What makes mobile computer supported cooperative work mobile? Towards a better understanding of cooperative mobile interactions

Despite the high availability of mobile phones and personal digital assistants with online capabilities, mobile computer supported cooperative work is still in its infancy. So far, only little is known about the distinct attributes of mobile cooperative work in comparison to its stationary counterpart. Across which dimensions does cooperation via mobile devices differ from traditional hard-wired settings and what implications have to be drawn for future research? To bring more light to this question, we conducted an experimental business-case at Frankfurt University with 16 graduate students and analysed their collaborative behaviour across mobile and non-mobile channels of communication over a 5 week period. We find that mobile messages differed from stationary messages in terms of size and that the use of mobile emails prevailed over stationary emails under conditions of stress. Finally, we found that the social structure of mobile communication corresponded with the structure of stationary communication. This indicates that mobile communication technologies support existing communication relations rather than creating new relations. From the perspective of system designers, these results may serve as practical insights into the user behaviour of mobile technologies and might support the future development of mobile computer supported cooperative work environments. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ARTICLE IN PRESS *Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-69-798-23318; fax: +49-69-798-28585. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Schrott), [email protected] (J. Gl . uckler). 1071-5819/$ see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2003.11.006