Rethinking Reminders: The Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Islamic Call to Prayer Application

Within the ubicomp and related communities two areas are receiving attention, mobile phone-based reminders and techno-spiritual practices. We explore the relationship of these through the development and real world deployment of “sun dial,” a mobile Islamic call to prayer application that alerts American Muslims to daily salāt times. We describe the design, a formative evaluation, and a two-week exploratory user study. Our findings suggest that: graphical imagery helped our participants connect to their faith; there is an important difference between the right prayer time and the right time to pray; and suggest a reconsideration of location as a reminder cue. We conclude with a discussing our study’s broader implications for ubicomp research and some lessons learned about mobile development for techno-spiritual purposes.