From the July 2013 issue

Studying Smartphone Usage: Lessons from a Four-Month Field Study

Ahmad Rahmati, Lin Zhong

Many emerging mobile applications and services are based on smartphones. We have performed a four-month field study of the adoption and usage of smartphone-based services by 14 novice teenage users. From the field study, we present the application usage and usage characteristics of our participants. We show that their usage is highly mobile, location-dependent, and serves multiple social purposes. Furthermore, we report qualitative lessons regarding the evaluation of smartphone-based services. In particular, we highlight the cases that an accurate evaluation would require a long-term and/or field study instead of a short or lab-based study, and the cases where studying a particular application independently is insufficient and a holistic study, i.e., involving the whole device, is necessary. We further present guidelines on effectively shortening the length of a study. These lessons are supported in part by five identified contributing factors to usage evolution.

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Editorials and Announcements

Announcements

• IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing Seeks New Editor in Chief for 2014-2015 Term
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• TMC is transitioning to the OnlinePlus publication model starting with 2012 issues.

Editorials

• Editorial and Changes to the Editorial Board (Jan. 2012)
• Editorial (Dec. 2011)
• Changes to TMC and its Editorial Board (May 2011)
• A Message from the New Editor-in-Chief (January 2011)

Guest Editorials

• Special Section on Outstanding Papers from MobiCom 2011 (Sept. 2012)
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