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Context 10. Car Passenger:
Passenger use
might be collaborative with the driver (example:
looking up the address for the current destination)
or might be unrelated.
tion, context of use, and behavior for Web use. If
they felt that the descriptions we provided did not
match their experience, they were asked to add a
category via an “other—please specify” response.
Study Parts Two and Three
OVERALL FINDINGS
In the spring of 2008, we conducted Parts Two
and Three of the overall work. In Parts Two and
Three, we addressed the same research ques-
tions as before, but with the goal of assessing
the robustness of the taxonomy in describing the
motivations, behaviors, and contexts of mobile
Web use for a second similar group a year later
(and after the introduction of the iPhone).
In Part Two, a second in-depth field study,
we modified the participants' reporting format
in line with the goal of validating the classifica-
tions; we asked participants to select from a fixed
set of categories via a questionnaire rather than
giving us free descriptions. We tracked 13 users
(6 iPhone and 7 non-iPhone users), ages 18-34,
from the greater Seattle area over a week's time.
iPhone users were all with ATT; non-iPhone us-
ers represented all four major US carriers and
included a range of manufacturers and styles,
with a majority consisting of smart phones (with
a full or partial keyboard). Immediately follow-
ing each mobile Web use, participants filled out
a short mobile Web-based survey, based on the
framework previously developed, to self-identify
the motivation, context, and behavior for that use.
For each response, they also had an “Other; please
specify” option. We then conducted 90-minute
retrospective interviews with each participant to
review their overall patterns of use.
Part Three of the study, a PC-based Web sur-
vey, was used to further determine whether there
were any gaps in our coding scheme. The 167
respondents were all active mobile Web users (45
iPhone and 122 non-iPhone users) who accessed
the Web over their phones at least twice a day.
Participants were asked to read brief descriptions
of each classification and select their top motiva-
In this section, we first present the findings with
respect to the validation of the preliminary scheme
proposed in Part One for the classification of
motivations and behaviors. We then discuss the
findings with respect to context of use and propose
a modification of the original schema. Finally,
we compare the findings for non-iPhone users
and iPhone users.
Coding Scheme Validation
In examining the data from Part Two (the second
field study), we found that the taxonomy derived
in Part One for motivations and behaviors robustly
accommodated the self-reported motivations
and behaviors. Of the 177 reported instances
of mobile Web use in Part Two, there were 20
reported “other” motivations, of which 13 had
sufficient contextual data from the interviews to
be classified into an existing category (leaving
7 unclassified or 4%). Of those motivations that
were not classified, participants reported general
activities like as visiting Web sites (for example,
“I clicked on a Web link someone sent me”
) but
did not include sufficient detail to recall the spe-
cific Web destination or motivation for visiting
it. There were 15 reported “other” behaviors, of
which 12 had sufficient contextual data from the
interviews to be classified into an existing category
(leaving 3 unclassified or 2%). Of those behaviors
that were not classified, participants report suf-
ficient detail to identify their motivation (such as,
“fooling around to kill time”
) but did not provide
sufficient detail to identify the specific behavior
exhibited by that motivation. For the participants
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