Examine and Critique a Scholarly Article Related to Mobile Computing Challenges
ZEKEB
Doestheipadaddvaluetobusinessenvironments.pdf
Does the iPad Add Value to Business Environments?
Abstract
Mobile tablets like the iPad recently had a huge success
in the consumer market. This generates the demand to
use them productively in business environments. The
underlying case study evaluates the introduction of
iPads at an applied research company. The study gives
evidence that the iPad adds value to this particular
business environment especially in terms of
productivity and joy of use. A detailed composition of
benefits and drawbacks shows major factors that have
to be considered when thinking about introducing and
integrating iPads to a business environment.
Author Keywords
Mobile; Tablet; Business; Case Study; Joy of Use;
Productivity
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User
Interfaces - Evaluation/methodology;
Introduction and Related Work
Without doubt, mobile tablets like the iPad add value to
the private and personal life of many users. Many of
them claim that mobile tablets as well add value to
business environments. Many press releases (e.g., [9],
[15], [18]), especially from tablet vendors [13], claim
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CHI’12, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA.
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1016-1/12/05...$10.00.
Steffen Hess
Fraunhofer IESE
Fraunhofer-Platz 1
67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Jessica Jung
Fraunhofer IESE
Fraunhofer-Platz 1
67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Case Study CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA
335
that tablets can be productively used in the business
environment, but statistically valid data on that
objective is often sparse. Therefore we set up a field
study to investigate the suitability of iPads (benefits,
drawbacks, and influence on work productivity) in
practical use in our company.
When introducing new technologies into a business
context, two issues must be addressed: 1) how the
technology is introduced into the company and 2) which
effect the new technology has on a company’s business
outcome (organizational level) and which effect it has
on the employee’s behavior and experience (personal
level).
Regarding the first issue, introducing the technology
globally into our company was not the main objective
of this study. It should furthermore be seen as a study
showing benefits and drawbacks of iPad usage from a
user’s perspective.
The second issue is of great relevance for our study.
Especially because the technology is rather new in
contrast to [16] and appropriate usage scenarios are
not yet known. Therefore we focused on usage
observations, productivity and joy of use.
According to Kemppilä and Lönnqvist [14] productivity
can be defined simply as output divided by input that is
used to generate that output. In our study we
measured productivity by setting it equal to subjective
work efficiency as our major output.
In the literature one can find several theories and
descriptions on how employee’s emotions can influence
critical organizational outcomes such as e.g. job
performance and turnover (e.g. [2]). These
explanations mainly remain on an organizational level,
but some studies include an in-depth analysis.
According to the Gallup study [11], a high subjective
wellbeing promotes good working results and affects
positively the quality of the work done. In their meta-
analysis, they analyzed the relationship between
employee workplace wellbeing and business-units
outcomes. Findings of their study are that “materials
and equipment have relationships to basic outcomes,
such as customer satisfaction - loyalty and employee
turnover - retention, which are outcomes that
ultimately influence larger business outcomes like
profitability.” This relationship is according to [11]
generalizable across organizations.
Also the user experience (UX) of business services and
devices can influence the result of an employee’s work.
Hassenzahl [10] defines UX as “a momentary, primarily
evaluative feeling (good-bad) while interacting with a
product or service. By that, UX shifts attention from the
products and materials (i.e., content, function,
presentation, interaction) to humans and feeling – the
subjective side of product use.” In a study of Nass et
al. [17], performed in a call center context, the call
center agents who used a specific designed software
with a high UX achieved a higher level of customer
satisfaction compared to the control group (call agents
with traditional/conventional software). This result
confirms the findings of [11] and interlinks the
specifically designed software as relevant working
equipment to business outcome. In a study of Kim et
al. [12] performed in the context of mobile devices, a
larger screen-size was a key indicator to greater
enjoyment. On the other hand a smaller device comes
along with a perceived increase of mobility.
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Budiu and Nielsen [3] stated the iPad is mostly used for
media consumption and not for productive work. But
this doesn’t explicitly exclude that it cannot be used at
all in a productive way. Several other sources indicate
that mobile devices can be used productive in a
business context:
Gruhn and Köhler [8] analyzed and enhanced business
processes and IT-systems for potential mobile
workforce automation especially for business to
employee applications. Enhancing mobile workflows can
add a significant value to the overall business outcome.
Unfortunately they didn’t show it on a concrete
practical study. Atkins et al. [1] developed an example,
where mobile technology could be used effective in a
business context where response time of feedback was
crucial to the customer.
Geyer and Felske [7] showed factors that organizations
have to consider when introducing iPads into the
workspace. They pointed out that the technical
integration is not trivial but that there is potential for
enterprises to add value to their business by the use of
mobile devices. Again, no usage observation from an
end user perspective is available.
Especially knowledge worker and managers spend a lot
of their daytime with communication via Email.
Franssila [6] presented that mobile email is a
performance driver for business users using a mobile
phone.
To conclude our literature survey, business outcome
can be improved by 1) being more productive e.g.
working faster, 2) producing qualitative better work,
and 3) a positive effect on staff retention, e.g. resulting
through the usage of appropriate and nice equipment.
Our research question is then: Does the iPad contribute
to one of these? And furthermore, does the iPad
contribute to one of these in a business environment?
We first describe our study and then show positive and
negative findings, their interpretation and limitations of
the study. The last chapter concludes the paper and
answers the question: “Does the iPad add value to
business environments?”
Study Goals
Our main research goal was to analyze the influence of
mobile tablets using the example of the iPad to the
business environment of our company. The iPad was
chosen, because when conducting the study, Android
tablets were not yet available and appropriate Windows
7 tablets providing a comparable touch interface
regarding user experience as the iPad were also not
available. Therefore our main research question was
how productivity will change after introducing the iPad
into daily working routines. The second research
question dealt with the usage duration; we suppose
that usage duration will decrease over time, because
the users will find out which usage scenarios fit best to
their working style. As a third research question, we
estimated that the iPad will have a positive effect on
the overall joy of use of our participants. Additionally,
the collection of subjective data on using the iPad in a
business environment, e.g. benefits and drawbacks of
iPad usage, is a major part of our study. The following
chapter gives a description of the study, including
participants, used material, study structure, and data
analysis.
Figure 1. User roles
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Description of the Study
Participants
In total, 12 employees (11 male, 1 female) of the
company at an average age of 31.54 years (SD=4.48
years) took part in this case study. 11 of them have a
higher educational degree, such as Master of Science or
PhD, one person has a bachelor degree. Participation
took place on a voluntary basis; also participation could
be refused at any point in time without any
disadvantages for the employee. The authors of the
study are also employees of the company but no study
participants. According to their daily working routines,
the participants were structured into three groups (see
Figure 1) and described each of them with the use of
personas [4]. All significant roles in our company were
included in the study: Role 1 ”high assumed external
mobility” (top/middle management as well as business
area managers) has the following main tasks: project
management, consulting, project acquisition and
executive functions. 7 employees belong to this group.
The tasks of role 2 (5 employees) “high assumed
internal mobility” (e.g. IT service personnel) include
project management, executive functions and research.
6 persons are performing as role 3 “different daily
working routines” (project managers and operative
project members) have to deal with project work,
research, and project acquisition. Employees take over
different roles at the same time in the company.
Material
All iPads had been pre-configured to use the already
existing personal exchange mail accounts. Furthermore,
connectivity to the company’s wireless network and
vpn-connection on demand was pre-configured. Apart
from that, the iPads had been in delivery status,
meaning no apps preinstalled and not connected to
iTunes. Participants were free to choose their own
iTunes account or to use one of the companies’
accounts. 10 of the participants used the iPad 1 (6 with
3G/4 without 3G), 2 participants used the iPad 2 (both
with 3G).
Study structure
The study consists of three phases (see Figure 2).
Phase 1: Within a kickoff meeting, the iPads were
handed over to the participants with a short
introduction to the study (e.g., duration of the study,
duties of the participants like answering online
questionnaires), the iPad itself, and proposed usage
scenarios (see Figure 3). Also information about the
integration of the iPad into the institute’s technical
infrastructure and the resulting legal framework of
usage within the business and the private context was
given. 12 specific usage scenarios (see Figure 3) were
presented to the participants to give them ideas which
tasks might be supported by the iPad. These usage
scenarios derived from analyzing daily working routines
of the different roles. They were described in a way
that the participants knew what they might do with the
iPad but not exactly how and with which app. The
participants should only get a notion which business
processes might be supported by the iPad. Therefore a
number of apps that might fulfill the scenarios were
proposed so that the participants had to choose on
their own if and how to perform the usage scenario.
Participants have also been encouraged to find
additional scenarios supporting their actual business
processes. Due to that 14 usage scenarios were
available at the end of the study.
Figure 2. Study overview
Figure 3. Usage scenarios
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Furthermore the use of the iPad for private purposes
was explicitly allowed. Additionally a short introduction
to the iPad itself was given, explaining very briefly
basic usage elements (e.g. button, multitouch) and
setup procedures with iTunes. Phase 1 resumed with a
pre-questionnaire to describe e.g., participants previous
experiences in usage of mobile devices.
In phase 2, the participants used the iPad in their daily
work whereby they were encouraged to use the iPad in
private context also. Regular feedback was weekly
collected via online-questionnaires (twelve
measurement points in total; approx. 10 to 20 minutes
to fill in). The questionnaires focused on the subjective
assessment of constructs to analyze the value of mobile
tablets in a business environment. These constructs
include perceived productivity with the facets subjective
work efficiency and self-organization, perceived
mobility, and fun of use. Therefore these facets were
translated into statements the participants could rate
on a 5-point-Likert scale. With the use of online
questionnaires, we are able to 1) match single
measurements for one participant to attain personal
time series, 2) to control the return of questionnaires,
3) to give participants the possibility to answer the
questionnaire independently of their presence at the
working site, e.g. when a participant is on a business
trip or attends a conference abroad, and 4) to attain
quantitative data. Additionally, we support these
quantitative measurements by qualitative data gained
from face to face interviews. These interviews with the
participants were conducted individually in order to get
a more holistic view on the iPad usage in business and
private context. A one hour structured interview was
conducted after 2 months of iPad usage with open
questions regarding benefits and drawbacks as well as
other factors (e.g. role suitability, demands of the
users, improvement potential) of iPad usage in the
different possible usage scenarios. Moreover, the
participants provided further information on using the
iPad during informal conversation or while
troubleshooting on issues they had while using the
iPad. Phase 2 ended with a last subsuming post-
questionnaire. In total, the data collection took 3
months (starting March 24 th 2011).
Phase 3 resumes the study and contains the analysis
of quantitative and qualitative data and interpretation
of the results.
Data analysis
Data analysis was done both for quantitative and
qualitative data, with an emphasis on the last
mentioned.
Qualitative statements provided by the participants
were categorized after the study was finished. The
qualitative data is visualized in tag clouds (see example
in Figure 4). Tag clouds were chosen over tables to
visually show the reader on a glance items mentioned
more often in comparison to items mentioned rather
sparely. There are five types of letter settings for the
tag cloud visualized in Figure 4: the largest and
boldest items have been mentioned more than 20 times
(20+), the second largest and bold items have been
mentioned 15-20 times, the third largest and medium
bold items have been mentioned 10-14 times, the
fourth largest items have been mentioned 5-9 times
and the smallest and thinnest items have been
mentioned 1-4 times. Because of the study design that
allowed the participants to mention their perceptions on
a weekly basis, it was possible to mention topics more
Figure 4. Tag cloud settings
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than one time. All statements were included in the
analysis, because the more often a topic was
mentioned, the more important it was to the
participants. Statements were structured into the
following categories: benefits of iPad usage with the
subcategories functional and usage benefits, technical
benefits, and social benefits, and drawbacks of iPad
usage with the subcategories usage of the iPad,
functional issues, place and context of use, technical
issues, and social issues.
Study Findings
This chapter describes the results of the study. They
are structured into benefits of iPad usage, drawbacks of
iPad usage, usage duration, findings related to
productivity and findings related to joy of use.
Benefits of iPad Usage
Benefits of iPad usage are divided into functional and
usage benefits, technical benefits, and social benefits.
Focusing on improving the company’s business
environment, joy of use and productivity have been
under special investigation and are described in more
detail in the following chapter.
FUNCTIONAL AND USAGE BENEFITS
The most important benefit in the category functional
and usage benefits (see Figure 5), as our participants
discovered is joy of use. Every participant reported an
increase in joy of use at work at least once. Regarding
other functional and usage benefits it seems obvious
that they are all contributing to joy of use and the
overall satisfaction of the employee. Participants
reported that they feel honored to be selected as
participants, and therefore being able to use an iPad in
their daily work. The usage of the device was perceived
as fancy, having a positive user experience, intuitive
usage, and even the keyboard usability was reported as
better than expected.
A further general benefit reported is increased mobility
which covers both, internal and external mobility.
Typical usage scenarios have been iPad usage in
meeting rooms, in colleagues’ offices, during travel to
and from a customer appointment, and at the
customer’s side. Increased mobility covers especially
personal information management and internet access
in general when not being in the office.
Note taking was also perceived as a huge benefit
meaning both typed notes and handwritten notes. It
definitely belongs on the personal preference which
way of note taking is chosen by the participants, but all
participants reported that they expected to substitute
their analog notepad with the iPad. Using different
notes apps, participants were able to structure notes in
different notebooks, to search and browse their notes
in an efficient and usable way. But the major reason for
pronouncing note taking as one of the major benefits
reported was that the participants have all their notes
always with them.
At our study, personal information management (PIM)
covers reading, writing, and the administration of
Email, contacts, calendar appointments, and task
management. In particular, participants receiving a
massive amount of Emails per day benefit, because
they are usually able to respond quicker and organize
themselves more efficiently. They are able to do PIM
whenever there is a minute of time during or between
meetings even when being out of office. Comparing to
having a smartphone, Emails can be answered and
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organized quicker and with a significant higher user
experience. For example, one participant reported that
“typing Emails with more than two sentences is a mess
on the smartphone, but can be done efficiently on the
iPad”.
Benefits in this category of a middle impact are internet
browsing, document reading and prototyping on the
iPad. According to the participants, the main benefit of
internet browsing is quick information retrieval.
Document reading is reported as more comfortable in
ways of reading comfort than on a laptop or desktop
PC, and of course there is no need for carrying paper
documents with them. Prototyping directly on the iPad
enabled participants to quickly sketch ideas and to
design full prototypes directly on the intended output
device as well as being able to perform instant user
tests easily.
Figure 5. Functional and usage benefits
Other benefits that have been reported less than five
times are:
Time tracking for supporting project management
Being able to navigate with the iPad in a situation where no other device was available
Intranet access from anywhere via vpn connection
Seamless integration into the business context
Performing “digital” document reviews via handwriting
vpn access more comfortable and quicker than on the available company laptop
Having a quicker response time for answering mails as consequence of increased mobility
Large app market offering a large amount of apps that are often free of charge
TECHNICAL BENEFITS
In comparison to functional and usage benefits,
technical benefits (see Figure 6) depend more on
hardware features of the iPad. Nevertheless, they also
have a huge impact on joy of use and productivity.
Mobility is listed in this category again, because it
belongs to both categories.
Besides mobility, the instant-on feature of the iPad
which enables user to immediately perform tasks with
the iPad was reported as a killer feature. Fast device
access provides a benefit in almost every situation (e.g.
quick mail access) the tablet is used.
Furthermore, low noise, light weight construction and
the size of the iPad was reported as a benefit multiple
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times. On the one hand, participants perceived the
larger screen size in comparison to other mobile device
as benefit and on the other hand, participants
perceived low noise and lightweight construction in
comparison to their existing laptop as benefit.
Other benefits that have been reported less than five
times are:
Just being able to use a stylus on the iPad
The iPad extends existing equipment in a beneficial way
Use of the iPad as additional extended desktop screen
The iPad can be used as data storage device
Long battery capacity
Figure 6. Technical benefits
SOCIAL BENEFITS
Social benefits (see Figure 7) occur due to just
“owning” an iPad and are not necessary related to any
particular usage scenario of the device.
First of all, the mobile tablet is a very discrete device,
using it during a meeting instead of a laptop enables
better collaboration because there is no barrier
between the persons in front of a display. It is
beneficial that the device is lying on the desk like a pad
of paper. Participants also reported that they feel more
comfortable being able to browse content or getting
information on the iPad unobtrusively. If a meeting is
about multiple topics and participants do not have to be
focused on the topic the whole time, they reported that
it is easier for them to perform other time-critical tasks
without disturbing the meeting participants.
In general, we observed that the personal image of the
participants as well as the corporate image increased
due to the usage of the iPad. Participants reported that
they were proud using the iPad, which increases their
attachment to the company. It was also seen as a
status symbol and they often compared it to having a
company car. In addition, representation in front of the
customer changed. Especially, during project
acquisition participants perceived that customers
recognized the iPad usage as a sign for being
innovative. While offering software engineering services
around mobile business applications, it is a huge
benefit to actually show the customer somehow
knowledge about the technology on basis of a daily
usage. Participants reported that as one of the key
factors for project acquisition in the mobile domain.
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With one exception, participants thoroughly perceived
the shift of work into the private environment as a
benefit. Employees were able to quickly access work
email and information occasionally while being at home
before and after work (e.g. while watching TV), on
vacation or ill. By this the amount of mails to deal with
when coming back to work could be reduced. They also
reported to be able to react on important things without
really interrupting their off-work time.
Figure 7. Social benefits
Other social benefits are:
Being prepared, when coming to the office, because of quick mail checks in the morning at home or
on the way to work.
“The device is always with me” - statement indicates that participants felt convenient to have all
their work information with them just in case they have
to react on something.
PRIVATE BENEFITS
Although the paper focusses on business benefits of
iPad usage, we also want to show the main private
benefits (see Figure 8) of iPad usage reported by our
participants. Having private benefits due to corporate
devices definitely strengthens the employee attachment
to his company.
Private benefits are:
Quick internet access from anywhere for information retrieval and entertainment
Couch surfing for easy IT usage while being relaxed
Game and app entertainment
Video entertainment
Usage of special news reading apps
Figure 8. Private benefits
Drawbacks of iPad usage
General drawbacks of using the iPad can be divided into
six categories: usage of the iPad, functional issues,
place and context of use, technical issues, and social
issues.
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USAGE ISSUES
According to the study’s participants, the most
significant issue on iPad usage is the bad user
experience provided by lots of apps that can be used in
a business environment. Almost every user in the study
reported that as a critical point. Especially making
notes was a very critical point on that – users expected
that the iPad might substitute their paper notebook in
an easy way and not that much trouble and need for
trial and error of different notes apps. Furthermore,
true integration into the existing infrastructure of our
company was lacking. As we are mainly working in a
windows based environment, the usage of comparable
apps on the iPad was aligned with a huge discrepancy
from what the participants were used to work with.
Figure 9 shows a all mentioned drawbacks regarding
the usage of the iPad in a business environment
depending on the participants’ statements in the online
questionnaires and interviews.
Figure 9. Usage issues
Further drawbacks are:
No haptic feedback of the device
Reflective display surface
Hidden feature phenomenon, meaning that it is often not obvious how to use the iPad
FUNCTIONAL ISSUES
As working in a business environment has to be
productive, of course functional issues (see Figure 10)
are as important as usage issues. First of all, all
participants argued about functional range of available
apps. Usually, apps only realize a small clear scope of
functionality, focusing on the actual need of mobile
support. Nevertheless, users in a business context
expect a functional range that is similar to what they
are used to from their matching desktop applications.
So we experienced, that especially mail and calendar
usage was not appropriate to fulfill the intended tasks
like e.g. arrangements of dates and view availability of
potential participants of a meeting. Although there are
plenty of apps available that claim to realize productive
work with MS Office applications, this is a major lack of
the iPad. As MS Office is the de facto standard in the
business environment in Western Europe, it was
absolutely mandatory for participants to view, create,
and edit office documents on the iPad without
completely destroying the layout of the document. A
further demand of participants was to have true
interoperability of apps that goes beyond copy & paste
of text blocks.
Further drawbacks are:
Many mail attachments cannot be opened
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The iPad does not offer support for the company’s project management environment, which is a
mandatory task for some participants
No true multitasking possible
Apps supporting relevant business processes (e.g. project acquisition) are not available
Figure 10. Functional issues
PLACE AND CONTEXT OF USE
When talking about HCI, context and place of use is
always one of the most important influencing factors.
The study showed that there is no additional value of
using the iPad in the office as a device that extends the
functionality of the already available laptop or desktop
PC at the moment. In case your working role affords to
often carry larger objects, a tablet like the iPad is
definitely not the first choice. Participants in the study
representing the IT-service department liked the idea
of having a mobile device with them, but the iPad
wasn’t suitable because they were not able to put it
into their pocket. They reported that they switched to
smaller smart phones after the study, because
introducing the iPad to them generated a demand of
having apps and services available while being mobile
inside the company building - only the size of the
device matters.
TECHNICAL ISSUES
When first thinking about introducing iPads to a
business environment, we expected to have technical
issues (see Figure 11). Fortunately it turned out, that
integration into the existing infrastructure from a
network point of use was better than expected. In the
beginning of our study, using vpn on the iPad to
connect with the companies exchange server was a
huge issue. Participants complained that vpn
connection wasn’t able at all or connects only once
within 10 minutes, for example. Availability of vpn
changed during the study due to an iOS update and
complaints were reduced significantly at the end of the
study. In the last weeks of the study, there have only
been complaints about the duration of the vpn
connection – participants argued that the vpn
connection often timed out after several minutes which
is very annoying when performing tasks like browsing
for information. Second major technical issue was the
problem with synchronizing. This particularly includes
password synchronization on password change in one
of the systems, synchronization with exchange mail
server, and synchronization of task management apps.
Although none of the user explicitly mentioned data
security as an issue, it is a major concern depending on
company policy and data criticality in projects with non-
disclosure agreements. Speaking from a user’s point of
view, security is not perceived as a drawback when
using an iPad. In addition very few participants
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complained that they have to use and carry an adapter
for VGA output.
Figure 11. Technical issues
SOCIAL AND NON-CATEGORIZED ISSUES
Apple first introduced the iPad as a device that should
be used via touch and not with an input device like e.g.
a pen. In contrary, we discovered in our study, that
participants had a strong desire to have a pen for
making textual notes. This drawback was negotiated by
providing pens for each participant in week 5 of the
study. Another major point were constraints due to
company policy like the participants were not allowed
to enable push notifications, could not use print
functionality as well as remote apps and were not able
to access a network file system. Our study showed that
working activities shifted a lot towards private context
only because employees were able to access emails
easily from their home environment. This shift was
perceived negatively by only one participant.
Figure 12 also shows further issues regarding social
and other areas:
Being constantly available for working issues
Shift of work into private life
The iPad is not a full business device and only an add-on (the expectation of one participant was that the
iPad could substitute a full desktop PC or notebook)
Risk of distraction during meeting is too high
Privacy issues because it is too easy to be observed while using the device
Figure 12. Social and non-categorized issues
Usage Duration
For each week, participants were asked to rate their
usage duration for both work and private usage on a
daily basis. In Figure 13, an average duration for each
week for all 12 participants is displayed (note y-axis is
not evenly distributed). As we can see, mean usage
duration in the working context is longer than in the
private context. Only at t5 and t7, private usage
slightly exceeds the usage duration during work. At t5
and t7 there was public holiday and Easter, therefore,
some of the participants have been on vacation.
Furthermore we can see that the average usage
duration decreases over time and reaches an average
duration of about 30 minutes per day for both, working
and private use of the iPad.
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Figure 13. Average usage duration
Productivity
According to [14], participants were asked to rate their
own productivity for each week (“Please rate your
productivity at work for this week on a scale from
5=very high to 1=very low”). The average values (see
Figure 14) stay rather constant over time on a positive
level. Again, we can see a reduction at t7, because of
vacation time at Easter.
Figure 14. Average subjective productivity at work
Joy of Use
To analyze the affective reaction generated by the iPad
usage, we asked the participants to rate statements,
such as “the usage of the iPad gives me fun” on a 5-
point-Likert scale (5=fully agree, 1=fully disagree).
Figure 15 shows the development over the 3 month-
period. The average agreement to that statement falls
off after the first 3 weeks of usage and remains fairly
stable just below 4(=somewhat agree).
Figure 15. Average joy of use reporting
Interpretation
Comprising the findings of the study, we conclude that
the iPad added value to the business of our company.
In contrary to our research hypotheses, productivity did
not increase during the study but was constantly at a
high level. As expected, usage duration decreased
during the study, but the perceived productivity stayed
on a constant high level. Participants reported that this
was due to exploring features of the iPad during the
first weeks of the study. The overall joy of use scale
also showed that the iPad was perceived as a device
that is enjoyed by our participants. Mainly the
qualitative measurements showed that the benefits of
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iPad usage exceed the mentioned usage drawbacks by
number of entities and frequency.
Investigations showed, that especially executive
employees reported larger benefit of using the iPad.
Creating a wow-effect at the customers’ site through
the use of innovative mobile devices especially creates
a benefit when selling mobile services. Expertise in the
mobile domain is more creditable transferable that way.
In addition the study showed, that there is no
difference between internal and external mobility. Role
profiles that are described by a large amount of short
time meeting in different in house locations reported
more flexibility due to the iPad usage.
Limitations of the Study
A first limitation of the study is the small number of
subjects. Usually a larger group of participants is
necessary to gain statistically valid data. In this study
the costs of the iPad had to be counterbalanced to the
added value of each additional participant. So we
decided to have a small group of participants we can
accompany and interview much more closely than a
larger group even over a longer period of time. By
combining repeated measurements with in-depth
interviews, we were able to catch a deep insight into
the users’ thoughts and wishes about iPad usage.
To cover all previously defined roles, participants could
not be chosen randomly from the company’s employees
to take part in the study. The selection of participants
was done in conjunction of the study responsible and
enterprise management. It is possible that the selection
of the participants has a systematic, but unknown,
influence on the study results. Over time, control of
changes of the role of the selected participants was not
possible. During the study, only one person explicitly
changed their role by being promoted to department
head which had no effect on his tasks performed with
the iPad.
Another limiting factor is the absence of an imaginable
control group. Normally the control group design is
used to point out the effect of the treatment, in our
case adding the iPad to the daily work and private life.
We considered implementing a control group, but
considering the fact, that the control group - employees
in the same company or even the same department -
would not receive the iPad but have to fill out
questionnaires on a weekly basis could have e.g. led to
envy between colleagues undermining our study and
even the working climate.
Threats to the internal validity of the study relate
mainly to the longitudinal design: during the study it is
likely that the participants mature and gain experience
and knowledge which can influence their subjective
ratings in the questionnaires. In the case of variables
related to assess the usage of the iPad this maturation
is desired. Whereas regarding the participant’s
productivity, there is no control of external changing
habits and approaches to deal with personal workload
and therefore how the subjective rating of productivity
is thereby affected. Also effects of history (what
happens during the study period), e.g. changes in the
institutes infrastructure (e.g. improvement of vpn
connectivity), are not in control and can influence the
results. Due to the fact, that the study was performed
in a rather specific business environment with a small
number of participants, the transfer or the study results
might be limited.
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Conclusion
With our study we showed, that introducing iPads into
the business environment is perceived as a benefit from
a user’s point of view. Increased joy of use,
productivity, image and staff retention are just few but
valuable benefits. Nevertheless a general conclusion
that the iPad adds value to all business environments is
not possible. For our company the iPad definitely added
value to our business in terms of supporting the
mobility working habits for some roles. We think that a
thorough investigation of employees’ roles is necessary
to decide if the iPad or any other tablet PC supports
employees in their work. Based on our observations we
can conclude that in general the higher internal and
external mobility is given, the more potential for
productive use of iPads is given.
In addition, iPad usage is very individual in terms of
technology adaption and specific to certain roles in the
enterprise. To really gain a more significant benefit for
the business environment, the enterprise has not just
to introduce iPads but to provide enterprise individual
apps which support exactly those tasks that need
mobile support. Therefore enterprises need to discover
business processes that are valuable enough to support
them with customized apps. In our case, we assume
that the iPad cannot replace the existing it-
infrastructure but extend it.
A significant improvement potential regarding our
study, is a better integration into the existing software
environment, which definitely is being interoperable
with Microsoft Windows based products. Future work
needs to analyze this results compared to state of the
art Google Android and upcoming Windows 8 tablets.
Acknowledgements
The work presented in this paper was performed in the
context of the Software-Cluster project EMERGENT
(www.software-cluster.org). It was partially funded by
the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
(BMBF) under grant no. "01IC10S01".
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