=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Influence of Usability on Customer Satisfaction: A Case Study on Mobile Phone Services
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-922/paper4.pdf
|volume=Vol-922
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iused/OliveiraCO12
}}
==Influence of Usability on Customer Satisfaction: A Case Study on Mobile Phone Services==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-922/paper4.pdf
Influence of Usability on Customer Satisfaction: A Case
Study on Mobile Phone Services
Rodrigo de Oliveira Mauro Cherubini∗ Nuria Oliver
Telefonica Research Google Telefonica Research
oliveira@tid.es mauroc@google.com nuriao@tid.es
ABSTRACT with usability goals even less clear. In this paper we focus
Designing for better user experiences (e.g., interactions more on clarifying this connection in the context of mobile phone
satisfying, enjoyable) is usually more difficult than aiming services, particularly between two key usability goals (i.e. ef-
for clearer usability goals (e.g., improve systems’ efficiency, ficiency and ease of use) and an important UX goal: user
easy of use). In this paper, we present a conceptual model val- satisfaction. More specifically, we present findings of a con-
idated with data from 603 mobile phone users that clarifies the ceptual model validated with data from 603 customers of a
relationship between usability of basic mobile services and telecommunication operator that provides insights on the re-
the users’ satisfaction with them. Our findings indicate that lationship between perceived usability of basic mobile phone
satisfaction is mostly influenced by how users perceive the us- services and their satisfaction with them. The model also cap-
ability of these services, more specifically their efficiency. We tures the influence of other variables, such as the users’ per-
discuss the model and propose three implications that shall in- sonality profile and their usage of mobile services. In the
crease satisfaction with basic mobile services: a few solutions following sections we explain how the proposed model was
to minimize routine disruption, personality-based service per- empirically validated and discuss how designers and software
sonalization, and persuasive strategies to raise awareness of engineers could leverage the model towards improving cus-
one’s technology consumption saturation point. tomers’ satisfaction with basic mobile services.
Author Keywords CONCEPTUAL MODEL
Big Five; mobile phone services; personality; structural The way people appropriate technology has been previously
equation modeling; usability. studied. Several theoretical models have been introduced and
tested to explain user acceptance behavior, such as the The-
ACM Classification Keywords ory of Reasoned Action [15], the Theory of Planned Behavior
H.1.2 Models and Principles: User/Machine Systems: Hu- [2] and the Technology Acceptance Model [11]. While these
man Factors models have contributed a great deal to our understanding of
users’ preferences and acceptance behavior of technological
INTRODUCTION artifacts, they fall short in explaining the users’ experience
The Human-Computer Interaction community was once con- with technology.
cerned primarily with usability, but has since become more
interested in understanding, designing for and evaluating a User experience encompasses the experiential, affective, and
wider range of user experience aspects. According to Rogers cognitive aspects of a person interacting with a product, sys-
et al. [29], interactive systems should now be designed in tem or service1 . Therefore it is not limited to the user’s in-
terms of their objectives classified in terms of usability and tention to use a certain technology. However, user experience
user experience goals. Traditionally, usability goals are re- models do not typically capture the role of the user’s personal-
lated to specific usability engineering criteria (e.g., systems ity when interacting with a certain piece of technology. Ryck-
designed to be more efficient, effective, easy to use), whereas man [30] defined personality as a “dynamic and organized set
user experience goals aim to explain the nature of the user ex- of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influ-
perience (e.g., interactions more satisfying, enjoyable, engag- ences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in var-
ing) [29]. Although usability goals are nowadays better estab- ious situations”. Recent studies have demonstrated that per-
lished and integrated into Software Engineering, UX goals sonality influences directly how people experience the world
are still considered somewhat fuzzy, being their connection [28]. Hence, we believe that there is an opportunity to better
∗
understand the user’s interaction with technology by taking
Research conducted while working for Telefonica Research. into account his/her personality profile.
Personality profiles are typically assessed by means of sur-
veys. Goldberg [17]’s Big Five model is one of today’s most
well-known, accessible—and of public domain—and empir-
ically validated personality assessment models. It structures
a personality profile into five factors (or traits): Extroversion,
1
Adapted from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience,
last retrieved September 2012.
Copyright is held by the authors/owners.
Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and possible to use these measures to benchmark service opera-
Intellect (also known as Openness). The five factor model tors in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Similarly,
is not only well known in Personality Psychology, but also Sawng et al. [33] worked on a model that included social ben-
extensively used by the HCI community [25, 14, 6]. efits, satisfaction and service risks and that could be used to
predict customer behavior when using mobile phone services.
Our proposed model aims at explaining the customer’s satis- In market research, behavioral patterns are typically used to
faction with basic mobile phone services by means of his/her: predict switching to a different operator (i.e., churn). For
(1) personality traits, (2) perceived usability of the services, instance, Sathish et al. [32] studied the factors that affected
and (3) actual usage of these services. Figure 1 depicts the churn decisions in India. They found that self-reported call
model with references to prior work related to each of the frequency was among the most important factors in determin-
five hypothesized relationships among the different concepts. ing whether customers were satisfied with their carriers. In
Detailed explanations on relationships 4 and 5 from Figure 1
this paper, we investigate the impact that actual—as recorded
are out of the scope of this paper. Next we therefore concen-
by the operator—mobile phone usage has on customer satis-
trate on presenting prior art that sheds light on the first three faction with mobile services.
hypothesized relationships.
Relationship 3: Personality influences the perception of
usability of mobile phone services. Many researchers have
Ryckman 2004 Perceived
Perceived Usability
Usability
Davis, 1989 worked on the relation between personality and the measures
Lee and Nass, 2003 Frøkjær et al., 2000
Graziola et al., 2005
[Rogers
[Rogers et
et al.,
al., 2011]
2011] Hornbæk & Law, 2007 that are usually taken into account to define the usability of
Devaraj et al., 2008
Ryckman 2004
Heo et al., 2009
Niklas & Strohmeier, 2011
a system. Ease of use and usefulness were studied by De-
Antoniou & Lepouras, 2010 3 1
Lee and Nass, 2003 varaj et al. [13], who conducted a study with 180 new users
Hendriks et al., 2006
of a collaborative technology and found correlations between
Personality
Personality Alsajjan, 2010 Customer Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction
[Goldberg, 5 [Oliver,
[Oliver, 1997]
the personality dimensions and the perceived usefulness and
[Goldberg, 1992]
1992] 1997]
ease of use. Other related measures of usability have been
4 2
Paunonen & Ashton, 2001 Turel and Serenko, 2006 studied for mobile services. Antoniou & Lepouras [5] worked
Saati et al., 2005 Sathish et al., 2011
Khan et al., 2008 Behavior
on an adaptive mobile museum guide and showed that per-
Behavior Sawng et al., 2011
Butt & Phillips, 2008 sonality traits are related to the acceptance of the adaptivity
Arteaga et al., 2010
Oliveira et al., 2011 dimensions of the service. A similar study was conducted by
Zhou & Lu, 2011 Graziola et al. [19], who found a relation between person-
Figure 1. Proposed conceptual model. References that address each ality traits and the user’s preferences of interface modality.
relationship are indicated onto the corresponding arrow or ellipse. Our work builds on these previous findings and investigates
whether and how they hold in the context of the proposed
model.
Relationship 1: Perceived Usability of mobile phone ser-
vices influences the customers’ satisfaction with them. Us-
ability goals (e.g., effectiveness, efficiency, learnability) have METHODOLOGY
been said to be positively correlated with how people evalu- According to Rogers et al. [29], usability testing has been in-
ate their user experience with technology (e.g., satisfying, en- creasingly performed remotely, thus allowing services to be
joyable) [29]. However, these correlations depend in a com- evaluated with larger samples and improving ecological va-
plex way on the application domain, the user’s experience lidity by keeping participants in their own environment. Fur-
and the context of use [16]. Additionally, effectiveness, ef- thermore, Nielsen & Levy [26]’s work on the relationship be-
ficiency and satisfaction should be considered to be different tween self-reported measures and objective measures of us-
goals [16, 22]. These recent findings motivate the study of ability have encouraged the community to also consider mea-
our hypothesis in the case of mobile services. In this regard, suring usability in a subjective manner. We therefore opted
Heo et al. [21] created a framework to evaluate the usability for measuring both usability and user satisfaction using an
of mobile services, and showed that there were correlations online survey approach. Participants were recruited via email
between usability and user experience constructs, such as sat- from an online panel with members living in Mexico and who
isfaction. Another support for this hypothesis comes from the satisfied two filtering criteria: they all owned a Telefonica2
Technology Acceptance Model [11] that has been adapted to pre-paid mobile phone number, and were using basic mo-
the specific case of mobile services [27]. In both cases sig- bile phone services for at least the past six months (i.e., calls,
nificant correlations between usability goals and user satis- SMS, MMS, and basic GPRS/3G related services). The on-
faction were found. In this paper we investigate the impact line survey had two main sections. The first section included
of perceived usability on customer satisfaction with mobile 50 questions [1] to assess their personality traits according to
phone services. the Big Five model (i.e. extroversion, agreeableness, consci-
entiousness, emotional stability and intellect) [17], whereas
Relationship 2: Mobile phone usage influences customer the second section collected the participants’ opinions about
satisfaction with mobile phone services. The way cus- the basic mobile phone services that they were using.
tomers use mobile technology influences their experience of
the mobile services they use. Turel & Serenko [34] worked 2
Telefonica S.A. is currently the 3rd largest telecommunication
on a model that incorporated self-reported behavioral ac- company worldwide with over 300 Million customers (21 Million
counts of mobile service usage. They found that it was in Mexico). See www.telefonica.com for further details.
Measures. Items were measured either subjectively or ob- model, i.e. relationships between each factor construct—
jectively. A total of seven constructs were created from sur- e.g. usability—and its corresponding items—e.g. efficiency
vey items and hence subjectively measured: extroversion, and easy of use. Then we estimated the structural paths—
agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, intel- e.g. between factors usability and satisfaction. The measure-
lect, perceived usability, and satisfaction with mobile phone ment model was evaluated for uni-dimensionality, reliability,
services. Each of the five personality traits were captured by convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, the hypothe-
10 survey items that were later grouped into personality facets sized structural paths between constructs were included in the
using Goldberg’s [18] classification (shown in Table 1). This model for the final estimation.
was performed by computing summated scales for each facet,
i.e., summating all positive survey items and reversed neg-
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
ative items related to the same facet. For instance, if one
participant gave the ratings 2, 8, and 7 to the survey items Figure 2 depicts the validated conceptual model with the most
q8r, q33, and q43 respectively (see Table 1), then the sum- relevant statistics. Fit measures like SRMR (.05), RMSEA
mated scale for his/her Orderliness personality facet would (.05), CFI (.94), and PRATIO (.80) reveal that our model has
be: (10 − 2) + 8 + 7 = 23. The remaining two subjec- a good fit according to widely accepted cutoff criteria [23,
tively measured factors—customer satisfaction and perceived 7]. Next we discuss only those results related to the influence
usability—were assessed in relation to the mobile services of perceived usability on customer satisfaction, and how one
contracted by the participants (phone calls, messages, i.e. can leverage the findings of the model in order to propose new
SMS and MMS, Internet access and operator’s mobile Web design solutions for basic mobile phone services that encom-
portal). Finally, mobile phone usage was the only factor com- passes both usability and UX goals.
posed of items that were measured objectively: the total num-
ber of mobile phone calls made/received between January err
err err
err
and June 2010, the total duration of phone calls, and the to- R2=.67 R2=.38
tal number of messages sent/received during the same period. efficiency ease of use
Table 1 summarizes data and constructs used in the study. .82 (.04)
.61 (.04)
Participants. A total of 603 valid responses (male: 50.2%, F6.
F6. Perceived
Perceived Usability
Usability R2=.28 (.05)
controlled for a balanced distribution) were obtained in the .29 (.11)
final study. Participants’ age ranged between 18 and 35 years .06 (.07)
-.01 (.08) .01 (.10)
old (x̄ = 25.87, s = 5.25)—as per our invitation filtering F1.
F1. Extroversion
Extroversion .25 (.09)
criteria—and they predominantly belonged to the middle so- .47 (.07)
cioeconomic class. The majority reported using computers F2.
F2. Agreeableness
Agreeableness .04 (.10)
(93.4%) and the Internet (92.4%) at least once a week. In R2=.25 (.05)
-.07 (.06)
terms of mobile phone use, 81.6% reported using their mo-
bile phone everyday and 14.8% several times a week. Based F3.
F3. Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness .14 (.08) F7.
F7. Satisfaction
Satisfaction
on their mobile phone call data, participants made or received .01 (.06)
an average of 101 calls per month and sent or received an av- F4.
F4. Emotional
Emotional Stability
Stability -.19 (.07)
erage of 171 messages per month.
-.11 (.04)
Data analysis. The conceptual model depicted in Figure 2— F5.
F5. Intellect
Intellect .04 (.07)
note that we expanded the personality variable from Figure -.03 (.06) .03 (.05)
.16 (.09)
1 into the Big Five traits—was evaluated using Structural -.07 (.08)
Equation Modeling (SEM) [7]. We highlight at least three F8.
F8. Mobile
Mobile Phone
Phone Usage
Usage R2=.03 (.02)
reasons for using this approach: (1) SEM models relation-
ships between concepts given that its objective function max-
imizes the probability of predicting the covariance matrix in- Figure 2. Validated conceptual model. Standardized loadings next to the
stead of predicting values of a certain variable; (2) SEM takes corresponding arrows with standard errors in parenthesis (bootstrap-
ping to 1000 samples). Significant paths (p < .05) indicated by solid
measurement unreliability into account by modeling equa- black arrows and non-significant paths indicated by grey dashed arrows.
tion errors and non-measurable concepts—e.g., extroversion, Error variables and covariance paths omitted for clarity.
satisfaction—as latent variables, thus avoiding unrealistic as-
sumptions of error-free measurements; and (3) SEM allows
Perceived usability positively influences customer satis-
researchers to leverage previous knowledge given that it uses
faction with mobile phone services. The validated concep-
confirmatory rather than exploratory factor analysis.
tual model corroborated that the usability of mobile phone
The conceptual model was evaluated using Maximum Like- services is positively correlated with the customers’ satisfac-
lihood (ML) estimation and the data was bootstrapped (1000 tion with these services (β76 = .47; p = .002). The stan-
samples) to meet the estimation’s assumption of joint mul- dardized direct effect of perceived usability on satisfaction
tivariate normality of observed variables [7]. The SEM esti- was .47, which means that when usability goes up by 1 stan-
mation process was split in two steps as recommended by An- dard deviation, satisfaction goes up by .47 standard devia-
derson and Gerbing [4]. First we developed a measurement tion, and hence has a very strong influence on it. In fact, this
is the strongest direct influence present in the model. With
Table 1. Construct factors and associated items captured subjectively by the survey and objectively by the mobile phone operator.
Construct Factor Summated item Survey Item description in English / Item description in Spanish (used in the survey) Removed from
Item code Item name a g
code the model
b
Extroversion
x1 Gregariousness q1 Am the life of the party / Soy el alma de la fiesta
q6r Don't talk a lot / No hablo mucho
q16r Keep in the background / Prefiero mantenerme al margen
h
q21 Start conversations / Comienzo las conversaciones
q31 Talk to a lot of different people at parties / En las fiestas hablo con muchas personas diferentes
q36r Don't like to draw attention to myself / No me gusta llamar la atención
q46r Am quiet around strangers / Cuando estoy entre desconocidos me mantengo callado
x2 Poise q11 Feel comfortable around people / Me siento cómodo con la gente
x3 Leadership q26r Have little to say / No tengo mucho que decir
x4 Provocativeness q41 Don't mind being the center of attention / No me importa ser el centro de atención
b
Agreeableness
x5 Understanding q2r Feel little concern for others / Me preocupo poco por los demás
q17 Sympathize with others' feelings / Soy sensible hacia las emociones de otros
q22r Am not interested in other people's problems / No me interesan los problemas de otras personas
x6 Warmth q7 Am interested in people / Me intereso por la gente
q32r Am not really interested in others / En realidad no me intereso por los demás
q37 Take time out for others / Dedico tiempo a los demás
q42 Feel others’ emotions / Siento las emociones de los otros
q47 Make people feel at ease / Hago sentir cómoda a la gente
x7 Pleasantness q12r Insult people / Ofendo a la gente
x8 Nurturance q27 Have a soft heart / Tengo un corazón sensible
b
Conscientiousness
x9 Conscientiousness q28r Often forget to put things back in their proper place / A menudo olvido poner las cosas en su lugar
x10 Orderliness q8r Leave my belongings around / Dejo mis pertenencias en cualquier lado
q33 Like order / Me gusta el orden
q43 Follow a schedule / Hago un programa y lo sigo
x11 Organization q13 Pay attention to details / Pongo atención en los detalles
x12 Efficiency q23 Get chores done right away / Realizo mis tareas inmediatamente
q48 Am exacting in my work / Soy perfeccionista en mi trabajo
x13 Purposefulness q3 Am always prepared / Siempre estoy preparado
q18r Make a mess of things / Soy desordenado
q38r Shirk my duties / Evado mis obligaciones
b
Emotional Stability
x14 Stability q4r Get stressed out easily / Me estreso con facilidad
q24r Am easily disturbed / Me molesto fácilmente
q29r Get upset easily / Me disgusto con facilidad
q34r Change my mood a lot / Cambio mucho de humor
x15 Tranquility q9 Am relaxed most of the time / Estoy relajado la mayor parte del tiempo
q39r Have frequent mood swings / Tengo cambios frecuentes de estado de ánimo
x16 Happiness q14r Worry about things / Me preocupo por todo
q19 Seldom feel blue / Rara vez me siento triste
q49r Often feel blue / Me siento triste frecuentemente
x17 Calmness q44r Get irritated easily / Me irrito fácilmente
b
Intellect
x18 Intellect q5 Have a rich vocabulary / Tengo un vocabulario amplio
q20r Am not interested in abstract ideas / No me interesan las ideas abstractas
q40 Use difficult words / Utilizo palabras difíciles
x19 Creativity q10r Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas / Me cuesta entender ideas abstractas
x20 Imagination q15 Have a vivid imagination / Tengo mucha imaginación
x21 Ingenuity q25 Have excellent ideas / Tengo excelentes ideas
q30r Do not have a good imagination / No tengo una buena imaginación
q50 Am full of ideas / Estoy lleno de ideas
x22 Quickness q35 Am quick to understand things / Soy rápido para entender las cosas
x23 Introspection q45 Spend time reflecting on things / Dedico tiempo a reflexionar
c
Usability
x24 Ease of Use q51 I find it easy to make mobile phone services do what I need /
Me resulta fácil conseguir que los servicios de telefonía celular hagan lo que necesito
x25 Efficiency q52 Using mobile phone services saves my time /
Utilizar los servicios de telefonía celular me hace ahorrar tiempo
Satisfaction
x26 d q53 What is your general satisfaction level with the mobile phone services that you are paying for?
General Satisfaction
¿Cuál es tu nivel de satisfacción general con los servicios de telefonía celular que estás pagando?
x27 e q54 How do you think the mobile phone services that you are paying for meet your expectations? /
Expectations Met
¿Cómo consideras que los servicios de telefonía celular que estás pagando cumplen con tus expectativas?
x28 f q55 How close are the mobile phone services that you are paying for to your ideal mobile services?
Ideal Mobile Services
¿Dónde consideras que se encuentran los servicios de telefonía celular que tienes contratados con
respecto a tu ideal de servicios de telefonía celular?
Mobile Phone Usage
X29 Calls N/A [not survey]: Number of mobile phone calls made/received between January and June 2010
x30 Duration of calls N/A [not survey]: Total duration of mobile phone calls made/received between January and June 2010
x31 Messages N/A [not survey]: Number of phone messages (SMS, MMS) sent/received between January and June 2010
a
Numbers in item code indicate the order of appearance in the survey while the letter “r” indicate the item is reversed.
b
Associated survey items measured in a 9-point scale ranging from 1: “almost never” and 9: “almost always” as suggested by Goldberg (1992).
c
Associated survey items measured in a 9-point scale ranging from 1: “strongly disagree” and 9: “strongly agree”.
d
Measured in a 9-point scale ranging from 1: “completely not satisfied” and 9: “completely satisfied”.
e
Measured in a 9-point scale ranging from 1: “don’t meet my expectations at all” and 9: “meet all of my expectations”.
f
Measured in a 9-point scale ranging from 1: “very far” and 9: “very close”.
g
Item-analysis suggested that personality facets measured by one survey item were violating unidimensionality of their corresponding factors and should therefore be removed. Furthermore,
convergent validity analysis and subjective inspection of questions pointed out that the extroversion factor should be improved by removing items q16r and q36r.
h
When reusing the Spanish translation, change this item for: “Intento no llamar la attención” as suggested by Cupani (2009).
respect to the key usability goals that defined customer sat- Limitations of the Study
isfaction, service efficiency came in first place (R2 = .67), As described in the methodology section, the conceptual
followed by ease of use (R2 = .38). The model changed model from Figure 2 was validated using data from 603 sub-
significantly when usability loadings for these variables were jects living in Mexico with an age range of 18-35 years old,
constrained to be equal (χ2 /df = 8.813, p = .003). These who had a pre-paid cellphone, and were using mobile services
results indicate that the efficiency of basic mobile phone ser- for at least six months (calls, messages and basic GPRS/3G
vices might be the most important usability goal determining related services). Our findings can therefore be safely gen-
user satisfaction—in the context considered herein. eralized to this sample profile only (CL = 95%; margin of
error: ±4%). Note that pre-paid mobile phone services are
Mobile phone usage influences customer satisfaction with
predominant in developing economies, but it is not in the de-
mobile phone services. According to our model, this influ-
veloped world. Future work should verify whether the model
ence is rather negative (β78 = −.11; p = .005), meaning
also holds for smartphone users with unlimited data plan.
that the more one uses basic mobile phone services, the less
satisfied s/he is with them. One possible explanation of this
finding is that technology consumption might have a satura- FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
tion point. Satisfaction could be maintained up to a point The conceptual model validated in the previous section con-
where the given technology addresses people’s needs without tributes to our understanding of how software engineers
compromising their daily routines and personal values. If by and HCI practitioners could improve customers’ satisfaction
overusing mobile services one jeopardizes these routines and based on more clear usability goals. For example, the per-
values, then dissatisfaction might be a natural outcome due ceived usability of the basic mobile phone services used by
to several reasons, e.g., realizing that too much time is being our participants was the most important factor when explain-
wasted using them, creating anxiety to keep up with the flow ing customer satisfaction. Moreover, the concept of usability
of messages and calls, etc. Note that the construct factor for was mostly characterized by efficiency (R2 = .67) rather than
Mobile Phone Usage comprised more information about syn- ease of use (R2 = .38), thus highlighting an important trend
chronous disruptive activities like phone calls (R2 = .94) and for satisfaction. Note that saving people’s time is a recurrent
their durations (R2 = .83), than about sent/received asyn- result from our research as mobile phone usage had a signif-
chronous text messages (R2 = .45). Therefore, the mo- icant negative effect on satisfaction. Next, we propose three
bile phone usage patterns as captured by our model include design solutions:
mostly activities that can break daily routines and hence be
First, project managers in charge of developing new mobile
more susceptible to the argument of technology consumption
communication services should focus their efforts on design-
saturation point. While previous work demonstrated the exis-
ing more efficient solutions that minimize disruption of the
tence of a link between usage behavior and satisfaction with
users’ routine. For instance we can think about leaving the
mobile services [34, 33], our work goes one step further by
possibility to request statements of the monthly bill or per-
finding that these are negatively linked (and quantifying the
forming operations on the contract such as enabling (or dis-
relationship), suggesting a possible explanation, and consid-
abling) options of the call plan via SMS or email instead of
ering actual mobile phone usage as captured by the mobile
requesting the customers to go through call centers that too
operator.
often require an enormous effort from their side. In terms of
Personality influences the perception of usability of mo- minimizing routine disruption, the user’s contextual informa-
bile phone services. More specifically, extroversion (β61 = tion could be leveraged in order to identify the most suitable
.29; p = .004) and conscientiousness (β63 = .25; p = .006) periods of the day for sending them notifications or contact-
had significant effects on perceived usability of mobile phone ing them.
services. The interpretation of this finding is grounded on be-
Second, personalized services could be created to help users
havior theories associated to personality traits. If today’s mo-
with low scores on the extroversion and conscientious-
bile phone services are useful to shorten distances between
ness traits better manage their time when overusing mobile
people and allow them to efficiently interact more often, it
phones. For example, less organized people could overuse
is expected that extroverts—who interact with peers more
mobile services during a certain time period without planning
frequently—will recognize such qualities and hence highly
much for the additional costs and end up with an unpleasant
evaluate these services’ usability. Likewise, if these services
surprise when receiving their monthly bill. Mobile services
indeed help people save time, one would expect that those
with personality-based user models could help these “less or-
who care about efficiency when following daily schedules—
ganized” users by sending them periodic feedback on how
i.e., people with high scores on the conscientiousness trait—
much they have spent with phone calls and text messages,
would positively rate the services’ usability. We cannot di-
and how close they are to their preferred maximum expense.
rectly compare our work with previous models because these
Recent work by Cherubini et al. [9] has revealed that the
studies do not group usability goals into one single factor [33,
lack of personalization is actually one of the biggest barriers
35]. However, our work offers synergic findings by revealing
for the adoption of today’s mobile phone contextual services.
that extroversion and conscientiousness have a significant ef-
Although related mostly to basic mobile phone services, our
fect on the usability construct (composed of efficiency and
findings are in agreement with these conclusions and further
ease of use).
identify new opportunities for personality-based personaliza-
tion. We expect their practical relevance to increase as tech-
niques for the automatic assessment of personality are more 17. Goldberg, L. R. The development of markers for the Big-Five
accurate and pervasive [24, 12]. Factor structure. Psych. Assessment 4 (1992), 26–42.
Finally, mobile services should identify and provide aware- 18. Goldberg, L. R. Personality psychology in Europe, vol. 7.
Tilburg Univ. Press, Tilburg, The Netherlands, 1999, ch. A
ness of the user’s saturation point when consuming mobile broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory
phone services. Persuasive techniques (e.g., social support, measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models.,
reminders, etc.) are relevant in this context towards prevent- 7–28.
ing mental/physical stress and hence low satisfaction. 19. Graziola, I., Pianesi, F., Zancanaro, M., and Goren-Bar, D.
Dimensions of adaptivity in mobile systems: personality and
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS people’s attitudes. In Proc. IUI’05, ACM (San Diego, USA,
Telefonica Research participates in the Torres Quevedo sub- January 10-13 2005), 223–230.
program (MICINN), cofinanced by the European Social 20. Hendriks, A., Smets, E., Vrielink, M., Van Es, S., and
Fund, for researchers recruitment. De Haes, J. Is personality a determinant of patient satisfaction
with hospital care? Int. J. for Qual. in Health Care 18, 2 (April
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