Portable, But Not Mobile: A Study of Wireless Laptops in the Home

Overview

This paper reports a qualitative study of the use of physical space and wireless laptops by ten United States households. Although wireless laptops purportedly offer the opportunity and affordances to go "Anywhere in the home," laptops were generally used in a small set of particular places rather than moving fluidly through the home: wireless laptops were portable, but not mobile per se. The paper presents factors that influence laptop movement in the home. It also presents a model of people's use of space in the home, identifying a small set of favored places of long-term use and a larger set of kinetic places used for specific tasks.