Towards an Approach for Incorporating Usability Requirements into Context-Aware Environments (original) (raw)
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Evaluating Context-Aware Mobile User Interfaces
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Exploiting Context-Awareness for Usability Evaluation in Mobile Hci
2000
The widespread use of mobile devices, like smart phones and PDAs, in domains like mobile work, mobile learning, and emergency services envisions a growing market for new applications. Such applications re- quire usability testing with particular focus on constantly changing environments and interactions. Desktop ap- plications are usually tested in laboratory environments in order to restrict influencing factors during the
On Context-Sensitive Usability Evaluation in Mobile HCI
JMM: Journal of Mobile …, 2009
In usability evaluations, experiments are often conducted in closed laboratory situations to avoid disturbing influences. Due to non-realistic usage assumptions, this approach has important shortcomings when mobile Human Computer Interactions (m-HCIs) have to be evaluated. On the other hand, field studies allow to perform experiments close to real-world conditions, but potentially introduce influences caused by the environment, which have not been fully investigated so far.
ROLE OF CONTEXT IN USABILITY EVALUATIONS: A REVIEW
Usability is often defined as the ability of a system to carry out specific tasks by specific users in a specific context. Usability evaluation involves testing the system for its expected usability. Usability testing is performed in natural environment (field) or artificial environment (laboratory). The result of usability evaluation is affected by the environment in which it is carried out. Previous studies have focused only on the physical environment (lab and field) effect on the results but rarely focused on the effect of social environment (people present during testing). Therefore, this study aims to review how important it is to take context into account during usability evaluation. Context is explored through the theory of behaviour settings, according to which behaviour of individuals is strongly influenced by the physical as well as the social environment in which they function. The result of this review indicates that the physical and social context plays a substantial role in usability evaluations. Further, it also suggests that the usability evaluation model should encompass context as an important component in the framework.
Deriving Usability Goals for Mobile Applications
Proceedings of the 2014 Mulitmedia, Interaction, Design and Innovation International Conference on Multimedia, Interaction, Design and Innovation - MIDI '14, 2014
A starting point in a development of a new application is the identification of an end-user problem that further is translated into usability goals. In this paper, the goals are derived exploring an experience gained from successful mHealth projects. Gartner's report of Hype Cycle for Human Computer Interaction concludes that context-aware applications has already passed the peak of inflated expectations, periods of disillusionment and understanding of the technology's relevance in a domain, and now are entering the plateau of productivity. Although the report explores important for investors indicators of market, investment and adoption activities, the conclusions are relevant for the human computer interaction design, too. One of the sources that generalize understanding of technology relevance is the PricewaterhouseCoopers research that crystallized the principles of successful mHealth projects. As a result, a list of mobile product usability goals is formulated. Literature search allowed compiling a collection of studies that helps defining usability goals for mobile technologies.
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2006
Quantitative usability requirements are a critical but challenging, and hence an often neglected aspect of a usability engineering process. A case study is described where quantitative usability requirements played a key role in the development of a new user interface of a mobile phone. Within the practical constraints of the project, existing methods for determining usability requirements and evaluating the extent to which these are met, could not be applied as such, therefore tailored methods had to be developed. These methods and their applications are discussed.
Testing the usability of a platform for rapid development of mobile context-aware applications
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In this paper, we present the usability evaluation of IVO (Integrated Virtual Operator), a platform that supports the rapid development of contextaware applications by users with no programming skills. Using only the tools provided by the platform (IVO Builder and IVO Outlook), users can define temporal and spatial conditions and associate them with workflows of activities available within the platform. This way, whenever the defined conditions occur, the user's smartphone will immediately produce the intended behavior, with no need for user intervention. The applications developed using IVO can easily be made available to other users through a distributed web platform. Moreover, an android client was developed, to run the IVO-developed applications, allowing the smartphone to act as the ubiquitous interaction device. The evaluation of the platform was performed through usability tests at both the end-user level (android client) and the developer-user level (builder tools).
Context-Awareness and Mobile Devices
Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, 2009
Context-awareness is a maturing area within the field of ubiquitous computing. It is particularly relevant to the growing sub-field of mobile computing as a user's context changes more rapidly when a user is mobile, and interacts with more devices and people in a greater number of locations. In this chapter, we present a definition of context and context-awareness and describe its importance to human-computer interaction and mobile computing. We describe some of the difficulties in building context-aware applications and the solutions that have arisen to address these. Despite these solutions, users have difficulties in using and adopting mobile context-aware applications. We discuss these difficulties and present a set of eight design guidelines that can aid application designers in producing more usable and useful mobile context-aware applications.