[Air-L] Tablet Computer Ethnographies

Kevin Guidry krguidry at gmail.com
Tue Feb 7 11:31:35 PST 2012


All,

Can anyone recommend to me to high quality ethnographies of people
using tablet computers?  I've searched the list archives and we
recently veered close to this subject in a thread discussing "Writing
and iPads" but not close enough.  In that thread, Shane Tilton shared
a link to a poster about an ethnographic study of tablet usage on
campus buses (https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/25041/hahn_rapid.pdf?sequence=2).
 I've also found references to an Australian study
(http://works.bepress.com/jeff_brand/18/) but nearly all of the
material I've found so far focuses on the use of tablets as tools to
conduct ethnographies.  So are there any studies out there I'm
missing?  Does anyone have anything in the pipeline?

(For the curious and those who need more context, this relates to a
study for which I've previously asked for help related to mobile
devices and web surveys.  I'm presenting a paper in a few months
showing that in this one study respondents to a web-based survey who
used mobile phones provided lower-quality responses compared to iPad
and computer users.  My methods don't allow me to say *why* this
happened but I'd like to conjecture intelligently and offer some
likely possibilities hence my desire to know how people use tablets.
My hunch is that this relates to screen size and environmental
factors.)


Kevin



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