Raudaskoski2009
| Raudaskoski2009 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | PHDTHESIS |
| Key | Raudaskoski2009 |
| Author(s) | Sanna Raudaskoski |
| Title | Tool and Machine: The Affordances of the Mobile Phone |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Mobile phone communication, Affordances |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2009 |
| Language | English |
| City | Tampere, Finland |
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| URL | Link |
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| School | Tampere University |
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Abstract
The dissertation investigates the use of mobile phones. The data is composed of audio-recorded mobile phone conversations, text messages and interviews with texters and the video recordings the use of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). The notion of affordance is a key concept, illustrating the situational conditions of the meaningful resources for mobile phone use. The study develops a systematic approach to investigate the use of mobile phones and information and communications technologies in general. In the approach, the idea of affordances is combined with the method of ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA). The study discusses the division between usable tools and incomprehensible machines. It is argued that the separation of artificial and natural resources of action is not relevant. In action, technological features are considered like any other resources. When affordances are recognised in relation to the user s own aims, technologies become usable; they are used as tools. If users do not identify the affordances of technological artefacts, these artefacts are seen as machines, and attention is switched to the functionality of the internal system of the artefacts. Mobile phones are examples of complex cultural artefacts that connect different kinds of social practices: communication, device and application design, maintenance of mobile networks, marketing, etc. Despite this complexity, for users they afford mundane actions. Technological components jointly increase interaction and sociability. The central affordances of the mobile phone for social actions are 1) the personal nature of the device and 2) the possibility of constant contact. The key functional features that afford these social affordances are portability and textual information, features that, for their part, are afforded through various technical solutions: portability due to small size, batteries, the display, network systems, etc. The usability of mobile phone applications is considered through three conceptual dimensions of affordances: handling, comprehensibility, and applicability. Handling refers to the physical, haptic relationship to the device. Comprehensibility is related to how simple the artefacts are to operate. The level of applicability refers to the possibility of applying the device for personal tasks. At all those levels, mobile phone calls are intuitive and easy to use. The basic functions are already known from fixed landlines, and the new features that mobile telephones introduced were piggybacked as affordances for new kinds of social actions. The mobile phone can be called an extension of the human because its features have become personal potentials for social interaction anytime and anywhere. Through mobile phones, people are situated in the sphere of mutual activity even when they are not constantly in actual contact with each other. Everyday arrangements are often made approximately and gradually in a series of several contacts. Accordingly, people are tied to their mobiles and must carry a functioning mobile phone at all times. A person without a mobile has to account for his or her nonconformism. Short Message Service (SMS) is also used for coordinating everyday practices. Even though SMS has a close relationship both to spoken and to traditional written forms of interaction, it forms a communication mode of its own. The study shows that people have been creative in organising both the sequential order and the content of the text messages with the aim, for instance, of reducing the amount of message exchanges. In addition to quick coordination of everyday activities, SMS also affords a new kind of relationship management that is realised, for example, through atmospherings in which the content of the messages is often intimate and only mutually understood. In 2002 when the WAP data was collected, WAP was marketed as a groundbreaking application: it was said to make available to the mobile handset all of the basic services of the Internet. However, there were problems at the level of comprehensibility. The study shows that the real applicability of early WAP was often blocked because users encountered problems with ambiguous command options and tricky menu structures. Based on hierarchical and textual menu structures, early WAP came to represent an incomprehensible machine for many users, since they could not understand the features of the service. Similar problems can be found in many present-day ICT applications. Detailed analysis of user-device interaction is needed to disclose the features that serve as affordances for users in everyday practical usage.
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