User Studies

Mobile technology user studies have mostly been conducted with student participants and within an academic library environment. Church and Smyth (2009) conducted a study of

undergraduate, PhD and post-doctoral student’s age 20-60 examining the intent to use mobile technology. Findings revealed that the location and time the information need took place was an important factor in using the mobile technology. The top three user goals were 75% geographical information, 65% personal information and 64% informational. Most mobile interactions took place when the participants were mobile or outside of their home or work environment. Hu and Meier (2011) found from 286 academic participant online surveys and interviews that 35% searched for information several times a day stating the mobile device provided convenience of looking up something right away. The research did find that 70% would rather read on a laptop computer than on their mobile device, though a reason why was not reported in the study.

Similarly, Hanson’s (2011) study of 101 students at an academic library found the most common participant activities conducted throughout the day on a mobile device were communication (email, text), social networking (Facebook), information searching (news, library), entertainment (music, video) and other (shopping, banking).

Along with user studies on how mobile technology has been used to search for different types of information, Seeholzer and Salem (2011) examined 20 undergraduate and graduate students expectations, perceptions and the use of the mobile Web. The results illustrated that participants performed a variety of tasks from their mobile devices and the most common websites visited were Facebook, email, weather information, directions and sport sites. In addition, most participants utilized the library website from their mobile device to interact with the library’s resources and services. One theme noted by the researchers was the design of site. The participants were disappointed in the mobile website compared to the experience they had with the regular site on the computer. The participants also wanted more space between links on the mobile site to make navigation easier on the smaller screens. Cummings, Merrill and

Borrelli’s (2010) study of 206 faculty, graduate and undergraduate students found 58.4% of participants who owned a mobile device would access the OPAC. The survey did not break down the participants by age of who would use their mobile device to access the library website. However, only 13% of participants were over the age of 46.

Mobile devices and the mobile websites could be important in how users search for information and perform activities on the mobile device. Alzaza and Yaakub (2011) discussed how mobile technology offered a new way of learning anywhere or anytime for the user. The results from 261 Malaysian students under age 26 found half of the participants were aware of the mobile services offered at the university. Interestingly, site usability on the mobile device and training of how to use the device ranked lowest as a limitation of the mobile technology.

However, a recent ethnographic study by Mizrachi and Bates (2013), which examined undergraduates age 18-22 personal academic information behaviors and tool preferences,

or device, such as a cellphone, varied on the type of task. Cognitive and learning styles as well as user personality traits also played a role. This illustrated that even among digital natives, there were distinctions among the young adult age group depending on the type of search task that needed to be accomplished. A mobile device user study examining a specific task was explored by Stockwell (2010), who looked at vocabulary activities performed on mobile phones compared to using a computer. The mixed method study on 175 participants from 2007-2009 explored the amount of time the participants took to complete the activities and the scores they achieved on the vocabulary activities. Results portrayed a larger portion of users in 2009 used the phone rather than the computer compared to the previous two years. It was noted that the activities took longer on the phone to complete, but there weren’t any differences in the scores achieved.

Nicholas, Clark, Rowlands and Jamall’s (2013) study in England of 70,000 user transaction log interactions with a mobile device and the Europeana website found that information usage was less interactive and less content was viewed per visit compared with a computer device. The researchers believed this could be because a mobile visit was usually a faster interaction or fit because of the different mobile device utilized to conduct the search. Mobile technology, according to Stockwell (2010), has become more noticeable as a device to be used in the ED field, which could be a reason for the various studies on students and academic libraries.

The above mobile technology user studies did not specify a model or application when examining mobile device usage. The TAM or the Technology Acceptance Model has been one of the most influential models in technology adoption research and the model constructs were fairly general and universal to different types of computer systems and users. TAM looked at the perceived usefulness and ease of use of a system as well how user attitude and behavior affect adopting the system for use. However, the model did not look at the social influences for

technology adoption (Malhotra & Galletta, 1999). In addition, TAM was not explored in the context of this dissertation study, since the model did not examine the how or why mobile technology would be used for retrieval and access to information.