Talking ‘Activity’: Young People & Mobile Phones

This paper presents a brief overview of findings collected from an ethnographic field study of young people and their use of mobile telephones. The findings indicate that mobile phones provide young people with a means of demonstrating their social networks. That is, through owning and using mobile phones, young people demonstrate their participation in social groupings and define the boundaries of their social networks. Using activity theory, the findings from this research have been interpreted to produce a number of preliminary design considerations. This work reflects the first of several stages aimed at investigating a systematic means of using rich and meaningful qualitative data for the purposes of design.