Mobile contexts and storytelling

This is an intriguing paper on how people use space and follow goal-oriented activities while moving. The authors use ethnomethodologically influenced methods to construct a story of users' daily lives and then analyze that information to determine 'nodal points' between contexts and determine patterns in users' activities. They have given some fairly unique design recommendations as a consequence of this perspective.

"We hypothesize that situated actions vary richly in mobile contexts. Many actions and routines are performed simultaneously while being on the move. For these reasons, we believe, mobile contexts do not lend themselves to rigid general definitions or static taxonomies. Importantly, however, actions performed while moving and their contexts also have regularities that can be captured by context-aware devices."

Understanding Mobile Contexts, 2003
Sakari Tamminen, Antti Oulasvirta, Kalle Toiskallio, Anu Kankainen
[Full-text pdf]