Prototyping adaptive systems in smart environments using virtual reality

Abstract

Smart environment is a key challenge for current ICT research: it is one of the solutions that can enhance people's quality of life and enable users with impairment to live independently. Over the years, scientific research has proposed several solutions to help and improve the capabilities of its occupants, but they are often developed for a specific context (e.g. particular disease or impairment). These systems do not adapt to the real needs of users with different profiles, and neglect that the user's requirements may evolve over time. This research work aims to develop a new adaptive smart system able to support users (with and without disabilities) in performing daily tasks by recognizing their preferences and actions and adapting the system feedback consequently. With the aim to develop an easy, efficient and usable adaptive smart system, the final users have been involved in the whole design and development process. The system was validated through a virtual reality system allowing the user interaction evaluation and helping the usability improvement. Keywords Smart environment • Adaptive and adaptable user interface • Virtual reality system • Bayesian network • ICT • User-centered design B Francesca Gullà

Methodological Quality of User-Centered Usability Evaluation of Ambient Assisted Living Solutions: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Although there might be reasons to develop or adapt a scale/questionnaire, its validity and reliability must be evidenced [77], which was not the case of the questionnaires used in 37% of the studies included in this review (i.e., [35,36,38,39,41,49,52,53,55,60,63,73]). The finding that SUS was the most commonly usability scale reported in the included studies (i.e., [43,45,54,56,58,59,61,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]74]) is in line with a previous review on user-centered usability evaluation [78] and it suggests that this is a widely accepted instrument, usually regarded as a golden standard in terms of usability evaluation.…”

“…Only 12 studies were carried out in the laboratory context, but it is not possible to establish an association between the testing environment and the maturity level of the applications (e.g., the solution reported by [32] was in an early development stage and the usability evaluation was carried out in an institutional context) nor between the testing environment and the purposes of the applications being developed. For instance, the seven studies evaluating the usability of social robots were conducted in living labs [34,36,38,57,58], institutional site [71] and participant's home [49], while an application to support daily tasks [69] was evaluated in a laboratory context. Moreover, among the five applications aiming to prevent falls [45][46][47][48]66], only one was evaluated in a laboratory context [66], although all these applications had equivalent maturity levels.…”

“…In terms of publication types, ten studies were published in conference proceedings [31,32,34,35,38,40,42,61,62,72] and 34 studies were published in scientific journals [33,36,37,39,41,[43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]73,74].…”

“…Concerning the publication years, the included studies were published between 2008 (i.e., one study [31]) and 2020 (i.e., five studies [70][71][72][73][74]). The diagram in Figure 2 demonstrates a trend towards an increasing number of publications, and more than twothirds of the studies (i.e., 30 studies ) were published in the last five years and more than one-third of the studies (i.e., 15 studies [60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74]) were published in the last two years. The Figure 3 represents the distribution of the included studies by country.…”

“…Of the 35 studies that used scales/questionnaires, 19 (54%) studies used at least one valid and reliable usability evaluation instrument, 13 (37%) used questionnaires developed by the authors of the included studies without any reference to their psychometric characteristics (e.g., validity and reliability) and three (9%) used instruments based on technology acceptance models (Table 7). In terms of valid and reliable instruments (Table 7), the System Usability Scale (SUS) emerged as the most used instrument, being used in 16 studies (i.e., [43,45,54,56,58,59,61,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]74]). Other instruments being used, both alone or in combination with SUS, were the IBM Computer Usability Satisfaction Questionnaires (IBM-CUSQ) (n = 2), the ICF-Based Usability Scale (ICF-US) (n = 2), the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) (n = 1), the Usefulness, Satisfaction and Ease of Use Questionnaire (USE) (n = 1), and the Human Robot Interaction Scale (HRI) (n = 1).…”