What does Mobile Mean? - Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation in Handheld, Mobile and Wearable Technologies - page 258

ACKNOWLEDGMENT current physical state, location and inferred

activity for health and performance monitoring
purposes, aiding their user to get fit or keeping a
watching brief that they are not becoming ill (e.g.,
for diabetics) or needing assistance (e.g., for the
elderly or infirm).
Newer applications (or research concepts, at
least) recognise the importance of transits between
locations as being important as well; for example,
in London a smartphone could relatively easily
determine that you were travelling in a car, and
automatically pay the congestion charge for you
when you entered the charging zone. More com-
plex systems could monitor your car usage and
provide discounts on your insurance premium
based on the fact that you mostly drove only in
daylight, on roads regarded as safe, and within
the speed limit. Such monitoring and informa-
tion sharing has a host of ethical, legal and user
acceptance issues to overcome, and it may well
be that we as a society decide that we do not
want many of these changes: but some could be
of great benefit to us with little or no effort on
our own part.

Thanks to colleagues for comments, especially
Anxo Cereijo Roibas and Mark Dunlop.

REFERENCES

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Cherns, A. (1976). The Principles of Sociotech-
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Kumparak, G. (2008). Apple announces Top
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SUMMARY

Lonsdale, P., Barber, C., Sharples, M., Byrne,
W., Arvanitis, T., Brundell, P., et al. (2004).
Context awareness for MOBIlearn: creating an
engaging learning experience in an art museum.
Paper presented at the Proceedings of MLEARN,
Odescalchi Castle, Lake Bracciano, Rome, Italy.

I have presented a case for mobility being consid-
ered in the widest possible sense, with the focus
being more usefully on the mobility of the user
and not of the device. This has clear implications
for considering different types of mobile user,
and for each of those types there are issues to be
addressed in application design that, especially
towards the more mobile user end, are considerable
and challenging. Issues such as where the user's
focus is, whether they need to interact with their
device or whether the act of moving provides the
interaction itself are of great research potential.
Concepts such as activity at a location, or between
locations, provide us with new avenues to explore:
the world of mobile interaction appears to be even
richer than we originally thought.

Madge, C., & Harrisson, T. (1939). Britain by
Mass-observation: The Topic . Penguin Books.

Rubicon. (2008). The Apple iPhone: Successes
and Challenges for the Mobile Industry. Retrieved
5th January, 2009, from http://rubiconconsulting.
com/downloads/whitepapers/Rubicon-iPhone_
User_Survey.pdf