Survey Dataset: The User Perspective on Island-Ready 6G Communication

This record contains the survey dataset, evaluation R source code, and Python scripts to generate figures and tables of the paper "The User Perspective on Island-Ready 6G Communication: A Survey of Future Smartphone Usage in Crisis-Struck Areas with Local Cellular Connectivity" by Leon Janzen, Florentin Putz, Kolja Straub, Marc-André Kaufhold, and Matthias Hollick in Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Abstract:

Using smartphone apps during crises is well-established, proving critical for efficient crisis response. However, such apps become futile without an Internet connection, which is a common issue during crises. The ongoing 6G standardization explores the capability to provide local cellular connectivity for areas cut off from the Internet in crises. This paper introduces to the HCI community the concept of cellular island connectivity in isolated areas, promising a seamless transition from normal operation to island operation with local-only cellular connectivity. It presents findings from a survey (N = 857) among adult smartphone users from major German cities regarding their smartphone usage preferences in this model. Results show a shift in app demand, with users favoring general-purpose apps over dedicated crisis apps in specific scenarios. We prioritize smartphone services based on their criticality, distinguishing between apps essential for crisis response and those supporting routines. Our findings provide operators, developers, and authorities insights into making user-centric design decisions for implementing island-ready 6G communication.

Dataset:

Our dataset consists of quantitative and qualitative data:
- Our pseudonymous quantitative dataset contains the smartphone screentime (Q10), positional voting on daily smartphone app usage in normal and crisis times (Q11, Q13), and use-case-specific app demands during crises (Q12) of 857 participants. We collected control variables (Q14-Q17) for prior crisis experience, experience with cellular/landline Internet outages, activity in relevant emergency forces, and technology affinity.
- As qualitative categories, we report open staments for faced technical issues (Q18) and additional comments (Q19).

Analysis source code:

Our R Markdown source code and Python scripts include the full reproducible code of our analysis that we used to generate the figures and tables from our paper. Please refer to the README.md file and our paper for further details about the dataset and the lab study.

Acknowledgments:

This work has been co-funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany in the projects Open6GHub (grant number: 16KISK014) and CYLENCE (grant number: 13N16636), and by the LOEWE initiative (Hesse, Germany) within the emergenCITY center [LOEWE/1/12/519/03/05.001(0016)/72].