Extending the modality of travelling Designing travelling support for mobile IT users

We report from an ethnographical study of mobile service technicians at Telia Nära examining the process of travelling as a mobile activity, for the purpose of designing for new mobile IT use. Taking a point of departure from information appliance as a vision for designing information technology and activity theory as a framework for grasping activities in context elaboration is made upon how to design travelling support for mobile IT users. As a result from the empirical investigation the prototype PACK-IT! is developed and then discussed from the perspective of information appliance. One problem dealt with concerning the design is that information appliance according to Norman is not appropriate when it comes to travelling. However, as shown in the scenario of the travelling support application, we argue that if information appliance is appropriately applied to the mobile context it could function as a good vision of how to use information technology even in mobile contexts.