Introduction

Abstract

The central thesis of this book is that the usability of mobile computers should be understood in terms of the correlation between unity of organizational and personal applications in mobile computers on the one hand, and continuity of organizational and personal use contexts on the other. This understanding is important because the nature of mobile computers and contemporary work practices induces the increasing inclusion of the user’s personal or cognitive needs of existence and development—that is, his psychological frame—into the human–computer dyad. The dyad determines mobile computer usability; and so this understanding is, hopefully, useful to designers, implementers and researchers of mobile information systems in organisations and society. It is also timely because mobile computing, as prognosticated in the ubiquitous computing vision (Weiser 1991; Kleinrock 1996), is increasingly becoming a predominant aspect of contemporary computing in organizations and society.