How to Define the Communication Situation: Determining Context Cues in Mobile Telephony

Abstract. Mobile telephony is increasing in use and is presently the most common mobile communication technology. Furthermore, the tech-nological possibilities for context-aware features for mobile phones are increasing. The out-of-context communication that occurs from mobile telephony leads to a need for exploring how users deal with situational cues in order to evaluate proposed context-aware features. We present an exploratory case study of mobile telephone users where the communi-cation situation is examined, in particular in relation to how users deal with context information. The study finds that users infer about context cues to a high degree and adapt accordingly. This indicates that context based features in mobile telephony should focus on the specific context measures when they are needed instead of focusing on general measures that are always available