Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

6-2016

Abstract

Mobile devices have begun to raise questions around the potential for overuse when in the presence of family or friends. As such, we conducted a diary and interview study to understand how people use mobile devices in the presence of others at home, and how this shapes their behavior and household dynamics. Results show that family members become frustrated when others do non-urgent activities on their phones in the presence of others. Yet people often guess at what others are doing because of the personal nature of mobile devices. In some cases, people developed strategies to provide a greater sense of activity awareness to combat the problem. Mobile phone usage was sometimes perceived as beneficial by providing a mechanism for needed disengagement from family members. These findings suggest several opportunities for redesigning mobile device software to mitigate emergent frustrations, and open up new opportunities for nurturing social interactions among family members.

Keywords

Disconnection, Families, Mobile phones, Social connection

Discipline

Information Security

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Publication

Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, Brisbane, Australia, June 4-8

First Page

1315

Last Page

1327

ISBN

9781450340311

Identifier

10.1145/2901790.2901809

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery, Inc

City or Country

New York

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901809

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