Susanne Bødker

Motivation
This study was motivated by an interest in understanding the new opportunities brought to use by App technologies available on mobile devices. In our qualitative analysis of interview data we used the concept of 'appropriation', and in doing so we realized that we needed to address both individual and social appropriation.

Research approach is a hermeneutic interpretation of data from interviews with 12 iPhone users triangulated with models of appropriation, theories of micro and macro level appropriation, and the concept 'expansive learning'

Findings/Design
Through use, idiosyncratically and in collaboration with others, people make the iPhone and its App-world their own to the extent that they use the phone as a port to exercising personal interests like poetry, Italian novels, planning and cookbooks; hence the title of this paper. A closer look shows that in doing so, the interviewees have expanded their scope of what activity is enabled by their iPhone.

Research limitations/Implications
Despite being an explorative study addressing only Danish users of iPhones and Apps, our findings suggest to take seriously the expansion of users' scope of activity and abandon the idea that use can be predicted.

Originality/Value
This paper presents a new conceptualization of context of use. The presented analysis of data opens a window to the transitions that users undergo, alone and together in order to make the iPhone their own. A particular focus is how the iPhone and its Apps support or hinder the artefact to become a personal access-point to the world of Apps.