April 13, 2006
(Via Mobile Community Design)
The latest issue of the always-interesting Receiver has an article by Jeff Axup about his research on the way backpackers use mobile communications:
It has been argued that we are rapidly evolving into a "culture of mobility" where movement is a regular part of life and the world is increasingly small and interconnected. Sociologists have also demonstrated that communities which used to be largely geographically bound are now "glocalized" and consist of distributed members, with larger numbers of people connected by weak ties. Frequently these networks move and change, and the people within them multitask and move with them. Thus, the normal life stages which individuals go through are increasingly taking place in a mobile setting that challenges the individual with new activities, customs and lifestyles. An interesting component of this is the increasingly popular activity of backpacking. This form of budget travel is different from wilderness hiking or trekking which commonly goes by the same name. Backpacking increasingly refers to younger people who travel on small budgets for long periods of time as an exploratory part of their lives. For many backpackers, the time spent traveling will be a period of extreme mobility before they eventually choose more stable situations in which to build careers or find homes. Examining what technologies could be used to support this highly mobile stage of life may provide insights into how to support their increasingly mobile home life as well./p>Backpackers tend to be young and well-educated, and are increasingly adapting existing technologies to fit their needs as travelers. Some of these tools include email, mobile phones, SMS, instant messaging and blogs. For the past several years a group of colleagues and I have been looking at the existing technology use and communication habits of backpackers in order to inform the design of new tourism technologies. My doctoral research specifically focuses on research methods for designing mobile devices for mobile groups and communities such as backpackers. The frequent movement, distribution and unique culture of mobile communities pose challenges for existing observation and design methods, and thus make a good research problem. So far our Australian-based studies have ranged from groups of backpackers wandering around tourist attractions with "magic mobile devices", to simulations investigating how backpackers respond to being paired with others to chat with. A particularly intriguing design problem is how to augment existing offline chatting systems with digital tools to make swapping tips more effective and enjoyable. But before we do that we need to look at what backpackers already do, and what tools are currently being used for recording, communicating and sharing.
