International Journal of Mobile HCI (IJMHCI) Latest Issue

I am delighted to announce the latest issue of the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI) - the details of the latest issue are as follows:

International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI)
Official Publication of the Information Resources Management Association
Volume 1, Issue 4, October-December 2009
Published: Quarterly in Print and Electronically
ISSN: 1942-390x EISSN: 1942-3918
Published by IGI Publishing, Hershey-New York, USA
www.igi-global.com/ijmhci

Editor-in-Chief: Joanna Lumsden, Aston University, UK
Special Issue: Mobile Internet User Experience

GUEST EDITORIAL PREFACE
Mobile Internet User Experience: Introduction to the Special Issue
- Virpi Roto, Nokia Research Center, Finland
Eija Kaasinen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland

This special issue of IJMHCI is on Mobile Internet User Experience (MIUX). This issue was inspired by two MIUX workshops (Roto & Kaasinen, 2007; Roto & Kaasinen, 2008) held in conjunction with the 2007 and 2008 Mobile-HCI conferences in Singapore and Amsterdam, respectively. In the workshops, researchers and practitioners presented different solutions for improving user experience when using the internet on mobile devices. This special issue continues the work on these topics and includes fully-fledged articles from some of the workshop attendees, as well as papers from other researchers working in this field.

PAPER ONE
How It Started: Mobile Internet Devices of the Previous Millennium
- Evan Koblentz, Consultant, USA

Internet access on cellular phones, after emerging as a new technology in the mid-1990s, is now a thriving activity despite the global economic recession. IDC reported smartphone sales of 1.18 billion units in 2008 (IDC, 2009), compared to the unconnected personal digital assistants approaching merely 1 million units per quarter in the second half of 2003; however, the concept of using handheld devices for wide area data applications began 25 years prior to the beginning of the end of PDAs. The key year in the history of PDA devices is 1978. That year, a start-up called Lexicon sold its handheld electronic language translator (Levy, 1979) called the LK-3000. Its interchangeable modules included database and notepad applications, and the product was licensed by Siemens-Nixdorf. Meanwhile independent inventors Robert Hotto and Judah Klausner patented what may be the world’s first PDA (Klausner & Hotto, 1977). Toshiba acquired the rights and produced it as the Memo Note 30 model LC-836MN. Data advances in handheld devices finally began changing from wired into wireless in the first half of the 1990s.

PAPER TWO
User Experience of Mobile Internet: Analysis and Recommendations
- Eija Kaasinen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland
- Virpi Roto, Nokia Research Center, Finland
- Kristin Roloff, Swisscom(Switzerland) Ltd., Switzerland
- Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Tampere University of Technology, Finland
- Teija Vainio, Tampere University of Technology, Finland
- Wolfgang Maehr, Opera Software ASA, Norway
- Dhaval Joshi, Nokia Research Center, India
- Sujan Shrestha, Brunel University, UK

Mobile access to the Internet with handheld devices has been technically possible for quite a while and consumers are aware of the services but not so ready to use them. A central reason for the low usage is that user experience of the mobile Internet is not yet sufficiently good. This article analyses the mobile Internet from the end-user perspective, identifying factors and solutions that would make the Internet usage on a mobile device an enjoyable experience. User experience can be improved by a better understanding of users and usage contexts, developing mobile services that better serve the needs of mobile users, easing service discovery, and developing the infrastructure needed for the mobile Internet. This article discusses all these aspects and gives development recommendations.

PAPER THREE
Always On: A Framework for Understanding Personal Mobile Web Motivations, Behaviors, and Contexts of Use
- Carol A. Taylor, Motricity, Inc., USA
- Nancy Samuels, University of Washington, USA
- Judith A. Ramey, University of Washington, USA

Mobile data services offer a growing alternative means of accessing the Web and have drawn significant attention from the mobile industry; however, design efforts are hampered by people’s motivations, behaviors, and contexts of use when they access the Web on their phones. To help address this need, the authors conduct a study to explore the following questions for U.S. mobile phone users: 1) What motivations lead people to access the Web on their mobile phones?; 2) What do they do?; and 3) Where do they do it? Based on the findings from part one of the study, the authors construct a taxonomy of behaviors, motivations, and contexts associated with mobile Web usage. In parts two and three, the authors validated the taxonomy as well as compared iPhone versus non-iPhone user behaviors. This article concludes by considering the design implications of our findings and future research directions.

PAPER FOUR
Improving the User Experience of a Mobile Photo Gallery by Supporting Social Interaction
- Elina Vartiainen, Nokia Research Center, Finland

Today, image gallery applications on mobile devices tend to be stand-alone and offline. For people who want to share photos with others, many add-on tools have been developed to connect the gallery applications to Internet services to enable photo-sharing. In this article, the authors argue that photo-centric social interaction is best supported when the gallery application is fully integrated with an Internet service. In this case, no additional tools are needed and the user’s image content is fully synchronized with the service. The authors design and implement a service-integrated mobile gallery application with a corresponding Internet service. Moreover, they conduct a field study with ten participants to compare our application with a state-of-the-art gallery application combined with an add-on photo-sharing tool.

PAPER FIVE
Touch-Based Access to Mobile Internet: User Experience Findings
- Minna Isomursu, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland
- Mari Ervasti, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland

This article reports user experience findings from two field trials where Mobile Internet access was supported through near field communication (NFC)-based tag infrastructure. The problems related to service discovery can be solved by providing location-based access, and by using visual cues embedded into the environment for discovering content and services. Mobile Internet access through touch solves the problem of memorizing complicated URLs and the challenge of typing with a mobile device keypad. As touch-based access builds a semantic bridge between the physical context of use and the Mobile Internet experience, the user experience converges seamlessly into one where both the physical and digital worlds play a role.


For full copies of the above articles, check for this issue of the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (IJMHCI) in your institution's library. This journal is also included in the IGI Global aggregated "InfoSci-Journals" database: www.infosci-journals.com.


CALL FOR PAPERS

Mission of IJMHCI
The primary objective of the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction (JMHCI) is to provide comprehensive coverage and understanding of the issues associated with the design, evaluation, and use of mobile technologies. This journal focuses on human-computer interaction related to the innovation and research in the design, evaluation, and use of innovative handheld, mobile, and wearable technologies in order to broaden the overall body of knowledge regarding such issues. IJMHCI also considers issues associated with the social and/or organizational impacts of such technologies.

Coverage of IJMHCI:
Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are limited to) the following:
- Case studies and/or reflections on experience (e.g. descriptions of successful mobile user interfaces, evaluation set-ups, etc.)
- Context-aware/context-sensitive mobile application design, evaluation, and use
- Design methods/approaches for mobile user interfaces
- Ethical implications of mobile evaluations
- Field-based evaluations and evaluation techniques
- Gestural interaction techniques for mobile technologies
- Graphical interaction techniques for mobile technologies
- Issues of heterogeneity of mobile device interfaces/interaction
- Lab v. field evaluations and evaluation techniques
- Lab-based evaluations and evaluation techniques
- Mobile advanced training application design, evaluation, and use
- Mobile assistive technologies design, evaluation, and use
- Mobile commerce application design, evaluation, and use
- Mobile HCI lab design/set-up
- Mobile healthcare application design, evaluation, and use
- Mobile interactive play design, evaluation, and use
- Mobile learning application design, evaluation, and use
- Mobile technology design, evaluation, and use by special (needs) groups (e.g. elderly, children, and disabled)
- Multimodal interaction on mobile technologies
- Non-speech audio-based interaction techniques for mobile technologies
- Other emerging interaction techniques for mobile technologies
- Other related issues that impact the design, evaluation, and use of mobile technologies
- Speech-based interaction techniques for mobile technologies
- Tactile interaction techniques for mobile technologies
- Technology acceptance as it relates to mobile technologies
- User aspects of mobile privacy, security, and trust
- User interface architectures for mobile technologies
- User interface migration from desktop to mobile technologies
- Wearable technology/application and interaction design, evaluation, and use

Interested authors should consult the journal's manuscript submission guidelines at www.igi-global.com/ijmhci.All inquiries and submissions should be sent to:
Editor-in-Chief: Joanna Lumsden at ijmhci@igi-global.com

Associated Link: International Journal of Mobile HCI

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