1. From the framework of the activity theory, what are the determinative factors affecting the dynamic interaction between the smart phones and different social contexts? Is there any difference of mobile online behaviors between Taiwanese and American graduate students? What do the culture, social structure and life style impact on the habits of mobile phone usages?
2. Unlike previous research only targeting smart phones on businessmen, this study will construct new personas, such as graduate students who should be more willing to spend much time on mobile contents.
If academics and content providers could fully understand about the possible preferences of the future major consumers, it will help to create more new appropriate mobile services
3. To understand whether there is any difference in the psychophysiclogical index while consuming media content, this research will measure the subjects’ heart rate, skin conductance and facial muscle. The stimulus will include text/video, news/drama/science, and mobile/PC.
IV. Methodology
1. Social Context
Viljamma et al (2005) thought that the consumption research of mobile phones should be studied in the specific social context and consider the impacts of other media in the real world. For example, users could easily get the free newspaper in the afternoon in many cities of Finland. Therefore, it was more realistic to observe around the streets, instead of conduct survey indoors, and you will found out why few people use mobile phone to access only newspaper contents at that moment (Södergård, 2003).
Because the usages of mobile phones will be ubiquitous and anytime, it is very difficult to record the processes in detail completely (Tamminen et al, 2004). There are different methods to record field observation of mobile phone usages. For example, Nokia research center had done a study of comparing
participants were recorded by shadowing video, pictures or diaries by themselves (Blom et al, 2005; Zhang &
Adipat, 2005).
Different methods of observation have their advantages and disadvantages. For example, the video records of the participants can completely have the whole dynamic usage process of mobile phones, but it is not easily to follow if the participants drive, take buses, or in the private rooms. On the other hand, the participant diaries have the least interruption to their usages. The method of using pens and paper is the easy way to record any time and any place. Although it will result in the insufficiency of multimedia data, the participants can take pictures by mobile phones to compensate for the lack of images (Blom et al, 2005).
Recently, with the online technology, Lee et al (2005) designed a web interface for participants to fill in their using experiences to avoid later forgetfulness.
In order to understand the mobile phone usages in the different contexts, this research recruited 6 Taiwanese and 6 American students from a university in Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan; as well as 6 Taiwanese and 6 American students from a university of the Midwest cities in the U.S. The four categories of personas are illustrated in Appendix A.
Different Social Contexts
Taipei, Taiwan U.S. Midwest college town Different
Cultural Contexts
Taiwanese 6 students 6 students American 6 students 6 students
Table 1, 24 Taiwanese and American graduate students participated in this research
Each of the participants will collect their 14 day diaries of mobile phone usages. It took 10-15 minutes every day for them to write down what they had done. Everything made by the phone would be needed to be filled in the table (Table 2 as an example). Even though they made a one minute phone call or just checked the current temperature, they still needed to record them. Besides, the participants also took some pictures to illustrate their phone usages but their face would not be recognized for privacy concerns. Finally, based on the diary, pictures and the content in their phones, the researcher would conduct an hour interview with each participant to explore the factors behind their mobile consumption.
Day Time Issue where Whom Note
9/23 0800-0805AM Check out the temperature My room Myself
0900-0930AM Watch youtube video School bus Friend Ipod touch 1200-1210PM Make a phone call One the way Classmate
0200-2030PM Buy ebook from APP STORE In class Myself $2 USD 0300-0400PM Take pictures Campus Friend
0500-0600PM Listen to music library Myself MP3 device
Table 2, the example of 14 day diaries of mobile phone usages
In addition to the participants’ self-reports and interviews, the researcher also observed the general phone usages of Taiwanese and American students in public from the universities in Taiwan and the U.S.. For the privacy issues and inference with the observation, no video, audio or pictures would be taken. The research also expected to understand what most students would make with their mobile phones in public. Although there were some scientific measurements, such as, in what percentage of students will listen to MP3 while they are walking, the results did not represent any statistic significance and the interpretation came from the researcher subjective judgment.
2. LC4MP experiment
This research applied the instruments from the Institute of communication research (ICR) to conduct the experiments. The data of heart rates and skin conductance will be collected from the Biopac. Physiological sensors would be explained to the subject. This research collected heart rate, skin conductance, corrugator activity, and orbicularis oculi muscle activity (OO). Electrodes for measuring heart rate, skin conductance, corrugator activity, startle reflex, and OO will be attached to the subject' forearms (for heart rate),
non-dominant hand palm (for skin conductance), right above the right eye brown (for corrugator), and beneath the left eye (for both OO and startle).
Figure 5, instruments in ICR, Telecommunication at Indiana University, Bloomington Source:：http://www.indiana.edu/~icr/facilities.htm
This research recruited 39 students, and the factors of the different sex and experience are controlled.
The independent variables include (1) mobile vs. computer; (2) multi-touch vs. traditional buttons; (3)
entertainment vs. science. The dependent variables will be the degree of attention which can be measured by the heart rates. The slower the heart rates, the more concentrated users are. In addition, the levels of skin conductance are the index of arousal which would need more mental resources in the intervened environment.
The content for comparative attention of mobile and computer screens will be several selected news web pages. When users read on the small screens for the same amount of information, they need to move or pull the mouse index which would spend more time and mental resources. The entertainment video and scientific
constraint of mental resources.