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Metaphors for the Mobile Internet

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Knowledge, Technology & Policy

Abstract

This paper examines a set of metaphors for describing, understanding and characterising the Mobile Internet. The metaphors are a result of extensive user studies in the US, Hong Kong and Europe in the late 2006 and early 2007. In these studies, we explored the user experience related to the Mobile Internet through in-depth contextual interviews with over 40 users, including a group in the US, which was deprived of their standard Internet PC access for several days. Our analysis of the collected data resulted in six metaphors that can be used as powerful creative tools in designing Mobile Internet applications.

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Acknowledgements

We would like thank all the anonymous users that participated in our user studies and without whom this work would definitely not have been possible. Thanks also to our colleagues who participated in our user research and/or helped us in writing this paper, namely, Alexa Andrzejewski, Todd Elliott, Sebastian Heycke, Julia Houck-Whitaker, Kim Lenox and Dan Saffer from Adaptive Path; Erkki Tanskanen and Anne Kaikkonen from Nokia and Juha Häikiö from VTT. Part of this work has been done in the SmartTouch project (ITEA 05024) and has been partly funded by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nokia Corporation, P.O. Box 300, 90401, Oulu, Finland

    Pekka Isomursu

  2. Adaptive Path, 363 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107, USA

    Rachel Hinman

  3. VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland), Kaitoväylä 1, 90571, Oulu, Finland

    Minna Isomursu

  4. Nokia Research Center, 955 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

    Mirjana Spasojevic

Authors
  1. Pekka Isomursu
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  2. Rachel Hinman
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  3. Minna Isomursu
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  4. Mirjana Spasojevic
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pekka Isomursu.

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Isomursu, P., Hinman, R., Isomursu, M. et al. Metaphors for the Mobile Internet. Know Techn Pol 20, 259–268 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-007-9033-5

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