Everyday interaction - an empirical study of a mobile practice Tomas Lindroth, Johan Lundin University West, University of Göteborg
[email protected];
[email protected] Abstract. When the forefront of IT development and use moves beyond the offices and board rooms and out into the everyday life of people, the sole focus on organizational impact and workplace change has to be challenged. The use of IT have not only moved in this conceptual way, but we as users also continuously move technology with us, mobile technology. Mobile use is not framed by a set number of defined use situations or limited to the rational reasoning of businesses such as efficiency and effectiveness. Rather everyday mobile use extends physical as well as social contexts. In this paper we focus on the everyday use of laptops among a group of undergraduate students. The students live their everyday interaction with mobile phones, laptops, ipods, etc. If we are to understand this use as a lived everyday practice, rather than snapshots of use situations, we need new models for conceptualizing this use. Based on an ethnographic study of the students’ use this paper presents a tentative model of the use, as well as suggesting the concept of continuous interaction processes.
Introduction As the use of information technology evolves, so must also the concepts, models and perspectives used by research to understand this use. In this paper we will focus on two ongoing and salient changes in how people use and relate to computers in their everyday life: the increased mobility of information technology and the increased use of the computer as a tool for collaboration. We claim that these changes makes current concepts for understanding, as well as methods for designing, IT-support for both work and leisure activities, less
relevant. In this paper we will discuss these changes. We will discuss how traditional models might fall short as analytical tools in studies of contemporary practices. Drawing on empirical data we aim to complement these traditional models, and suggest new ways of analyzing everyday collaborative use of IT. Mobile IT here includes hardware such as mobile phones, PDA:s and laptops, but also the software installed on these devices, and the infrastructure the technology relies on. These mobile artifacts users bring with them, the same laptop and mobile phone is used in various situations and places. In this paper we choose to focus on one of the most widespread mobile devices; the laptop. Laptops have in many cases become the everyday computer for professionals, and with the introduction of consumer priced laptops also for the everyday user. In 2005 notebooks for the first time accounted for over half of the total number of computers bought at retail in the US (Kanellos, 2006). The laptop can be described as a “general” tool, useful and used in different settings and for solving different problems. The laptop is used in both work, and more everyday activities. However, looking at the research on mobile IT this tends to focus on quite specific situations. Research on IT use can be accused of emphasizing isolated problems without looking at whole practices. When studying the use and designing new applications, we fail to see technology as tool brought into continuous use. New complex technologies and applications are being introduced to solve one type of problem without considering the ongoing practice (as seen in Luff & Heath, 1998; Fagrell, 2000; Lundin, 2005; Ratner et al., 2001), in some cases with problems as a result. While many solutions have to be context and problem dependent and adaptable, they must also fit the practitioner’s larger working practice. This larger practice refers to a property of contemporary life; that IT use is something ongoing, produced through the activities of individuals (Lindroth, 2005). This paper takes a practitioners perspective on the use of mobile IT in everyday interaction. Focusing on the individual’s everyday activities and procedures in relation to technology rather than on an organization’s or a group of people. To be able to form new concepts and models for everyday collaborative IT-use there is a need for empirically based research giving rich descriptions of the use. In this paper we examine the interaction process among a group of undergraduate students. The students all have access to a laptop as part of their education. This creates an intriguing use practice that goes beyond what we previously have seen in professional settings. We will show what a practice where mobile IT plays an important ongoing part may look like. This description is intended as a starting point for the exploration of new ways of understanding mobile IT-use as an continuous activity, as well as designing for this activity.
Continuous IT-use – Related Research In this section we will pick up on two main aspects of IT-use: collaborative use and mobile CSCW. The collaborative use of IT Distributed collaborative use of computers as well as the collaboration between co-located users has inspired research focusing on work settings. The field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) invite research from diverse fields and with different theoretical foundations, for overviews on CSCW e.g. Bannon (1993), Grudin (1994) or Borghoff and Schlichter (2000). One prevailing framework of CSCW technologies is the place and time matrix. In the figure below (table one) is one version of the table focusing on different types of groupware. Same time
Same place
Meeting facilitation
Different Tele/video/desktop place but conferencing predictable
Different time Different time but predictable and unpredictable Work shifts
Electronic mail
Different Interactive multicast Computer place and seminars bulletin boards unpredictabl e Figure 1 (Groupware matrix, from Grudin, 1994).
Team rooms
Collaborative writing
Workflow
The groupware matrix has been criticized several times for different reasons and our aim is not the critique in it self, it is rather about the matrix as a good starting point when writing to the field of CSCW (see Mogensen & Robinson, 1995 for critique of the matrix; Bannon & Schmidt, 1993). Basically, the critique of the matrix adds to the general critique of frameworks which concludes that the richness of the world doesn’t not lend it self to be put
into such simplified framework without loosing the value for design. Moreover the critique has turned against the way the matrix treats time and space as dividers. There are several reasons for this, but it basically boils down to a problem of scale and mobility. When does a new place start and another ends and at what length of time does synchronous become asynchronous? That is, the model does not handle the fluidity of work, the changes between situations and task, in everyday life and work and the fact that many of the systems and services presented in the matrix extends over several cells. For example, instant messaging on the laptop can be used both for direct communication, as well as for leaving a message to a distant person, which are not at their computer. Mobile CSCW The field of CSCW have during the past years given considerable interest to how mobile technologies might change collaborative practices. As mainstream everyday technologies, our mobile devices obviously cross boundaries between work and leisure. Mobile CSCW has been criticized for understanding “stationary” office work as rule and being on the move as the exception. This approach have been questioned: “…as the name CSCW indicates, this field has traditionally focused on work settings. Non-work settings have not been in focus, although a number of studies addressing other domains have appeared at the conferences over the years (e.g. Palen et al., 2000; Brown and Chalmers, 2003). […] There is a lack of studies focusing on the use of mobile technologies in situations, being work and leisure, where people are mobile as the activity occurs, rather than being mobile in order to transport themselves to some place to do the work. The ‘inbetween-ness’ is not treated in its own right, but as an exception which needs to be compensated for.” (Weilenmann, 2003, p. 4 & 6). Weilenmann suggests focusing on the real mobile use, and in part we argue that she might be going in the same trap as the researchers she is criticizing. Neither mobility nor stability should be treated as the oddity that needs to be compensated for. Mobile technology follows the users, and stays the same, through different settings, we have to study and understand both types of situations, or rather all situations where use of mobile technology might occur. Perry et al. (2001) studied professionals traveling alone. They found that time traveling alone often was described as ‘dead time’. But, ‘dead time’ must in this case not necessarily be something negative; rather it is understood as time when you can focus, when you are undisturbed. They also point to the act of planning for mobility, highlighting how technology takes part in a process of work activities rather than in isolated tasks. In Jauréguiberry’s paper on mobile technology and time, he also covers the topic of ‘dead time’. He brings out the
connection of plans and time. In everyday language terms such as ‘lost time’, ‘suspension of time’ or ‘vacant time’ is common. When finding ourselves waiting for someone that is late for a meeting, being stuck in a traffic jam, or waiting for a delayed plane, mobile technology allows us to extricate ourselves from such situations. Brown and Chalmers present a study of mobile technology for tourists (2003). They suggest the notion of pre- and post visits as a way of understanding traveling as something not only defined by when you are away but rather as a process including both preparations as well as recollection. In line with understanding mobile use of IT as part of process of action Wiberg argues that “…mobile meetings are part of ongoing interaction processes. In Wiberg’s studies the interaction is maintained by the mobile workers through their efforts of reestablishing different threads of interaction across the co-located and dispersed settings (e.g. taking notes about numbers to call, redirect questions and answers to each other, making several calls to notify each other about new solutions, problems etc).” (Wiberg, 2001; 64). What Wiberg describes as an ongoing interaction process is here interpreted as the activities that the mobile workers perform in order to be informed and in contact with distant colleges and some of these activities are described in the parenthesis. Kakihara and Sörensen (2002) also focus their argument on how a flow activities by the practitioners upholds the the everyday practices. A fluid work practice is created, where work is conducted in different places, activities constantly change between, and take place within different social and technological networks. Fluidity is represented through the mobile worker and her strive towards an ongoing flow of incoming and outgoing interactions during a working day with as few breakdowns as possible. Mobile CSCW outside of work CSCW have mainly studied work settings. This is quite understandable since the personal computer, as well as, networking technology first made its entry as a tool for office work (Grudin, 1994). However, during the past years the focus on the workplace has been questioned. There is a slight tendency to change focus as research on blogs (Nardi et al, 2004) and gaming (Ducheneaut & Moore, 2004) are being published within CSCW. In Brown and Bell (2004) the videogame “There” is studied as a collaborative technology. “There” includes functionality for representation, communication and awareness, similar to more work oriented collaborative systems. However, in the study of the use, terms such as enjoyment, gaming, and play is brought into focus. It is not useful to analyze such an enterprise using terms such as tasks or efficiency. Even though efficiency and the carrying out of tasks in efficient ways might be useful in everyday life, for example when aiming to support grocery shopping with a handheld computer (Newcomb, Pashley & Stasko, 2003). In a study of teenagers’ use of mobile phones Berg, Taylor and Harper (2003) draws conclusions on how to design
functions of the phone based on the use culture as well as cultural meaning making involving the mobile phone. In this study the focus is on the teenagers everyday non-professional use of their phones. Even though everyday use is in focus in the mentioned studies, they typically exclude professional situations. The division of workplace mobile CSCW and leisure mobile CSCW is problematic when looking at how mobile technology is used today. Laptops, for example, are not only, or even mainly, a professional tool anymore, but includes support for gaming, personal communications, music making. Churchill and Munro (2001) contend the traditional understanding of the workplace: “Conceptions of the work place have always been mutable and are always changing. People have been working in ‘unusual’ locations all the while, but these issues are now becoming more visible. As well as the mobility coming to fore, it becomes clearer that we need to consider the ways in which stable infrastructures underpin mobile ones” (p. 8). What and where the work place is, is constantly changing and dependent on the technologies that we involve in work. But as the boundaries between work and non-work is dissolving (also connected to technology) we need to broaden our perspectives even more.
Everyday laptop use among undergraduate students This paper builds on ethnographic studies of a mobile IT-use among students in a university in northern Europe.
Methodology The study applies ethnographic methods, or in other words, an ethnographic perspective on empirical material. In this interpretative, subjective tradition the researcher is in a very real way part of the data (Van Maanen, 1988; Clifford & Marcus, 1986). Data is not merely collected, rather it is generated as part of the researchers involvements in the practice. As this research focus on understanding relations to technology and interactions among people, involving oneself and interacting with the students is of great importance. This engagement with practitioners involves an aspect of responsibility and of seeing oneself as accountable for the results presented. Not only does the production of ethnographic accounts demands both training and changing perspectives (as suggested by Forsythe, 1999) but it also demands insight into the impact of ones own work. Ethnography is always about taking a stand, “Whether explicitly or not, representations either serve or undermine the dominant ideological structures sustaining existing societal structures. On this view, ethnography should be reconceived as a contribution either to cultural critique or cultural hegemony” (Anderson, 1997, p. 8). From another point of view this might enable the users (or
participants) voice to be heard in the design process, suggesting other values and aspects of work which is not being lifted up in design efforts initiated and guided by management (as suggested by Shapiro, 1994). Not only designers but also researchers are accountable for their suggested understandings of practice. This is never just a reproduction of some “united” practitioner’s perspective. Understanding our role as important subjects in the ethnography we must provide some background, as well as discuss our relation to the studied practice. The studied practice is that of being students at the university. Both the authors have during periods acted as teachers, and examiners to some of the students, something that obviously affects the relations between researchers and students. The first author has been conducting the fieldwork as part of a larger project on mobile IT use. This study has been going on during three years studying mobile IT-users in trains, buses, and in school. The presented excerpts are taken from the written field notes of the first author and from interviews of students. The observations were conducted in two main settings: (i) in the open shared areas at the university as well as (ii) during lectures. In the open areas of the university the observations were generally conducted covertly, in the sense that the students were not informed that they were studied. However, the observations were conducted in public places at the university, where the researcher has access to the same "data" as any other participant within that setting. The students on the other hand are aware of being in a public place and that what they do, say, i.e. everything they do in that setting are accessible to other people in that setting. This is an important aspect which limits potential ethical problems of studying people without them being aware of it. The classroom studies were conducted as the first author taught the students over a ten-week period. During this time students were observed from this perspective. Something that was valuable to get a close view of the students group work. As a supervisor the researcher could be a part of the everyday work of the students, getting access to details that would not be observable anonymously in public places. During the time as a teacher twenty students was interviewed. The interviews are based on McCracken’s (1989) open ended interviews which are semi-structured and may be seen as a discussion between the interviewer and the interviewee compared to a more formal and structured interview. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. Half of the interviews were group interviews where two to three students was interviewed at the same time. The interviews focused on their daily activities with the laptop as well as how the felt and thought about it.
Introduction to the empirical setting As mentioned the study is conducted among students at a university department. The department is rather young and the educational programs given are mainly master programs, all with an orientation towards IT. The department was started
to support new multidisciplinary research and educations. Not only were the educational programs new, but it was also focus on "new" ways of teaching, new infrastructure for learning, new ways of examination, industry involvement in the education, etc. The localities are modern, with designer furniture, places for short ad hoc meetings, group work rooms. The teachers, administrators and students eat lunch in the same rooms, faculty is not physically located away from teaching areas etc. When you enter the floor where the university is located you enter a café like area with small tables and chairs, water and coffee machines. The open areas are next to group rooms and more traditional classrooms. Lunchrooms, coffee machines, printers and the open areas are shared between staff and the students.
Picture 1 Students working with laptops in a café like milieu All the students at the university are to have a laptop for conducting their studies. This is economically supported through a leasing deal which all students are offered. This means that most students lease a laptop during their time at the department, normally one and a half years. The laptops are equipped with a wireless LAN capabilities and the whole building of the department, there is Wireless networks available. This means that the department have no computer labs. Instead, the students collaborate in the café-like milieu, much like in Picture 1. The students do not leave their computers at the IT-university when they are leaving. There are hardly any place where they could safely leave the laptops, except some small lockers. However, the general approach is to bring your laptop with you when you are done with your activities at the department. This opens up for use in other settings outside the university, most obviously the students home, as we will discuss in the results below. During lectures students commonly bring their laptops along. They have them open and turned on, hardly anyone of them take written notes during lectures or at
seminars. As they are also constantly connected opens up for written interaction among students in the classroom, as well as WWW access during classes in general. The avid use of computers in class is something that some lecturers find threatening and frustrating, while some considers it a resource in their lectures.
Result and Analysis In this section the results from observations of school work and interviews with students is used to provide a rich illustration of the practice. This is combined with an analysis of each descriptive account. It offers a view of the daily life at the IT-university. The students interviewed are part of the same master program which consists of four ten week courses plus a master thesis. Project based assignments are one common denominator for the different courses, this is also visible in the interviews and observations in different ways. Among others it is demonstrated by in the way the students arrange their work and what and how they spend their time in relation to the project group. Below, two excerpts from the same interview are presented, each excerpt is followed by a short analysis. When we enter the interview it has been going on for almost 45 minutes and the discussion is about the tension between work and leisure. The interviewees are three women in their late twenties. P1, P2 and P3 denotes who is speaking at the moment. 1.
P3: but then, it feels like …we have worked so much in projects that the classmates
2.
almost feel like workmates…that you go here to juggle ideas with and not only your
3.
friends then but also for the bigger picture, to really work together, to show what you
4.
have produced and such. When one was programming I felt it was hard to be at home
5.
since you wanted response on the work you hade done and to get help and help
6.
others.
7.
P1: its little of both, at the same time that I want this separation, work on daytime,
8.
finish of and then go home, it is very nice to realize in the morning that, I have the
9.
computer, I wont have to go to school to day. Maybe you feel a bit down, you stay
10. home and do the work there instead, it is a little bit of both… 11. P1: and not only during the programming classes, also during the Method class, gee what we wrote a lot! We where here and wrote every day. 12. P3: Even if I did not need to drag the laptop home every night I did that, even if you 13. did not need to it was nice if there where something you wanted to check, because
14. now we have very much on our computers, it is everything, here you are always 15. connected, check this and that, you download stuff to the hard drive and then it is 16. kind of sweet to have it at home to look at, its like a book, where you look stuff up.
The notion of Anywhere, Anytime computing introduced by Kleinrock, (1996), is just merely a realistic one from a technical perspective, and inherently problematic from almost all other perspectives. As showed in the excerpt above mobile technology does not "free" us from physical, situational and social constraints. In the first two quotes by P1 and P3 this is illustrated in the relationship between the possibility to choose where to work on the one side and the interactive process of group work that is facilitated by actually meeting face to face. If we try to frame the practice in question, being a student engaged in group work and lectures, it becomes an example of the importance to look beyond the use situation and take the whole practice into account. It is not only about using the laptop for one purpose at a time or in one situation. Rather, the students' experiences with the computer spans several situations and it is these multiple user situations that shape the interaction process and is part of the practice. The group work , the home work, the home leisure and the school lecture leisure is all part of the practice, and puts complementing and at some times conflicting demands on how technology is used.
Figure 2 Time separation (black arrows) between situations One can think of it as a series or a process of future and past situations that the student in the present situation use as resources. That is, in every situation the student is coming from some where and are on their way to some place else after their present activity. These past and future actions affect the actions of the present. In the excerpts below the different actions of the students and services executed on their laptops becomes visible. The students also emphasize the portability and the fact that they bring it almost wherever they go, which offers flexibility of future work. But they also express another reason for bringing their laptop: it does not only contain work related content but there is also more everyday and private content such as e-mails, music, films. More private actions in the form of using a service, such as looking up a recipe, may happen in any physical location, but also in many of the social situations where such actions are more or less appropriate, for instance, a lecture. The excerpts below show that while the interaction process is defined by the social and physical situations the
mobile IT clearly expands the boundaries of the available interactions. In that sense, the different situations are drawn closer to each other and the interaction through the laptop becomes the enacting glue. 1.
Interviewer: What does it meant to you to always be connected?
2.
P1: There is no fun at all sitting in front of a computer that is not connected.
3.
You can’t connect to ICQ, you can’t surf, oh only that thought…at what time is
4.
Dawson Creek tonight, when does the ferry leave…
5.
P3: Or maybe that recipe I need this weekend
6.
P1: A computer without a connection is a dead computer!
7.
P2: It is really just a tool to do something with, you do something and then you turn
8.
it off (the unconnected computer), if you are connected and you get a hunch of
9.
something in the middle of the lecture, like, ahh I must not forget to check when the
10. ferry leaves or to download something, then you stay here in school for a while 11. longer, then it may take some time and you stay just because its nice to stay here.
Figure 3 Interaction (grey arrows) ties situation together What P3 says in the last quote about checking recipes shows how future and past interactions becomes mundane resources in the daily practice. That is, when P3 searches for the recipe, her interaction with certain online services becomes resources for future situations in the form of bookmarks. When actually using the recipe while making dinner, the result of the interaction, the bookmark, is a resource from past situations. In that way the interaction tie the situations together. This is an effect of the use of mobile IT and the effect is described as continuous interaction. In the interview P3 says that it is “nice to now that they are there, nearby” when people are on her IM, though they are not actually closer, but it is how she perceives it. The laptop also minimize the time and place where work is not possible. Together with features such as standby mode where the laptop starts quickly this helps to create a fluid work practice. Together with all the external interactions with other persons the continuous interaction process may become both something exiting and a burden. Below follows three excerpts taken from the observations of students IT use at the university. The first situation described takes place in an open area with chairs
and tables that are used both for working and lunching. The students in focus are entering this area, arriving from a lecture: Coming out from a lecture with their computers still on…. There are three small square tables standing together in a row with eight chairs around creating a long table. Jonas, a master student, approaches the table with his rug sack hanging on his left shoulder while he is balancing his laptop in his right hand. He puts down the laptop on the table, puts the rug sack on the floor, pulls out the chair and sits down. Now, while sitting he tilts the screen backwards, presses ALT + TAB on the keyboard in order to switch window and checks his e-mail. At the same time more students are arriving, making them selves comfortable around the table. The students’ small talk, what they brought for lunch, what was actually said on the lecture et cetera. There are now five laptops on the table and though there are sockets available no one are using them, which is quite unusual. Two of the students, Johan and Daniella, are using there laptops quite intensively, but still they are engaged in conversations with others. Johan is playing an online flash game. This game has been spread around the class via an URL in an e-mail and quite a few students have been observed playing it. Daniella is playing poker. While she plays she explains to the person sitting beside her that she is invited to a game of poker at a friends place on Saturday and that she needs to practice, they continues to discuss the rising phenomena of online poker. The game is an online poker game played through an application installed on her computer. Daniella started to play the game during the lecture and now continuous to play at the break. About 15 minutes after Jonas entered the situation, he and Johan leaves the area and walks down the corridor with their laptops in their hand and sits down at a table where the rest of there project group is already working.
The situation described above illustrates several interesting parts of an interaction process. In just a few seconds, Jonas checks his e-mails and as well as effortlessly engages in small talk with the other students. The hibernate functionality of the laptop provides him with reminders of his previous activities and allows him to start where he left of during the lecture, this functionality allows for more seamless integration of use situations. It ties these different situations together. The combination of portable IT (the laptop), smart functions of the laptop, the hibernation possibilities of the OS and the wireless network (connectivity) turns separate use situations into a continuous interaction process. This second situation was observed during a guest lecture in a classroom. About half of the class is present. A guest lecturer from an IT-consultancy is giving a presentation on how to create and show a relation between the interaction design and the business effect through various activities and documents. Afterwards a student said that this was the most interesting guest lecture so far and the class seemed very pleased during the lecture. Still it was obvious that some of the students focused on the screen rather than looking at the guest
lecturer. Later, when some of the students were asked questions about this particular event, they explained what were going on, on the screens. When the guest lecturer talked about her company and the customer where the screen shots from the current example came from, some of the students, still interested in what was said, surfed to these actual sites. One of the students also looked up what wikipedia.org had to say on some of the topics that came up during the lecture. Then, she sent the URL of the Wikipedia page to three other students in the classroom through her instant messenger.
Figure 4
If we take a look at the already presented figures above and add the interaction with the IM and Wikipedia, we can see that while the interaction presented before have been with future and historical situations, the interaction in this example is with another concurrent situation and with one service. Through the Instant Messenger the student is communicating with another student in the same classroom and in that way interacting with another situation. In doing this she did not only interact with several services, she also left several trails of that interaction within her own laptop as well as others. According to the students, the point of this behaviour is not to find and read the information during the lecture but rather to follow up a hunch before it is forgotten and then save it for later us. Then, when writing an essay or other assignment, the student can always go back to the history log of the instant messenger or the URL history in order to revisit and actually read the text. This behaviour illustrates the historicity of the interaction process and how a historical situation of interaction becomes resources for future ones.
Suggesting the concept of Continuous Interaction Process Maintaining fluid mobile life may be understood as a continuum, as something ongoing. People that move in to different situations needs to adapt their interaction process to that particular context since different situations affect usage in different ways. This contrasts sharply with the traditional CSCW matrix as we suggests that the systems and services needs to be adaptable and usable in both different temporal and spatial situations as well as social situations which the matrix ignores. But the most important aspect, from our perspective, that the matrix do not cover is the switching between situations.
Figure 5 (Bannon & Schmidt, 1993) Today the least problem is to technically bridge distance and temporal differences. There are mature tools for cooperation and communication which are utilized globally. E-mail, mobile phones, wikies, instant messaging, video conferencing and many many more have entered, not only work but also private life.
Figure 6 (Bannon & Schmidt, 1993 The challenge, as we see it, is no longer to make anywhere, anytime interaction possible, this is already a reality (Bannon & Schmidt, 1993; Kleinrock 1996). Rather, the challenge is to design the use and technology it self in such a way that it helps to create a continuous interaction process ( the relation between the user, the practice and the technology) suitable for each individual and practice and avoid breakdowns and in that way support the continuities rather than the
discontinuities in the continuous interaction process (Watson-Manheim et al., 2002). We argue that we need to consider this ongoing process of interaction. The individual need this ongoing strategy to handle the fluidity or process to be able to avoid interaction overload, asymmetries of interaction or other anomalies such as lack of resources (Kakihara, 2003; Ljungberg and Sørensen, 2000; Sherry and Salvador, 2002). In order to build on the related work the continuous interaction process is here defined as: The activities of a person which maintains her interactions in and between the different temporal and spatial situations of everyday life and work This description looks at peoples strive to handle interaction rather than their actual movement or other aspects not involving interaction. Implicit in this definition is also the use of technology. Because it is not the information technology that is of interest per see, but rather the activities and interactions that the user engage in through the IT, then if the type, brand and functionality of the device is important it will make it self visible through the actual use. This definition will be further elaborated in the Result section. The straight grey arrows serves to show the interactions in and between the temporal and or spatial situations that is mediated through the laptop. On top is the grey arrows, which is the representation of interaction that we engage in with other individuals and their situation as well as services.
Figure 7 Continuous Interaction Process While the circles represent the situations of interaction and the related activities and procedures. The rhetoric behind the visualization builds on the recursive relationship between what we do here and now and what we did and are planning
to do, in other words the historicity of the interaction process. In this sense the circles represent the digital bread crumbs, the interaction trail of students’ activities. So basically it is three parts that we are dealing with here, the Interactions, the Situations of Interaction and the continuous process. Lets look at these three a bit closer: -Interactions in and between temporal and spatial situations refers to a quite mundane empirical phenomena. It refers to the type of interaction (with humans or services), the media used and the possible content of the interaction. The interaction may be between a human and a web site, a groupware as well as IT supported communication with other persons. For instance, while in a discussion with a group member about a deadline, one of the students access her mailbox in order to check for the exact date of the deadline. Here, she interacts with her mailbox and her bread crumbs of interaction, that is with past interaction activities. The bred crumbs of interaction become resources for interactions to be. Another example of interaction is interaction with services and synchronous communication with other individuals such as ordering a flight ticket (interaction) on the web or talking on the mobile phone (communication). -Situations of Interaction refer to the different situations encountered in the students daily practice. Situations that may be separated in space and/or in time or by more contextual factors. These contextual factors, as showed through the empirical work, may be that the person that I want to interact with is wearing head phones or that we are in the middle of a lecture. This means that a situation of interaction is in many cases directly tied to the individual and is not necessarily shared between users even if they are in the same room at the same time. The common dominator of the different types of factors that separates different situations is that they affect in what way we choose to interact, with humans as well as systems. The physical movement between situations, at the IT-university, spatially separated, is mainly driven by lectures, meetings and the transportation between home and school. Consider the example above again, the student access her mailbox for the exact date of the deadline. The other student is waiting while she is accessing, but still we as readers do not know in what Situation of Interaction it is. Are they sharing a table in a café, talking over the phone or having a chat through Instant Messaging? The activity of an individual in front of a computer in one situation is rather well understood. But this continuous process of use situations that technology helps to tie together, is not.
-The Continuous Interaction process is the result of the combination of the individual, the practice and the technology. The process is built up by the ever ongoing movement from one situation to another. This process is driven by properties of the individual, the mobility aspects of the practice and the portability and adaptability of the technology.
Utility of the model The purpose with the model of continuous interaction is first and foremost to present and conclude the empirical result. But the utility and usefulness of the model is threefold: •
•
•
Empirical analytical framework o The model may work as an analytical framework for empirical settings consisting of knowledge workers, mobility and mobile IT. It grasps the core aspects of mobile IT supported life and will provide a stable ground for a deeper understanding of the role of IT in such situations. Analytical evaluation tool of systems, services and conceptual designs o The continuous interaction process is a generalisation of mobile IT practises from an individual perspective, as such, it may work as an evaluation framework of the design of services and systems, both existing systems that one want to evaluate for different reasons or novel ones that needs to be evaluated as part of a prototyping or iterative process. Design model for IT practice o Introducing IT or changes in the IT infrastructure will, in most cases, change how people live and work. The model may become an important part in the process of designing the vision, goal and effect of the new IT-practice.
Discussion When a person moves between home and school with the laptop in her rucksack the two different settings, in a social sense, become closer. Through the daily activities of adding content to the laptop, bookmarks, PDF:s, PowerPoint’s, e-mails, etc. the laptop becomes personalised and also related to the different situations where it is used. At home the students watch movies, listen to music and surf for recipes but when the laptop is brought to school all of the URL:s, files and documents related to the home situation follows with the laptop. This is also the case the other way around, the programming software, the other students
(and teachers) on the IM is brought back home. The laptop brings the activities from one setting to the other, brining these places together. The laptop makes it more likely that the student will bring schoolwork to her home and entertainment to school. The presented findings as well as the tentative model provides support for thinking about, constructing studies as well as designing for mobile practices. The model is built on a single study, in a specific setting, including specific cultural and social aspects, and of course specific individuals and researchers. However, the situation as such is not rare, similar settings can be found where people conduct their work with, or through, laptops. The presented model should be understood as a tool for interacting about interaction involving mobile IT. Interacting through conversation, through reflection, through designs (of studies as well as more graspable artefacts). It can also be understood as a comment or reaction to more static ways of describing mobile IT-use, and rather emphasizing the process of interaction, the continuous interaction process. However, the model certainly lacks in explaining aspects of this use: it does not hint on infrastructure needs, it does not openly provide norms or suggestions for the use, neither does it show how it relates to "other" aspects of mobile life. In the introduction of the paper we discussed three ongoing technological changes: the increased mobility of information technology, the increased use of the computer as a tool for collaboration, and information technology as an everyday technology. So what further knowledge of these changes can be provided from the findings and the model? The research presented here is to be understood as explorative and ongoing. Further research is needed covering different aspects of interaction as an ongoing process: (i) empirical studies on real everyday use of mobile IT. Even though mobile IT have been around for quite some time now, and have been given attention and funding, there is still a very limited number of studies of mobile ITuse. Mobile phones, PDA:s, laptops, etc. are main work tools, as well as main personal technologies and their use needs to be further described. (ii) design studies. Studies with a focus on the practice rather than individual technologies. (iii) critical studies: design assumptions, efficiency, task focus. How may we talk about non-work related tasks and question the hegemony of work situations as the norm?
Conclusion An everyday interaction process from an individual standpoint is something produced and maintained by the relation to practice and mobile IT. The interaction process is characterised by the different situations, how and what we bring between each situation is a key issue in order to understand the
requirements for different services. This is not an easy task, the contradicting result from this study suggest, among other findings, that the services and systems both needs to be general enough to support a general set of situations but at the same time is contextual or specific enough to support the individuals process. The laptop as a tool for interaction, consumption and production of new services and medias is only one of many forces that pushes the boundaries of ones stable fields of reseach.
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