Rethinking Activity Awareness: The Design, Evaluation Implication of Integrating Activity Awareness into Mobile Messaging
Nowadays, different types of context information are integrated into mobile messaging to increase expressiveness and awareness, including mobile device setting, location, activity, heart rate, etc. Due to low recognition accuracy, activity awareness has been underutilized in mobile messaging. Recently, activity recognition technology has advanced. However, the user behaviors of activity awareness with improved technology have not been studied. In this study, we design ActAware, a mobile instant messaging application that integrates activity awareness based on re-summarized design dimensions, and conduct a field study to fully explore user behaviors. We found that the improved activity recognition accuracy and the addition of activity transition notification allow users to better utilize activity awareness to achieve utilitarian and emotional purposes. We also found that users have fewer privacy concerns when disclosing activity information in ActAware. Based on these findings, we provide design recommendations for mobile messaging to better support activity awareness.
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