What's in your wallet?: implications for global e-wallet design

As part of a comparative ethnographic study of everyday life of young professionals in London, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, we conducted a detailed survey of wallets and their contents, through photographs, interviews, diary studies, and observation. Despite prominent differences in culture and lifestyle, there were remarkable similarities across all three sites in terms of what wallets contained and how they were used. Individuals arrived at similar (if imperfect) solutions to common problems of temptation management and access control, identity management and partitioning, and collecting tokens of affiliation and history. Our findings suggest that future electronic wallets (e-wallets), whether physical devices or distributed functionalities, will be able to capitalize on these existing patterns, solve some of the existing problems, and encounter new challenges. Furthermore, they frame the potential value of e-wallets in a broader context than traditional concerns over privacy, security, ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Scott D. Mainwaring, Ken Anderson, Michele F. Chang
• Keywords: ACM Classification Keywords, Author Keywords Ethnography, CHI 2005, Future Electronic Wallets, Human Computer Interaction