Context. There has been a remarkable growth of the mobile game industry since the raging pandemic covid-19 destroyed many businesses across several industries [1]. Nowadays mobile gaming has been one of the highest performing industries globally, raking in more billions in revenue [1,2]. Understanding the direction and aspects to improve the quality of products and reduce the cost is important for a mobile gaming company to stand out. There is a plethora of literature on how to improve the related product quality [3]. One of them is to analyze and optimize the various requirements in each version update, and how these requirements could be elicited from the company’s development plan and user feedback. Specifically, mobile game companies would review the user comments of their products from various application platforms such as Google Play and Apple store, select the informative comments with specific user requirements according to their own standard, and finally elicit and then implement these requirements in the follow-up version updates. During this process, it is important to control the lead time---the time cost for mobile game companies to review and select the valuable user comments, make decisions to apply the changes, make a development plan afterwards and finally put it into action. In the current increasingly intense competitive environment, time-based dimensions of a product such as the lead-time are becoming an increasingly important component in assessing strategic advantage, since having products early increases the possible market introduction window. Meanwhile, traditional long lead times and high inventory levels may be less appropriate and more costly endeavors that may not even achieve product parity [4]. To compress the product lead time was the priority task to help companies keep their competitiveness [5]. To fulfil this aim, fundamental changes must be made in every function that affects the delivery of the product. However, most existing literature focuses on the lead time in the traditional software industry, which can be different in the case of the mobile game apps. We herein in this paper explore the contents of lead time in the mobile gaming industry. We designed a series of steps to explore the real situation of lead time in the mobile gaming industry. Differences between mobile gaming and traditional software industries are also of interest to be explored.       Objectives. The main purpose of our research was to study the lead time which would be caused during the process of implementing users’ requirements. We tried to achieve the purpose from two aspects: First, we investigated whether there were differences in the lead time of different requirement types. Second, we investigated whether the lead time differences existed in different types of mobile games.   Methods. Our group used Case Study as the main research method to investigate the lead time in real cases.   Results. .First, there were differences in the lead time of implementing different types of requirements. Such as the lead time of bug fix types of requirements would be shorter than feature added types of requirements. Second, different types of mobile game apps had differences in the lead time. For example, MOBA games would take longer time on Function update or Feature request types of requirements, and FPS games would take longer time on exclusive event types of requirements. The details would be shown in part 4.2 and 4.3.   Conclusions. Two research questions in our thesis were answered. When mobile game companies dealt with requirements in user feedback, the lead time objectively existed. We could calculate the length of the lead time of different types of requirements. Moreover, different types of requirements had various lead times. For example, the lead time caused by bug fixing requirement would be shorter compared with that of adding new functions. And this research provided some fundamental results to both academic field and mobile game industry field.   Keywords: Mobile game apps, User reviews, User requirements, Lead time

Scholars have paid increased attention to the impact of social technologies on organizational communication but have yet to explore how their use has influenced organizational socialization, a process in which organizational newcomers transition into the organization. To fill this gap, this thesis investigates the use of social networking applications, a type of social technology, and its relation to three key processes in organizational socialization: information seeking, identity work, and workplace relationship development. Drawing on the concepts of affordance and paradox, this thesis examines how technological features and human factors such as mobile communication culture, technological frames of users, and organizational contexts shape processes of using social networking applications during organizational entry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese organizational newcomers regarding their experience of using WeChat, the most popular social networking mobile application in China. Findings suggest that WeChat provides communicative opportunities that are otherwise not available in other communication platforms or channels. The participants obtain official and unofficial information from using WeChat. In addition to conventional, direct information seeking, the participants rely on persistence of information afforded by WeChat to indirectly access information. The participants seek information about identity expectations through indirect methods such as observation and experiment with their provisional identities using WeChat Moments. Details of mundane everyday work life and achievements are the most frequently mentioned content for identity construction. For workplace relationship development, the participants develop metaknowledge of their coworkers through browsing their coworkers' posts from WeChat Moments. WeChat work groups provide opportunities for newcomers to initiate and develop relationships with their coworkers with low social costs. Despite that WeChat provides lots of benefits, the participants describe WeChat as a problematic tool in that they could be trapped in paradoxical situations when they are concerned with engagement in organizational communication flows, construction of flexible identities, genres of professional communication enabled by WeChat, and blurred boundaries between professional and personal life. Dealing with these paradoxes provides opportunities for newcomers to learn technology culture of their organizations, reflect on their technological frames, and adjust their expectations and behaviors with respect to WeChat use. This technologically occasioned learning is an unexpected outcome of responding to the paradoxes of using WeChat during organizational entry. This thesis extends organizational communication research to provide an initial exploration of the use of social technologies in organizational socialization, uncovering how social networking sites and applications both enable and constrain information seeking, identity work, and workplace relationship development. It also provides insights into how various individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors influence the perceived affordances of social networking mobile applications and how these factors interact to shape the paradoxical user experience. With their wide adoption in the contemporary workplace, social networking sites and applications have huge potential to help newcomers transition into new organizations and have become an important aspect in organizational socialization. By learning and adapting to the norms of use for social networking sites and applications in new organizations and making sense of paradoxes in their user experience, newcomers can begin to understand the technology culture of their new organization. This thesis argues that it is necessary to reconceptualize organizational socialization, taking into consideration distinctive processes enabled and constrained by social technologies, and to reflect upon how organizational tactics and the design of social technologies can help newcomers to learn, to adapt, and to thrive in their organizations.

This thesis discusses the practice of involving children in the production of kids’ apps in order to gain an understanding of how notions of children and childhood are being shaped by and shape this practice. This is achieved through a narrative analysis of interviews with five design and research professionals from the kids’ apps industry. The informants express a strong moral obligation to create quality experiences for the child user. Children are portrayed as with agency and competence in shaping and sharing their views on the world, but also as dependent of adults’ good intentions when it comes to the design of consumer products. A common belief is that when creating quality products for children, adults need to consult children to gain insight into their different physical and cognitive capabilities as well as their culture and ways of making meaning of the world.

This thesis looks to explore from a user-centered standpoint, which mobile application features are relevant in the social integration of new arrivals in Sweden. Mobiles are used by individuals who are moving away from home not only to stay connected to their close ones but also as a way for empowerment and adaption in their new homes. Access to information helps immigrants to face the new challenges new host societies present. Nowadays mobiles and more specifically smartphones are becoming the principal sources for new arrivals to obtain information. As mobiles become more common among immigration groups, governments and institutions are turning to them as new ways for addressing migration challenges such as integration. This thesis, through a participatory design study, explores possible mobile digital application features that could be relevant in the social integration of immigrants. The goal is to develop through a cooperative and co-design method a prototype of a mobile application that can fit better with the necessities of new arrivals and can also facilitate better ways for social integration. As a result, it could be determinate that features that provide users the ability to gather information from one source are the most important for immigrants. Additionally, users want to be able to have control over the information they are receiving according to what phase they are at the integration process. Also, digital features seem not to be enough and digital and offline cooperation are suggested. In the process, participants provided innovative ways on how integration challenges can be addressed.

Developing an app for Android and iOS traditionally requires you to build two different versions. This is both costly and time consuming, which has led to the creation of many Cross-platform alternatives. One such alternative is to use a Progressive Web App (PWA). They are built like regular Web apps and include features previously unique to Native apps. Our focus is to compare PWAs to other Cross-platform solutions by measuring the performance of a PWA, Web app and Cordova app. Terms in the ecosystem are clarified due to inconsistencies, and the process of converting a Web app into a PWA is described. The measurements showed that the PWA and Cordova app had almost equal overall performance, and they were both faster than the Web app. This indicates that PWAs are a viable Cross-platform alternative, but more quantitative studies with performance in focus needs to be conducted due to the small scale of this work. Other aspects of PWAs also needs to be evaluated, such as app size and ease of development.

Over 90% of faculty members in higher education have access to smart mobile devices. However, data are lacking about community college faculty members’ use of smart mobile devices and applications for instruction and content delivery. The purpose of this study was to examine Tennessee community college full-time faculty’s use of smart mobile devices, to determine if there were any significant differences in the mean scores measuring attitudes and use of smart mobile devices by generational age grouping, teaching discipline, rank, years of teaching and to determine if Tennessee community college faculty members who under-utilize mobile technologies for teaching also hold negative opinions about them. This study measured Tennessee Community College faculty use of smart mobile devices and their attitudes and use of smart mobile devices by generational age groups, teaching discipline, rank, and years of teaching. This study used quantitative, nonexperimental survey design. The survey instrument was an electronic questionnaire, consisting of 15 items that were divided into 7 dimensions. The dimensions were: Learning Preference, Institutional Training, Frequency, Attitude, Willingness to Attend PD Training, Willingness to Use, and Competence. Of the 267 possible participants, 93 (35%) responded to the survey. Data from the survey were used to analyze 5 research questions and 35 null hypotheses. Two research questions were analyzed using independent-samples t test 2 and 3 analyzed using one-way analysis of variance. Testing the null hypotheses associated with the 5 research questions resulted in 7 significant findings and 28 findings that were not significant. The findings indicated that there were significant differences in professional development training scores by generational age, and by academic rank. There were significant findings in learning preference by teaching discipline and training by teaching disciplines. Last, there were significant differences in some of the dimensions by years of experience. The results of this study may benefit administrators and educators in knowing what groups are open to professional development training for using smart mobile devices for instruction and in what areas to provide training.

This exploratory qualitative study used grounded theory to investigate the anatomy of educational apps that contain virtual manipulatives. For this study 100 virtual manipulatives within educational apps designed for the iPad were observed by the researcher in order to expand the explanations of and build theory about virtual manipulatives within apps. Affordance theory was used to frame all six phases of the study in which the researcher identified virtual manipulatives situated within educational apps, conducted observer-as-participant structured and unstructured observations, analyzed component data including field notes and memos using open and axial coding, created a conceptual framework, developed an evaluation tool prototype to evaluate virtual manipulatives within educational apps, and used the evaluation tool prototype to evaluate additional virtual manipulatives within educational apps. The constant comparative method of open and axial coding was used to analyze the observation data that included field notes, memos, and video recordings. This indepth qualitative analysis led to the emergence of six study results concerning the components and relationships within educational apps that contain virtual manipulatives. The results revealed that: (1) virtual manipulatives within apps are comprised of two components: dynamic mathematical objects and features; (2) there are three distinct types of dynamic mathematical objects; (3) there are eight categories of features; (4) within one virtual manipulative there can be one or multiple objects; (5) varying relationships can exist among the dynamic object and the features within a virtual manipulative; and (6) varying relationships can exist among the virtual manipulatives within an education app in terms of the number, type, and ways the user proceeds. A conceptual framework was also developed during the study to illustrate the components and relationships that emerged from the analysis and to serve as the basis for the development of an evaluation tool prototype to evaluate educational apps that contain virtual manipulatives. The components, relationships, framework, and evaluation tool prototype developed during this study advance the literature on virtual manipulatives and provide researchers with a common language to evaluate these apps.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Introduction Mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) are increasingly accessible and popular. In 2015, over 60% of smartphone users used their phones to look up health related information. mHealth apps related to maternal and child health (MCH) are particularly prevalent and frequently used. As high as 73% pregnant women and new mothers reported the use of MCH apps, with 27% using them daily. Methods A cross-sectional sample of MCH apps was extracted from the Apple App and Google Play stores using a JavaScript Scraper program. A multivariable linear regression, and series of ordinal logistic regression assessed the relationship between MCH app characteristics and two outcomes, end users’ perceived satisfaction (star ratings), and intent to use (downloads). Next, theory-based content analysis reviewed the presence and use of behavior change techniques (BCTs) in popular MCH apps using the mHealth app taxonomy framework. Finally, a qualitative inductive analysis assessed user self-reported experiences, perceived benefits, and general feedback for MCH apps. Results Seven hundred and forty-two apps met the inclusion criteria. A large majority of MCH apps were developed by non-healthcare developers. Google Play store apps had higher user ratings; while, apps within health & fitness genre, with older updates, and no agerestrictions had fewer user ratings. Furthermore, lower priced apps, with high star ratings, in-app purchase options, and in-app advertisement presence had high downloads. And, apps belonging to medical and health & fitness genre had fewer user downloads. Content analysis revealed that popular MCH apps on an average include 7.4 behavior change techniques (BCTs) with a median of 6 BCTs. Apps developed by healthcare developers had higher BCTs present within app content. Qualitative analysis shows that consumers value apps that are low cost, with superior features, smooth technical aspects, high quality content, and easy to use. Conclusions Healthcare providers, app developers, and policymakers may benefit from a better understanding of MCH apps available in two popular app stores and may consider strategies to review and promote apps to consumers based on information accuracy and trustworthiness. / 2020-11-06

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