research-article

Falling asleep with Angry Birds, Facebook and Kindle: a large scale study on mobile application usage

Authors:

Matthias Böhmer,

Johannes Schöning,

Antonio Krüger,

Gernot BauerAuthors Info & Claims

MobileHCI '11: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

Pages 47 - 56

https://doi.org/10.1145/2037373.2037383

Published: 30 August 2011 Publication History

Abstract

While applications for mobile devices have become extremely important in the last few years, little public information exists on mobile application usage behavior. We describe a large-scale deployment-based research study that logged detailed application usage information from over 4,100 users of Android-powered mobile devices. We present two types of results from analyzing this data: basic descriptive statistics and contextual descriptive statistics. In the case of the former, we find that the average session with an application lasts less than a minute, even though users spend almost an hour a day using their phones. Our contextual findings include those related to time of day and location. For instance, we show that news applications are most popular in the morning and games are at night, but communication applications dominate through most of the day. We also find that despite the variety of apps available, communication applications are almost always the first used upon a device's waking from sleep. In addition, we discuss the notion of a virtual application sensor, which we used to collect the data.

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Cited By

Ahmed MHasan TIslam SAhmed N(2024)Investigating Rhythmicity in App Usage to Predict Depressive Symptoms: Protocol for Personalized Framework Development and Validation Through a Countrywide StudyJMIR Research Protocols10.2196/5154013(e51540)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/51540
Bemmann FStoll HMayer S(2024)Privacy Slider: Fine-Grain Privacy Control for SmartphonesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765198:MHCI(1-31)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3676519
Savino GWahls JSchöning J(2024)Mobile Map Applications for Foldable DevicesProceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces10.1145/3656650.3656655(1-5)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656650.3656655
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Index Terms

Falling asleep with Angry Birds, Facebook and Kindle: a large scale study on mobile application usage
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. HCI design and evaluation methods

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cover image ACM Other conferences

MobileHCI '11: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

August 2011

781 pages

ISBN:9781450305419

DOI:10.1145/2037373

General Chair:
Markus Bylund
Swedish INstitute of Computer Science (SICS)
,
Program Chairs:
Oskar Juhlin
Mobile Life Centre, Stockholm University
,
Ylva Fernaeus
Mobile Life Centre, SICS

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Nokia
Swedish Institute of Computer Science: Swedish Institute of Computer Science
ERICSSON

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 August 2011

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MobileHCI '11

Sponsor:

Swedish Institute of Computer Science

MobileHCI '11: 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

August 30 - September 2, 2011

Stockholm, Sweden

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Overall Acceptance Rate 202 of 906 submissions, 22%

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Cited By

Ahmed MHasan TIslam SAhmed N(2024)Investigating Rhythmicity in App Usage to Predict Depressive Symptoms: Protocol for Personalized Framework Development and Validation Through a Countrywide StudyJMIR Research Protocols10.2196/5154013(e51540)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/51540
Bemmann FStoll HMayer S(2024)Privacy Slider: Fine-Grain Privacy Control for SmartphonesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36765198:MHCI(1-31)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3676519
Savino GWahls JSchöning J(2024)Mobile Map Applications for Foldable DevicesProceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces10.1145/3656650.3656655(1-5)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656650.3656655
Wang LZheng CWang HLuo XTyson GWang YWang SSpinellis DConstantinou EBacchelli A(2024)Global Prosperity or Local Monopoly? Understanding the Geography of App PopularityProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3643991.3644935(322-334)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643991.3644935
Andrew SBishop CTigwell G(2024)Light and Dark ModeProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36435398:1(1-23)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2024
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Jamalzadeh MRekik YShahzad IGrisoni L(2024)Eyes-free Circular Gestures on SmartphonesAdjunct Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3640471.3680240(1-5)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2024
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Krieter PZerrer PPuschmann CGeise SBoratto LGena CMarras MGermanakos PPopescus E(2024)Following Topics Across All Apps and Media Formats: Mobile Keyword Tracking as a Privacy-Friendly Data Source in Mobile Media ResearchAdjunct Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization10.1145/3631700.3664879(126-131)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2024
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Liu ZChen CWang JChen MWu BHuang YHu JWang Q(2024)Unblind Text Inputs: Predicting Hint-text of Text Input in Mobile Apps via LLMProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642939(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Hornbæk KLyngs UIarygina OSkov M(2024)“You Can Find a Part of my Life in Every Single App”: An Interview Study of What Makes Smartphone Applications Special to Their UsersProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642820(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Liu JZhang ZHu XThung FMaoz SGao DToch EZhao ZLo DRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)MiniMon: Minimizing Android Applications with Intelligent Monitoring-Based DebloatingProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639113(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
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