Challenges for usability testing in ubiquitous systems

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing expands both the place where the software system is used and the traditional way of interacting with its users. This happens since technologies should be fully integrated in the user daily activities in such way they become indistinguishable. So, in this scenario, new characteristics can emerge like calmness, transparency and context awareness that should be evaluated to assure the ubiquitous system quality. One of the methods used for evaluation of traditional systems is usability testing. Then, in this paper, we identify the main challenges to perform usability testing in ubiquitous systems based on an overview of the literature studies and on our own experience in testing this kind of systems. We also describe our ongoing work where we investigate usability testing to be designed considering contextawareness and to be supported by specific measurements to the ubiquitous computing scenario.

Pervasive games field trials: recruitment of eligible participants through preliminary game phases

“…4b) available from Google Play. 4 When the player launches the application, the game engine requests her location via GPS. When a GPS fix is acquired, the player may start a new game session.…”

“…Hence, beyond investigating technical flaws and malfunctions, field trials offer insights into user understandings, perceptions, practices and the eventual uses of evaluated systems [14]. Field trials are even more important in testing ubiquitous systems, whose operation largely depends on sensing (and adapting to) the environmental and social context; these aspects are difficult to 'simulate', and hence, they limit the reach of classical laboratory studies [1,4,25].…”

“…3 https://github.com/zxing/zxing 4. Following the end of the evaluation trials, ManHunt has been freely available for anyone to play and enjoyed more than 8000 downloads.…”