Personal artifact ecologies in the context of mobile knowledge workers

Recent work suggests that technological devices and their use cannot be understood in isolation, and must be viewed as part of an artifact ecology. With the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), studying artifact ecologies is essential in order to design new technologies with effective affordances. This paper extends the discourse on artifact ecologies by examining how such ecologies are constructed in the context of mobile knowledge work, as sociotechnical arrangements that consist of technological, contextual, and interpretive layers. Findings highlight the diversity of ICTs that are adopted to support mobile work practices, and effects of individual preferences and contextual factors (norms of collaboration, spatial mobility, and organizational constraints).