The goal of this project was to understand people’s daily social transitions, mobile practices, and collaboration techniques at the workplace, at home, and in between. The methods we used included shadows and in-context interviews — at home, at work, during commutes, and in other transition spaces/times.
Among our findings were that mobile technologies offered ways to fulfill culturally defined roles (such as working hard — yulshimhi) by providing the ability to work through transitions. Despite the shifting role of Korean women toward wage earning, mobile computing devices permitted them to manage their responsibilities at home (including budgets, investments, travel, bills).
Other key findings from this research included:
- Context drives device use, not the device.
- Reciprocal adaptations between usage and technologies creates a co-evolution of features used.
- Devices are divided by time of use and are function-specific, not device-driven.