Uncovering traces of mobile practices: 'the bag study'

This study addresses everyday human practices in order to inform our thinking around the design of technology to support human mobility and mobile device use. Building on traditional ethnographic techniques, we investigated the contents of people's bags, seeking traces of planning, decision making and other social practices that people rely on to construct and maintain relations between particular mobile objects and their particular mobile lives. The research contributes to the development of novel methods for researching mobile practices and its initial findings question assumptions about information use and storage, and about the personalisation of mobile device and services.