Affiliations: College of Business, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 350 Wohlers Hall, 1206 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL
61820, USA. E-mail: gebauer@uiuc.edu
Abstract: As advanced mobile technology becomes more widespread, the impacts
on professional environments and on the personal lives of individual users
continue to increase. Devices, such as smart cell phones, personal digital
assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers can free their owners of the need to
remain close to a wired information system infrastructure that is provided in a
stationary office environment, and provide the opportunity to perform tasks in
a wide variety of use contexts. With changes in use context, however, come
changes in requirements, such as the need to limit weight and size of a device.
In order to achieve success in the form of adoption, use, and positive impacts
on user performance, a thorough understanding is needed about the functional
and non-functional technology requirements of mobile professionals. In this
paper, we summarize the results of a series of research studies that we
conducted to explore the technology requirements of mobile professionals. The
research studies included a content analysis of online user reviews, two
empirical surveys, and a series of user interviews. Our research findings
indicate that (1) user-perceived technology maturity is a critical factor to
explain and predict the use of mobile technology by mobile professionals; (2)
mobile technology needs to be available in a broad variety of use-situations;
(3) users require basic communication and productivity-related functionality,
in particular to support non-routine and supervisory task profiles; and (4)
mobile technology can have considerable impacts on the job performance and on
the personal lives of its users. Our findings have implications for the design,
management, and research of mobile information systems.
Keywords: Mobile workforce, user mobility, technology maturity, task-technology fit, user satisfaction
