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equipped with the several cameras, microphones,
and battery packs, is certainly less obtrusive and
lends itself well to outdoor observations. However,
none of these solutions would be acceptable, for
example, when attempting to collect usage data
over a longer period of time and involving, say,
highly mobile business executives.
One possibility for collecting field data unob-
trusively is to beam software directly onto mobile
devices (Lindgaard & Narasimhan, 2007). The
purpose of our study was to these predict which
features should be bundled for specific target user
audiences. In order to avoid sensitive privacy-
or business issues, data logging was limited to
recording time-stamped feature activation and
de-activation. At the end of each day, users up-
loaded their data logs to a server. Apart from the
data analysis of the logs, which provided useful
information as such, these data logs also served to
spark the user's memory of what they were doing
at the time as divulged in weekly interviews. The
method, which we called Strategic User Needs
Analysis (SUNA), enabled us accurately to predict,
and subsequently verify, different usage patterns
of two types of executives whose job descriptions
were very similar. Electronic data logging can thus
be a very practical, objective method of gathering
indirect observational data which, combined with
other methods, can contribute to a more complete
picture of people's usage patterns in their natural
environments.
The popular 'Think Aloud' technique, or verbal
protocol tracing, is typically applied to investi-
gating problem solving approaches (Ericsson
& Simon, 1984) where the researcher seeks to
uncover mental processes either during or after
task performance (Bainbridge, 1995). Concurrent
verbalizations in which the test person verbalizes
their thoughts and performs a task simultane-
ously, are difficult to carry out in natural mobile
environments, although this has been done with
a researcher walking next to a user with an audio
recorder (Treen, 2008). However, it is a less-than-
perfect option and far from 'natural' even when
the test person is accompanied by a researcher
and their monologue may seem like a two-way
conversation to outsiders. Apart from test user
safety issues, the requirement to talk while doing
and while mobile would probably be unaccept-
able to most people. Instead, the researcher could
follow the test person at a distance, take snap
shots and audio record their own narrative to be
replayed later when both are safely back in the
lab. This form of retrospective verbalization avoids
interrupting the user and also avoids the need to
'translate' one's thoughts into verbal articula-
tion as in Ericsson and Simon's (1984) 'level 2'
verbal protocols. Such 'translations;' can easily
distort the user's thoughts and actions, yielding
inaccurate data. At the same time, electronic data
logging, together with the researcher's narrative
and snap shots, could serve as memory prompts
for the user when interviewed at the end of the test
session once they are safely back in the labora-
tory. Thus, the challenges of collecting data and
running usability tests on mobile devices while
seeking to preserve ecological validity and a sense
of 'naturalness' remain.
CONCLUSION
Traditional usability evaluations on standard
screen-keyboard-pointing mobile devices would
not focus on whether a user knows how to use the
pointing device or how to whack it into activation
but rather on the meta-task such as searching for
or adding an item to a list. Evidently, new mobile
technologies and novel uses of existing technolo-
gies that go beyond the traditional keyboard and
mouse paradigm demand detailed studies before
they can be employed in novel applications. Such
studies include investigations of human memory
for gesture vocabulary to activate and de-activate
the device, correct placement of it, in some cases
focusing on the weight of the equipment, as well
as of physical interaction with devices and with
the environment. Accordingly, many of the above
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