Interactional Context for Mobile Applications

Mobility and ubiquity bring about an increasing engagement in the concept of context. Environmental context such as location or light have been studied for a while, however little research has been done on interactional context – context that evolves in the course of interaction. This paper presents results of an empirical study conducted in order to assess the interactional context. The empirical study is a major part of an ongoing research project, which is concerned with developing a context-of-use model for users’ interaction with mobile devices. The paper dicusses the findings, reports the results, and summarises the implications for future development. It argues that the interactional context plays a major role in mobile communication settings. It underpins the necessity for a socially grounded research approach as well as empirical evaluations in order to develop applications, which are unobtrusive and better support users in accomplishing their everyday tasks.