Designing for mobility, collaboration and information use by blue-collar workers

The uptake of mobile phones in the UK has increased exponentially in the past two years, indicating that a wider range of users are now utilising mobile technologies in different contexts than ever before. Still little is known about how mobile technologies are used amongst different populations in specific contexts and this research addresses the context of work use by blue-collar workers with an aim to augmenting this with new mobile technologies better suited to their informational and communicative needs.Most of the current public domain research into mobile device use practice concentrates primarily on professional workers (the ubiquitous 'mobile professional') and 'knowledge workers' (e.g. Bellotti and Bly, 1996; O'Hara et al. 2001). It seeks to discover how mobile technology, particularly Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's) and 'communicators', can be designed to help mobile professionals retain a sense of awareness of their workplace and work colleagues while they are away from their traditional workplaces. To a lesser extent, 'teens' (Ling, 2000) using SMS/text messaging and novice users (e.g. Palen, 2000) are also examined, but there is very little understanding of the nature of other, and equally as important (in terms of the numbers of users and their importance to the economy), less well represented user groups.