A Qualitative Research on the Structure and Determinants of Personal Device Network in the Ubiquitous Computing Context

유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경에서 PDN의 구조와 결정 요인에 대한 정성적 연구

In the ubiquitous computing environments. people usually carry multiple information technology devices with them. Personal device network (PDN) refers to the way how people connect multiple IT devices for their personal as well as professional purposes. Even though it has been Quite popular to construct the PDN in ubiquitous computing context, not much research has been conducted on how people actually connected multiple devices and what influences their methods of connection. In this paper we conducted a content analysis on community bulletin boards of IT devices and a contextual inquiry with expert users of PDN for investigating the configurations with which users connect multiple IT devices. Base on the results of two related studies, we identified three major types of PDN configurations, and key factors that influence the configurations of PDN. We conclude this research with guidelines to design a set of devices for each of the three configuration types.