Re-modeling the 'Phonebook' in a Smart Phone: Personalization Based on Intimacy and Immediacy

摘要

With rapid innovations taking place in smartphone technologies, features in the phonebook has evolved significantly to provide us more options for managing our social network. Personalization of these kinds of intimate social networks with the closest, most meaningful ties, such as between close friends, family, relatives and even close colleagues, are characterized through classification based on high frequency of interaction, but also by an inherent need to feel connected, to be in touch. In a qualitative study following ethnographic research and analysis of phone call logs revealed that, people interact with only a small fraction of the people actually present in their phonebook contact list. Our experiments examined the manner in which the users manage the phonebook and their co-relation to the frequency of interaction and intimacy and immediacy of need with the people they contact. Based on the research conducted, we propose a design approach that enhances the personalization of the mobile phonebook to provide the user with option of reordering hierarchies of their own intimate networks. In the paper, we also study the efficiency and usability of such a personalization tool.