A Study On Future User Needs And Innovative Smart Phone Features

With the development of the ubiquitous computing, 3G, Web2.0 and the trend of 3C integration, smart phone will become a dominant form of the digital product in the future. Nevertheless, unlike other digital products, the mobile context and its own limited resources (such as screen and input device size) of the smartphone result in the different interaction style and unique essential user needs. Commissioned by the Lenovo Corporate Rearch & Development, we start user needs and interaction styles research on smart phone and alike mobile terminal equipment for the next 3-5 years.The research include: literature review, target user definition, use context and behavioral variable analysis, user needs analysis, validation scenarios design and validation by the user. First, we investigate more than 100 related literatures for the purpose of understanding the current status and trends in the field. Then, refering the relevant market research reports, we identify the target user group. In the use context analysis phase, we collecte the subject user data by user diary/culture prob and one-on-one interview in Dalian and Beijing, then conclude the set of behavior and context variables. Based on different value of variables, we identify, outline and narrate nine different Personas. Attached with different Personas, a total of 65 context scenarios are constructed. Persona-based context scenarios figure personas in a series of representative activities in a typical environment. According to Personas and Scenarios, we analyse the user’s essential potential needs and propose the corresponding functions, furthermore, followed with clustering, refining, assessing and prioritizing all user needs. These smartphone user needs and the new functional design provide guidance for the future development of mobile terminal equipment and a solid foundation for the subsequent research work carried out.In this thesis, the literature review, target user definition, use context and behavioral variable analysis, user needs analysis was completed, the design of validation scenarios and validation by the user are ongoing. The first chapter is the introduction of research background and the structure of the thesis; the second chapter is the summary of related research in the field, includeing functions of mobile terminal, researches on user needs/behavior patterns and UCD methodology; the third part of this study is the definition of target user groups; in the fourth, it is about the data acquisition in use context analysis phase, including subject selection and user recruitment by the means of user diary/culture prob and one-on-one interview; Part five is about the data processing and analysis of the context analysis phase, in this part, researchers analyse the behavioral/contextual variables of targete user groups; the sixth part is the analysis, clustering and assessment of the user needs and corresponding new functional feature of future mobile terminal based on the results of data analysis; the last section is the conclusion of the research.