Methodology

In the context of our mobile reputations of sharing economy and collaborative consumption course we were asked by our coordinator Mrs Betty Tsakarestou to examine millennials’ behaviors and their relationship with their mobile phones on a daily basis. Some of the topics that we had to put under the microscope were the time their screen time, their mobile habits, their favorite and most used apps and whether their mobile phones are their personal assistants as well.

At first, we focused on our own behaviors and relationships with our phones and presenting them we managed to gather some main insights. Some of them were the time we spent on our phones, which is approximately 5 hours per day, what is the first thing we do in the morning, which is checking our Instagram feed and our messages/ e-mails, our favorite and most used apps which are Instagram, Messenger and Spotify/ YouTube. We also realized that we use our phones as personal assistants too (calendar, e-mails, alarm, notes etc.), building our daily lives around.

After discussing these habits of ours in the classroom, we came up with more specific insights like the use of our phones for work, University, transportation and online payments. Another topic we further discussed was our sharing habits on social media. Afterwards we were asked to interview and compare our local and international friends’ behaviors and come up with some more main insights.

So, after gathering all the insights and writing them down, we collaborated with another team to do our first post-it session, our first design workshop. We concluded that Millennials use their phones mainly for communication, well-being, sharing and creativity. After this realization we were asked to choose one specific community that we had to interview. The other team decided to interview people that combine social networking with well-being via their phones, while we decided to interview Millennials that might use their mobile phones’ services and the possibilities they offer as a creative output.

So, after finishing our first post-it session with the other team we focused for a while on our own cases and the topics we had to examine. The other teams did the same thing for the communities they picked and after presenting our own discussion points, we concluded on some common threats that would be our main discussion guide. Some of these threads were the time they spend on their phones daily, how addicted they are to them, their point of view on some topics like influencers, social media, actual connection and communication.

After this last session, the teams’ coordinators gathered the common data and created the discussion guide, our common ground. We picked out 13 main questions and then we focused on the more specific ones that emerged from our communities’ particular characteristics. Of course our more specific questions were about editing apps, photography, design and sharing and promoting one’s work via social media.

Finally, after finding 10 creative Millennials that certainly use their phones all day long we interviewed them and asked them to show us their visual content mainly created and shared through their mobile phones. Surprisingly, except for the data and insights that we expected to gather, we came to the realization that each story has given us results that differ from each other based on each person’s location, age, art and of course creative output.

Finally, when it comes to the limitations of our research, while doing the interviews the sample of the interviewees was quite small (10 millennials) and some of them didn’t even want to share with us their work, their name or their real habits. Furthermore, our research was strictly qualitative and so we couldn’t get some statistical data that could might be helpful. Also, there wasn’t much of a variety when it comes to the sample and the results because most of us and our friends share similar lifestyles, hobbies and habits. Bibliography-wise even though there are a lot of articles and other researches on this particular topic online, we have to agree that Millennials and their mobile behaviors is a rather new and contemporary subject to examine which means that the sources were limited.

Our team: Christos Daniilidis Danai Lyratzi Frossini Drakouli Maria Kall

Our coordinator: Betty Tsakarestou