Mobile Cloud Storage: A Contextual Experience

In an increasingly connected world, users access personal or shared data, stored “in the cloud ” (e.g., Dropbox, Skydrive, iCloud) with multiple devices. Despite the popularity of cloud storage services, little work has focused on investigating cloud storage users ’ Quality of Experience (QoE), in particular on mobile devices. Moreover, it is not clear how users ’ context might affect QoE. We conducted an online survey with 349 cloud service users to gain insight into their usage and affordances. In a 2-week follow-up study, we monitored mobile cloud service usage on tablets and smartphones, in real-time using a mobile-based Experience Sampling Method (ESM) questionnaire. We collected 156 responses on in-situ context of use for Dropbox on mobile devices. We provide insights for future QoE-aware cloud services by highlighting the most important mobile contextual factors (e.g., connectivity, location, social, device), and how they affect users’ experiences while using such services on their mobile devices