How changes in context affect human behaviours and performance in mobile computing systems

Abstract

Many real world mobile device interactions occur in context-rich environment. Information about how users react to changes in context and perform in context-rich environments is crucial to informing strategies for mobile device design. Thus, the context of use must be considered because there are multiple tasks taking place in many mobile computing interactions. However, few empirical studies on mobile computing regarding changes in context impact users' abilities to perform effectively are conducted to date. In this investigation, context is presumed to be a set of conditions or user states that influence the ways in which a human interacts with a mobile computing device. In order to sense and record relevant contextual factors, the investigations have been conducted to enable a device to sense characteristics of mobility, such as motion and changes in environmental conditions like lighting. The result indicates that the way in which users' behaviour is affected by changes in context is not uniform.