Models & Optimisation and Mathematical Analysis Journal Vol.

06 Issue 01 (2018)

How Young Algerians Interact With Their

Smartphones
N.Elouali
LabRI-SBA Lab., Ecole Superieure en Informatique
Sidi-Bel-Abbes, Algeria
[email protected]

Abstract—This study assesses the usage of smartphone the findings of our study and analyse them in sec-tion 4.
in particular, from a Human-Computer Interaction perspec- Finally, we discuss our work in section 5 and conclude it
tive, among young Algerian smartphone users. Question- in section 6.
naire was used to assess their smartphone usage details and
multimodal interactions exploitation. The data were ana-lysed II. Related Works
looking at key applications and reasons for the use or non-use
of the different interaction modalities. It was found that for Intensive research has been realised to study/understand
the participants, social networks (especially Face-book) are the the smartphones usability and users interaction in different
most used applications, despite the lack of in-ternet connection. countries [2]. In the USA for instance, several studies have
The participants interact mostly with the tactile modality. They been defined especially with young people. For example, the
do not use (and sometimes do not know) the other modalities authors of [3] show that the smartphones usability among
because of several use problems and cultural particularities
young users (14 novice teenage) is highly mobile, location-
including the use of different languages, financial conditions,
lack of use cases in their preferred applications and lack of
dependent, and serves multiple social purposes.
conviction about the mul-timodality benefit. The authors of [4] find that there is an immense diversity
among users (255 knowledge workers and high school stu-dents)
Index Terms—Smartphone Usage; Human-Computer Inter- while interacting with mobile phones. The average number of
action; Multimodal Interactions; Multimodal Mobile Appli-cation. interactions per day varies from 10 to 200, and the average
amount of data received per day varies from 1 to 1000 MB.
I. Introduction The author of [5] presents a study on smartphone usage
In the last years, mobile phones and especially smartphones realised across five countries: Fin-land, Germany, France, the
are being adopted at a phenomenal pace. In 2015, mobile UK and the USA. It is a comparative analysis of mobile
phone penetration has reached 78% of population in Algeria. user behaviour that shows that users initial propensity to
Smartphone penetration has reached 20% of mobile users adopt advanced mobile handsets and their continued intensity of
which represent 15% of total popu-lation1. These numbers utilizing such appliances increase as user perceive the new data
are expected to grow considera-bly over the coming years. de-vices and services as more “useful” and “easier to use” [6].
However, we know little about how Algerian people use In Africa, most studies in this area have been made in South
and interact with their mobile phones. Smartphones, in Africa. For instance, authors in [7] present a study about
particular, include hun-dreds of applications and come with an the usage of smartphone applications and specifi-cally social
important set of embedded sensors that enable new interaction networking applications. They found that users (60 university
modalities (interaction by inclining the phone, changing its students) spend an average of five hours per day on their
orienta-tion, activating the text-to-speech synthesis, etc.). smartphones interacting with others via social networking
Exploiting these interaction modalities enable users applications and especially Facebook (updating their profiles,
not only to benefit from the new mobile senses, but also chatting with friends, and looking at their friends profiles and
to easily interact with applications even in difficult situations statuses). They also use sms and phonecalls to communicate
(taking a phone call while wearing gloves, reading a text in with others, but only for close friends, loved ones and family;
bright sun, etc.) [1] possibly due to the high cost of sms and phonecalls in South
Africa compared to the low cost of social networking
In this preliminary study, our goal is to understand the
applications. In South Africa also, authors of [8] present a
use of smartphones among young Algerians who repre-sent
study about the smartphone adoption factors. They also profiled
the majority of the population (51% of people below 30 years
how con-sumers were using their mobile devices from a
old and 25% below 142). We focus on smartphone usage
time and frequency perspective. So, they find that smartphone
from a Human-Computer Interaction perspective: 1) What
fea-tures such as battery life and the affordability of data
are the most used applications? 2) How does a user interact
were the most important to consumers in the decision of
usually?
purchasing a smartphone. The study shows also that from
3) Does user know/use the different interaction modalities? 4) the time and frequency perspective, Internet brows-ing is the
What are the factors that can prevent the use of applications activity that dominates for most users.
and/or modalities?
In the Arab countries, there is a very few studies in this area
Answering these questions is not just a matter of aca- (or in fields close to it). These studies have been made espe-
demic interest; it is key to understanding which interaction type cially in the Persian Gulf countries like the study in [9] made
can improve user experience. in the United Arab Emirates. It presents a qualitative study on
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We dis- student adoption of mobile library technology. The find-ings
cuss related work in section 2. We explain our study method- not only support the applicability of a number of existing
ology and present their limitations in section 3. We pre-sent constructs from the technology acceptance litera-ture, such as

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 Models & Optimisation and Mathematical Analysis Journal Vol.06 Issue 01 (2018)

perceived ease of use, social influence and “trust”; but also of the Algerian population.
suggests new adoption factors like the “perceived value”, • Participants were asked to provide a self-report on
“facilitating conditions”. their usage of applications and interaction modali-
All these studies were conducted in different countries ties. These may not be as accurate as using metric
in order to define the different smartphone usage and interac-tion softwares for example.
patterns. This helps developers to understand the users needs and • Non-parametric statistics will be used to analyse the
improve their experience in the future. To the best of our results.
knowledge, there are no studies to understand the smartphones
Despite these limitations, we believe that this study will
usability and/or the user-mobile interactions in Algeria.
provide a snapshot from Algerian smartphone users. Results
Therefore, we direct our attention to this issue. In this paper, we
will give us an idea about the use of smartphones among young
present a study that aims to understand the use of smartphones
Algerians, the use of interaction modalities and especially
among the Algerian people with a focus on Human-
factors that can prevent their usage.
Computer Interaction and mainly on multimodal interactions
(using sensor-based interactions in input and output). IV. Results and Analysys
III. Study Methodology Following is an overview of the results, ordered according to
the questionnaire questions.
This preliminary study examines the usage of smartphones
and multimodal interactions amongst stu-dents at an Algerian Smartphones. The predominant operating system is
University. Android (76.9%). The next most popular system was iOS
(11.5%) and then Windows Phone (3.8%). This is in line
Data collected (questionnaire). In order to better
with a recent survey on the classification of OS present on
understand how students are using their smartphones and for
smartphones sold in Algeria for 2014 (63.13% Android,
what, a questionnaire was developed to assess their personal
information, smartphone usage details and the multimodal 12.41% iOS, 9.17% Series 40, 3.72% Samsung bada,
interactions exploitation. Personal infor-mation, including 2.14% Symbian OS, and Windows Phone of 1.87%)3.
information such as sex, age and partici-pant department. The It should be noted that 7.7% of respondents (2 people among
smartphone usage details were col-lected through questions the 26) say that they do not know the operating system of
about the smartphone operat-ing systems, relative ranking their smartphones.
of applications and factors that may prevent their usage.
Lastly, regarding the multimodal interactions exploitation,
questions were for-mulated to determine the intensity of using
interaction mo-dalities other than the tactile, factors that may
prevent their use as well as the degree of difficulty in using
these interactions modalities.

Fig.2. Factors preventing the smartphone applications usage

Fig.1. The applications usage

Participants. 26 participants (14 males, 12 females) took

part in the study. The average age was 20 years. Partic-ipants
were all students of the first year in the computer school
ESI-SBA (Ecole Suprieure en Informatique, Sidi Bel Abbes). In
this school, students come from different de-partments of
Fig.3. Knowledge of interactions modalities
Algeria. Thus, participants in our study cover 12 different
departments, knowing that there are 48 departments in Algeria. Applications usage. The chart in figure 1 represents the
Duration. The data were collected over a period of seven students ranking of applications according to their frequency
weeks with the aim of collecting maximum responses. of usage.
However, at the end of the collection period, a total of 26 The highest used application was Social net-works
responses were collected only. (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), then Music, Alarm
Study limitations. The sample population for this study clock, Telephony and Camera. The next highest used are
was specifically students on ESI. Only a small number of SMS, Internet surfing (browsers), Emails and Games. Finally,
students answered the questionnaire (26 out of a possible 135), Calculator, Weather, Films, Notes and Agenda are the least
therefore the following limitations should be considered: used applications.
• The study participants are not in any case representative The highest used social networking site was Facebook.

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 Models & Optimisation and Mathematical Analysis Journal Vol.06 Issue 01 (2018)

Factors preventing the applications usage. The chart interaction. 12 participants say that it is not difficult to use
in figure 2 represents the factors preventing the smartphone different interaction modalities while other 12 do not know if
applications usage. Students were asked to se-lect factors from a it’s difficult or not. However, the two remaining stu-dents find
list and they had also the possibility to define new factors it difficult.
in “others” option. The most im-portant factor that prevents
participants to use their fa-vorite applications is the lack V. Discussion
of internet connection. This makes sense since most used / In this study, students use their smartphones mainly for
favorite application was Facebook (social networking). The social media. Thus, the problem/factor that haunts most
second factor was the lack of credit, while the third was students was the lack of internet connection. In Algeria,
the fact of being out of coverage. Finally, the factors that prevent the 3G technology was only launched in Decem-ber 20134.
stu-dents less are the lack of electricity and battery problems. Thereby, currently, it is still a new technology with a little
The latter factor was defined by the participants them-selves. high price and few users (3% of total popula-tion5).
It should also be noted that one participant selected the option
“None”, which means that there is no factor that prevents hem.
Interaction modalities. Figure 3 presents the chart about
the extent of participants knowledge on interactions modalities
other than tactile. For half of the participants, the tactile was
the only known interaction modality. For the oth-er half, others
modalities were declared.
The most well-known modality for the second half of
participants is the voice (10/13 know it). Noting that there are
participants who confuse between voice and Siri applica-tion
for iOS. The second modality is the phone ori-entation
(5/13 know it), while the third is the phone acceleration
(2/13). Lastly, three participants declared respectively “touch Fig.4. Frequency of the interaction modalities usage
ID” (physical button), “TalkBack” (text to speech) and
“smart connect” (ubiquitous sys-tems) as known interactions
modalities.
Frequency and intensity of modalities usage. We asked
students about their frequency/intensity of the modalities
usage (other than tactile). The Only occasion-ally and No,
never were the options that had the most of selection, while the
Yes, mostly and Yes, often had the least (as shown in figure 4).

Factors preventing the modalities usage. Students were

asked to describe constraints that may prevent them from using
the different interaction modalities (no listings was proposed).
Most described constraints were about using the voice as Fig.5. Difficulty of using multimodal inter-actions
interaction modality. This is logical since the voice is the most
known modality after tactile. Its constraints are: Moreover, in Algeria and especially in departments
• The voice recognition system makes a lot of mistakes (it other than the capital, there is no wifi available in public areas,
does not write correctly what we pronounce). universities, etc. (even if it is available, it is weak).
• Participants generally write (especially sms) in Arabic Regarding the multimodality, half of the participants do
but with latin letters (in order to reduce the cost), this is not know interaction modalities other than tactile (despite
just not possible using the voice modality. the two examples given with the question: voice and phone
• When they write SMS in French, they write abbreviated orientation). However, 4 among them re-port in the next
(instead of “parce que” -which means “because”- question that they use some modalities occasionally (with this
they write “pcq”) to reduce the cost of sms. The voice question modalities use-cases were given: voice for writing
modality does not help them do that. SMS and orientation to play games). These participants
may not have realized the modalities that when we have
• Voice requires internet connection. given use-cases. This amounts to a major problem in mobile
• Even with the voice the tactile is needed. multimodality, which is how to inform the multimodal
The other constraints affect the other modalities. Concern- applications users about the different ”no-tactile” interactions
ing the phone orientation, they declare that it does not work well [10]. The use of tactile is obvious since users can view on
with small screens. In addition, they are not accus-tomed to the screen the different interaction points (button, list, etc.).
use it as well as the others new modalities. Partici-pants report However, for sensor-based interactions like shaking the phone or
that these modalities are not useful enough, ie, since they changing its orientation, no indication is dis-played on the
can do all interactions using the tactile, why they need to use screen. Therefore, the application develop-er has to identify
other modalities? a good way to inform users. In addi-tion, we note from this
study that s/he has not only to give the modalities descriptions
but also their use-cases in the ap-plication [10].
Difficulty of using multimodal interactions. Finally, par-
ticipants were asked about the difficulty of using multimodal On the other side, participants who know the different

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 Models & Optimisation and Mathematical Analysis Journal Vol.06 Issue 01 (2018)

interaction modalities only use them occasionally. But, it is tations. Our work should certainly be complemented by addi-
not the difficulty that prevents them since, for the most, the tional studies including more participants in order to properly
multimodality is not difficult. Which prevent them depend on represent the young population in Algeria. Metric applications
some use problems and cultural particularities : may also be used in future studies so that we will have more
• The nearest being used modality is the voice be- details regarding the use of the different interaction modalities
cause it is the best known after tactile (10/13 know it), on participants smartphones.
but: Finally, we will continue to explore how Algerian people use
– Participants felt that the voice can only be used via and interact with their smartphones where we plan to perform
the Internet and since the lack of internet connection a field study that will provide us quantitative and qualitative
is the major factor that haunts them, they (most data about usage and usage evolution of interaction modali-ties
of them) didn’t even try. provided to participants through some applications. We aim to
understand how our participants will use these modali-ties and
– Their first language is Arabic, so they want to write in
how they can be accustomed on them.
Arabic. But it costs more expensive than writing with
Latin letters.
References
– Due to the relatively high cost of sms in Alge- ria,
students (those who use their second lan-guage:
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munication Technologies (APSITT), pp 1-3 (2015)

Our study of the usage of smartphones among young Alge-

rians shows that for our participants, social networks (espe-
cially Facebook) are the major used applications. It shows also
that the most important factor that prevents them to use these
applications is the lack of internet connection. A factor that, in
our opinion, may disappear by developing the com-munication
field in Algeria.
Participants interact mostly with the tactile modality. They
do not use (and sometimes do not know) the other modalities
because of several use problems and cultural particularities
including the use of different languages (Latin letters Vs Arab
letters), financial conditions (communication credit Vs cost of
sms), lack of knowledge (lack of conviction about the multi-
modality benefit) and habituation (lack of use cases in their
preferred applications), etc.
We recognize that our study results do come with their limi-

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