How People Really Use the Mobile Web - Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation in Handheld, Mobile and Wearable Technologies - page 199

interaction, become more latent, while gratifica-
tions like fashion/status and entertainment become
more dominant.

(in study Part One) or a mobile Web-based survey
(in study Part Two), brief snapshots of their ses-
sions of use for closer examination later during
in-person interviews.
Our method was also informed by a qualita-
tive study about the viewing of video content
on a broad range of portable devices (Palen &
Salzman, 2007). This study demonstrates how
diary studies can be combined with ethnographic
interviews to achieve a richer understanding of
the motivations for mobile use.

Method for Studying Mobile Usage

Studies that have relied only on statistical analysis
of Web usage data to understand the unique be-
havioral characteristics of mobile Web use have
not fully examined the complex contexts and un-
derlying motivations influencing mobile use. We
concluded that, to gain a more complete picture of
real-life use, we needed to examine people who
have been actively using Web-based data services
for a period of time and we needed to study their
use of their own personal mobile phones.
Mobile voice-mail diary studies have proven
to be a successful method of capturing richer
contextual information in mobile settings (Hagen,
Robertson, Kan, & Sadler, 2005; Palen & Salz-
man, 2007). Many earlier studies have also used
(as we did) one form or another of the method
of the combined diary study and interview and/
or survey (for instance, Nylander, Lundquist, &
Brännström, 2009; Church & Smyth, 2009; Heim-
onen, 2009; Sohn et al., 2008; and Kellar et al.,
2007). Other important earlier work (which was
summarized and extended in Kahn, Markopou-
los, Eggen, IJsselsteijn, & deRuyter, 2008) has
focused on technologies to support experience-
sampling methods like diary studies. We drew on
an interesting data-capturing technique dubbed
“snippets” that was employed to aid self-reporting
by respondents in one study. Users were offered
multiple media options for recording data and the
researchers identified strengths and weaknesses
of different types of reporting (Brandt, Weiss, &
Klemmer, 2007). They also identified possible
“trivial” data that could be captured in the data-
gathering stage and that might easily be missed
using other methods, but which could potentially
inform the interview stage in a study. This study
influenced our decision to use a diary system
where users immediately recorded, via voicemail

THE STUDY

The following research questions motivated this
three-part qualitative study:

1. Part One of the study: What motivations
lead people to access the Web on their mo-
bile phones? What do they do? And where
do they do it?
2. Parts Two and Three: Is the framework of
motivations, contexts of use, and behaviors
identified in the earlier study valid for a new
set of users and a later stage of mobile Web
evolution?

Study Part One

Our original study, conducted in the summer of
2007, tracked 11 active U.S. mobile Web users
(usage of at least twice a day for at least 3 months)
from the greater Seattle area who had actively
incorporated the mobile Web into their personal
(rather than business) lives using a variety of their
own personal phones. Participants included an
approximately equal number of males/females,
18-24/25-34 year olds, and smart phone/regular
phone users from the four major U.S. carriers (to
mitigate any differences between carriers' mobile
Web portal experiences). Over a five-day period,
participants recorded brief voicemail messages
describing their Web access sessions immediately