“You Can Find a Part of my Life in Every Single App”: An Interview Study of What Makes Smartphone Applications Special to Their Users

Kasper Hornbæk, Ulrik Lyngs, Olga Iarygina, Mikael B. Skov

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Abstract

In the 1979 book “The Meaning of Things” Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton studied people's perception of the significance of things in the home. They emphasized how things influence the self, and vice versa. We propose that their method and analytical framework can help to understand the analogous question for smartphones: Why are some apps special to users? Using the framework, we conduct and analyze 60 interviews with people aged 21 to 41; with participants' consent, we made the anonymized transcripts publicly available. The analysis of the interviews shows that participants find apps special because they are convenient, support personal goals and social communication, help them remember, and serve emotional functions. Participants report that their identity is intertwined with certain apps, even if they are annoying or cause dependency. Importantly, we also find that participants actively regulate their use of apps through their organization and particular use strategies.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHI 2024 - Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sytems
Number of pages16
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc.
Publication date2024
Article number252
ISBN (Electronic)9798400703300
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Event2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sytems, CHI 2024 - Hybrid, Honolulu, United States
Duration: 11 May 202416 May 2024

Conference

Conference2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sytems, CHI 2024
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityHybrid, Honolulu
Period11/05/202416/05/2024
SponsorACM SIGCHI

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s)

Keywords

  • meaning
  • Smartphones
  • user experience

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