblogging> (11 Jun.
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[14] Joi Ito, “A Chronology of Articles, Events and Resources about Moblogging”,
<http://joiwiki.ito.com/joiwiki/?moblog> (11 Jun. 2005)
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[16] Ling R, Yttri B. “Nobody sits at home and waits for the telephone to ring: micro and hyper-coordination through the use of the mobile telephone,” Technical Report 30/99, Telenor Research
& Development, Norway, 1999.
[17] Ling R. “One can talk about common manners: the use of mobile telephones in inappropriate situations,” Technical Report 32/96, Telenor Research & Development, Norway, 1996.
[18] Krishnamurthy, S. “The Multidimensionality of Blog Conversations,” Internet Research 3.0, Maastricht, the Netherlands, October, 2002.
[19] Herring, S., Scheidt, L., Bonus, S., et al., “Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs,” Proceedings 37th Annual HICSS Conference, Big Island, Hawaii, January, 2004.
[20] Kumar, R., Novak, J., Raghavan, P. et al., “Structure and Revolution of Blogspace,”
Communications of the ACM (December 2004): pp.35-39.
[21] Gumbrecht, M.,”Blogs as “Protected Space”,” Presented at the Workshop on the
Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis, and Dynamics: WWW 2004, ACM Press, New York, 2004.
[22] Schiano, D.J., Nardi, B.A., Gumbrecht, M., etc. “Blogging by the Rest of Us, “CHI 2004, Vienna, Austria, April, 2004, pp1143-1146.
[23] Nardi, B.A., Schiano, D.J., Gumbrecht, M., etc. "I'm Blogging This” A Closer Look at Why People Blog”, Communications of the ACM (December 2004)
[24] Nardi, B., Schiano, D., Gumbrecht, M. “Blogging as Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary?”, CSCW’04, Chicago, Illinois, USA, November, 2004, pp 222-231.
[25] Kuniavsky, M., Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research (Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, 2003), pp 160-161.
[26] Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K., Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, 1998), p 151.
[27] Raven, M.E., and Flanders, A., “Using Contextual Inquiry to Learn about Your Audiences,”
ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation (February 1996), pp 2-4.
[28] Holtzblatt, K. and Jones, S., “Contextual Inquiry: A Participatory Technique for System Design,” in Participatory Design: Principles and Practice, ed. Namioka, A. and Schuler, D., (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Pub, 1993)
Appendix A: The Reasearch Plan for Contextual Inquiry (Chinese)
研究計畫 個人日誌分享經驗探討
修改時間：2005/1/18 王秀娟 壹、 目的
本研究的目標在收集使用者透過新興溝通平台－Blog（部落格、博客）進行分享生活、交流意 見、發布想法等活動的經驗，並深入了解溝通與分享在Bloggers 生活中所扮演的角色，以及使用者 對於未來行動溝通工具的需求。
貳、研究問題
主要的研究問題可分為二個層次：
一、 瞭解受訪者Blog 之分享行為以及態度，內容包含：
寫Blog 的習慣（場所、議題、對象、內容）。
使用者曾經使用過的Blog 服務之使用經驗。
透過Blog 分享生活的「苦痛」與「愉悅」經驗。
Blog 在社交網絡中的角色與關係（互相分享生活的動機與方法）。
二、 瞭解受訪者對於「溝通」的期望，內容包含：
對於溝通工具的使用頻率及使用上所遭遇的困難（Blog, IM, email, phone, and webpages）。
了解現有的溝通模式；同時也了解對於未來狀況的期許。
理想中溝通服務或溝通產品應具有的特點。
参、研究方法
本研究將以脈絡探索（Contextual Inquiry）的研究方法進行受訪者使用 Blog 分享生活經驗的調 查。針對不同的受訪者，調查地點可能會是家中書房或學校宿舍等他們主要使用電腦Blogging 的場 合。每一場脈絡訪談皆包含三個部分：
第一部份簡介及暖場，簡單介紹本此訪談目的與流程，請求受訪者同意架設錄影設備並解釋每 張表格的用途，如：訪談同意暨保密協約、受訪者基本資料表等。
第二部份廣泛瞭解使用者Blog 的觀點、回溯使用背景與經驗。
第三部分為此次訪談活動中的主要部分，採用脈絡探索方法（Contextual Inquiry）來觀察受訪 者使用Blog 分享生活的情形，記錄下旁白註解作為訪談依據。在受訪者整個觀察活動中，研 究人員盡量不打斷受訪者發言，但是適當詢問受訪者相關的問題，以釐清受訪者的使用行為與 意圖。
在實地登門拜訪前一個月，持續閱讀受訪者的Blog 並做觀察記錄，記錄內容包含 Blog 裡文章分
Appendix B: The Reasearch Script for Contextual Inquiry (Chinese)
實地訪談流程與執行事項
修改時間：2005/3/8 王秀娟 壹、召開觀察說明會
一、角色說明：
（1）主要提問人提問，其他人若有問題亦於訪談最後階段提出。
（2）一人負責全程筆記（除記錄對話內容外，需紀錄受訪者表情、情緒與特殊行為或習慣），並 負責架設攝影機與用數位相機拍照。
（3）所有研究人員需熟讀研究計畫與提問腳本。
二、詢問問題說明：
（1）訪談過程由主提問人與受訪者來共同主導議題，盡量不要打斷受訪者的回應與動作。
（2）盡可能避免引導受訪者。
（3）盡量問開放式的問題，避免發問連受訪者都無法回答的問題。
（4）避免顯示任何可能會讓受訪者感到尷尬或覺得愚蠢的表情或動作。
三、實地研究的目的：
（1）從觀察中學習，盡量鉅細靡遺地觀察受訪者家中的物品與環境。
（2）透過受訪者陳述意見的方式、用語以及所做的行為來瞭解受訪者。
（3）廣泛地觀察任何有關分享行為的事物而不只侷限在 Blog，例如：實體手札、手機等行動產 品…。
四、研究計畫與提問腳本：
（1）期望整個脈絡探索過程依據腳本來進行。
（2）若有一些有趣的突發問題或發現，可利用最後五分鐘的時間提出。
貳、準備事項
訪談同意暨保密協約 受訪者基本資料表 小禮物
學生證或名片（需顯示為交大學生）
數位相機
DV 攝影機、tapes、三腳架 隨身碟
提問腳本（攜帶四份）
參、進行觀察流程（討論內容詳見提問腳本）：整個訪問過程預計共花費1.5 小時，詳細時間分配如下：
一、開頭介紹與攝影機架設 (10 mins)
二、廣泛瞭解使用者Blog 的使用背景與經驗。 (25 mins)
三、深度訪談，透過Blog 進行分享、溝通的動機與企圖 (45 mins) 四、詢問臨時想到的問題或先前未考慮的問題 (5 mins)
五、結尾 (5 mins)
肆、召開觀察後討論會（討論重點詳見提問腳本）
提問腳本 一、開頭介紹與攝影機架設 (10 mins)
非常謝謝您接受我們的訪談活動。這個活動的目的是想請您談談使用Blog、以及分享生活的經驗，您的 寶貴意見將會是未來進行研究時的重要參考依據。過程中會進行錄影錄音或是拍攝照片，這是方便日後 分析資料時使用，您有權力可以檢視所有的拍攝內容，同時也請您放心，所有研究結果僅供學術研究參 考，不會對外公開所有受訪者資料的。當然，在訪談過程中，您可以在任何時間或是任何情況下要求暫 停或是停止訪談喔!
請讓我解釋一下接下來的流程。整個訪談過程大約一個小時半，分成兩個部份：
階段一：請您跟我們廣泛聊聊關於上網經驗、怎麼得知blog、使用 blog 過程的經驗。
階段二：針對blog 的動機、跟我們談談您透過 blog 分享生活的經驗。分享過程中，請盡量舉您親身的 經歷跟我們分享喔!
• 詢問受訪者是否有任何要求需要我們配合（例如，因為我們的來訪所造成的影響或壓力需要我們改 進的地方）。
• 簽署保密協定。
• 調整觀察與訪談的座位。
• 架設攝影機與相機。
• 盡量減少彼此的疏離感 (face to face, eye contact) 。
二、廣泛瞭解使用者 Blog 的使用背景與經驗。 (25 mins) 1.受訪者 Blog 使用背景：
（1）網路使用經驗： 右邊空白處以供其他研究人員作記
• 每天平均上網的時數約個小時？
（2）開始 Blog 的原因：
• 當初如何開始接觸 Blog 的？
• 你為何會想要擁有自己的 Blog？
目前你有幾個Blog 呢?
有沒有其他類似的發布自己消息的地方?
（新聞台、電子報、個人網站…）
• 讓你持續讀寫 Blog 的原因為何？
（3）Blog 讀寫經驗：
• 你讀 Blog 多久了？平均一天大概花幾個小時在讀
• 你讀 Blog 多久了？平均一天大概花幾個小時在讀