Understanding Effects and Determinants of Mobile Support Tools: A Usability-Centered Field Study on IT Service Technicians

The integration of mobile workplaces is a major challenge for companies. First-wave mobile solutions mostly support existing business processes through adding value in terms of increased efficiency. Second-wave mobile solutions comprise a re-engineering of the mobile business processes, add value through increased effectiveness and may even enable new forms of mobility. In order to achieve a systematic approach to mobile integrated business processes it is important to analyze existing processes, focusing on the effects and determinants of mobile solutions that might be used to support those processes. For this purpose we examined a typical example, the field technician support process of an IT service providing company. Our research approach combines usability and process performance issues. The results show which tasks are suitable for mobile application support, which personnel is most likely to benefit from mobile technology and what improvements on business metrics such as labor time, back office capacity, and invoice cycle are to be expected.

An Automated WSDL Generation and Enhanced SOAP Message Processing System for Mobile Web Services

Web services are key applications in business-to-business, business-to-customer, and enterprise applications integration solutions. As the mobile Internet becomes one of the main methods for information delivery, mobile Web Services are regarded as a critical aspect of e-business architecture. In this paper, we proposed a mobile Web Services middleware that converts conventional Internet services into mobile Web services. We implemented a WSDL (Web Service Description Language) builder that converts HTML/XML into WSDL and a SAOP (Simple Object Access Protocol) message processor. The former minimizes the overhead cost of rebuilding mobile Web Services and enables seamless services between wired and wireless Internet services. The latter enhances SOAP processing performance by eliminating the Servlet container (Tomcat), a required component of typical Web services implementation. Our system can completely support standard Web Services protocol, minimizing communication overhead, message processing time, and server overload. Finally we compare our empirical results with those of typical Web Service

Using overview style tables on small devices

Users increasingly expect access to data from a wide range of devices, both wired and wireless. The long term goal of our research is to inform the design of applications that support data access by providing reasonably seamless migration of data among internet-compatible devices with minimal loss of effectiveness and efficiency. In this paper we focus on design issues related to the use of tables of data on small mobile devices. In particular we are concerned with tables presented in an overview or focus + context style to maintain the consistency of their structure on all devices to support users who have already used the data on larger devices. We report on the results of two user studies related to two techniques, cascade and auto column expansion, that support the use of tables in such a display. We show that for a range of tasks from simple lookup to complex comparisons, both techniques provide benefit to the users

Relationships among Mobile Data Service, Mobility and Social Capital: A Conceptual Model

Mobile data service (MDS) is any service other than voice calling on a mobile phone. It offers an unprecedented means of connectivity to information and interaction with others, and thus shows great potential in enhancing social capital. This paper proposes a conceptual model to examine the role of MDS in social capital building. By introducing the concept of “degree of mobility obtainable by using MDS over time”, it is expected that this model will be able to explain how and why information and communication technology (ICT) in general and MDS in particular changes individuals’ social capital

Mobile Instant Messaging Apps: Usability Evaluation on iOS and Android Platforms and Recommendations for Developers

With the current growth in the use of smartphone devices, and the large amount of Mobile Instant Messaging applications available in the markets, this co-occurrence makes it highly valuable to evaluate the usability of this kind of applications in order to provide more satisfying user experiences. Within this paper, a systematic usability evaluation of Mobile Instant Messaging applications is presented, which will be applied to both iOS and Android platforms. Based on the results, it is suggested that this type of mobile applications present serious problems in performing tasks, poor user interfaces and lack of information about privacy and security features. Likewise, along with the results, this paper presents a list of usability recommendations to help developers improve their Instant Messaging applications

Understanding Consumers’ Behaviour when Using a Mobile Phone as a Converged Device

This research develops an empirical model to explore the factors that influence consumers’ behaviour while using a mobile phone as a converged device, i.e., using different functions and services on a mobile phone for multiple purposes. Convergence in this domain is particularly regarded as a social phenomenon that has now existed for over two decades. However, empirical research is lacking in terms of individual’s perception and behaviour toward using a converged device. This research is the first to provide an exploratory study of individual uses of a mobile phone for personal information management (PIM), e-mail, entertainment, and commercial transaction. It also draws from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and identifies some of the antecedent factors that influence the above behaviours and behavioural intentions. Fifty mobile phone users were interviewed and provided their thoughts and experiences of using a mobile phone other than voice communication. The interview data was transcribed and analysed to develop an empirical model. The finding shows that although the TAM has been effective in explaining behaviours in the context of single-functional technologies, it needs further enrichment when applying it to multi-function (converged) technologies. Therefore, the result provides a significant step towards a better understanding of consumer behaviour and creates a better strategy for the market of technology convergence in the future