This project has investigated user requirements, the design and the deployment of MIC devices from a user-centred perspective. It investigates how information is used in organisations, where people are no longer fixed to permanent or semi-permanent locations. Recent changes in both work and communications technologies have led to a shift in working patterns, so that across a range of organisations, a model of work where the employee has a desk and a rich, fixed set of informational and technological resources is no longer appropriate. However, with a few honourable exceptions (e.g. at the Viktoria Institute in Sweden), few studies exist that tell us much about how mobile workers operate, the sort of work they perform and the problems that they encounter. If we are to develop appropriate technologies to support mobile work, we need to understand the tasks that users are engaged in, the access to information that they have, and how they collaborate with their colleagues (who may be mobile or static).
The project examines how people use technological and non-technological tools when away from their home office bases and where they are not co-located with colleagues. It draws implications from this to support the next generation of mobile technologies that offer complex data services as well as voice connectivity.
In the data gathered, we investigate the underlying patterns of mobile activity using a fieldwork-based approach. These findings have been used to generate implications for design to augment the kind of working practices observed in distributed and mobile environments. from these prototype technologies have been developed and iteratively evaluated to see how they support or change patterns of mobile work, and to see how acceptable the designs are to their mobile users. These evaluative studies motivate future designs and offer us an insight into the potential effects that this technology might have on work itself. We have been careful to include work that is currently conducted from a static location, because MIC technologies allow a greater degree of flexibility in where work can take place, and may transform the work into something very different from that currently being conducted.
The content of the research is described in the project reports and publications available in the publications pages.