Abstract
The mobile Internet, which gives access to the World Wide Web through a mobile device, has been gaining in popularity. The mobile Internet differs from the traditional stationary Internet in that it can be used in a wider variety of contexts. However, no studies have identified the contexts in which mobile Internet services are used most frequently, or determined which contexts exert significant influence on a user's choice of mobile service. This article proposes a framework of use contexts that reflects the characteristics of the mobile Internet. To explore these contexts, a research method was devised and a longitudinal monitoring study was conducted. The results indicate that mobile Internet use is heavily clustered around a few key contexts, rather than dispersed widely over diverse contexts. Further, participants in the monitoring study were found to concentrate their use on a few mobile services, rather than on exploring diverse services. Perhaps most interestingly, some contextual factors were found to correlate closely with the selection of specific mobile Internet services. On the basis of these results, the article concludes with implications for developers of mobile Internet services.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 269-292 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2005 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors express their appreciation to members of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at Yonsei University, in particular Yeonsoo Lee, Kyungwook Park, Sungjune Park, Hyunho Kim, Hoyoung Kim, Boreum Choi, and Hyunjoo Ahn. Also, we thank the usability team members, Junghun Moon, Euna Kim, and Sujin Kim, of WiderThan.com, for their support and their comments on this article. This research was funded by Grant F01–2004–000–10345–0 from the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Human Factors and Ergonomics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Computer Science Applications