User experience is a key point for successful ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environments. The envisaged design should be explored as soon as possible to anticipate potential user problems, thus reducing redesign costs. The development of ubicomp environments' prototypes might help, providing feedback on the users' reaction to the environments. This paper describes the design and evaluation of ubicomp environments using APEX, a rapid prototyping framework providing user experience via a 3D application server and connected physical devices. APEX prototypes allow users to explore and experience many characteristics of a proposed design, in a virtual world. The paper focus in particular the design and evaluation of a smart library in the APEX framework.

APEX was developed as a framework for ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) prototyping through virtual environments. In this paper the framework is used as a platform for developing a serious game designed to instruct and to inform. The paper describes the Asthma game, a game aimed at raising awareness among children of asthma triggers in the home. It is designed to stimulate a healthier life-style for those with asthma and respiratory problems. The game was developed as the gamification of a checklist for the home environment of asthma patients.

Serious games combine a ludic component with instructive and formative goals. They aim to educate and train through play. This paper explores the use of a development framework for dynamic virtual environments to develop serious games. The framework (APEX) was originally developed to prototype ubiquitous computing environments. Here it is used to develop a first person serious game: the Asthma Game. This game aims to teach children with asthma how to act to prevent attacks by drawing attention to asthma triggers in the home, and by providing information about how to avoid them. Besides the description of the game, results about the viability and utility of the approach are also discussed.Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org.