=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-490/paper-7
|storemode=property
|title=Designing, Developing, Evaluating the Invisible? - Usability Evaluation and Software Development in Ubiquitous Computing
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-490/paper_07.pdf
|volume=Vol-490
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iused/Gross09
}}
==Designing, Developing, Evaluating the Invisible? - Usability Evaluation and Software Development in Ubiquitous Computing==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-490/paper_07.pdf
Designing, Developing, Evaluating the Invisible? —
Usability Evaluation and Software Development in Ubiquitous Computing
Tom Gross
Faculty of Media
Bauhaus-University Weimar
Bauhausstr. 11, 99423 Weimar, Germany
+49 3643 58-3710
tom.gross(at)medien.uni-weimar.de
unobtrusive interaction’ [1] induces further challenges such as
ABSTRACT highly mobile users [3, 5], interaction on small devices [3],
This position paper for the 2nd International Workshop on the timing difficulties through concurring interactions [10], and
Interplay between Usability Evaluation and Software environmental factors that cannot be controlled [6].
Development (I-USED 2009) introduces some strengths of
Ubiquitous Computing as well as some challenges it entails for
3. SOLUTIONS
the software development and usability evaluation; i n
Methods from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) have already
particular it presents a user-centred design process for
been integrated into software development life cycles, but the
ubiquitous computing.
process of finding and integrating designated methods into the
UbiComp development life cycle is still in its early stages. In
Categories and Subject Descriptors HCI, for instance, Jokela [8, 9] has extended the ISO 13407
H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and P r e s e nta ti on] : standard ‘ISO 13407: 1999 - Human-Centred Design Processes
User Interfaces – Evaluation/Methodology; Prototyping; User- for Interactive Systems’ [7]. This ISO 13407 regulates the
Centred Design. design processes of the four phases: understanding and
specifying the context of use, specifying the requirements,
General Terms producing design results, and evaluating the design against the
Human Factors. requirements in a loop from the first phase to the last, and then
restarting with the first phase in an iterative cycle. We have
Keywords extended and adapted this life cycle to fit to the specific needs
Software Development; Usability Evaluation; Ubiquitous of UbiComp (cf. Figure 1).
Computing.
A general challenge in integrating methods into the design and
development life cycle for UbiComp is to find or define natural
1. INTRODUCTION and unobtrusive methods that reflect the nature and
Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) provides new opportunities characteristics of UbiComp and everyday computing. In this
and poses new challenges to software development and the 2nd International Workshop on the Interplay between
usability evaluation. According to Mark Weiser who coined Usability Evaluation and Software Development (I-USED 2009)
this term, UbiComp ‘enhances computer use by making many workshop I would be particularly interested in discussing new
computers available throughout the physical environment, approaches for the integration of usability concepts and
while making them effectively invisible to the user’ [11]. methods into the software development processes—including
Instead of explicit input from devices such as a keyboard or a traditional single-user systems, cooperative systems as well as
mouse, UbiComp systems typically get implicit input from particularly UbiComp systems.
users’ interaction with their physical environment through
everyday objects. Besides the advantages of the resulting
4. CONCLUSIONS
invisibility and unobtrusiveness for the users, UbiComp
Tom Gross is professor for Computer-Supported Cooperative
entails a variety of challenges for their software development
Work and head of the Cooperative Media Lab at the Faculty of
and usability evaluation.
Media of the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. His
research interests include Computer-Supported Cooperative
2. CHALLENGES Work, Human-Computer Interaction, and Ubiquitous
The challenges that are mentioned in the literature include both Computing. Since beginning of 2008 he is Prorektor (vice-
the general unobtrusiveness [2], but also the complex president) of the Bauhaus-University Weimar. From 1999 to
interactions that make use of natural input technologies [2] 2003 he was a senior researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for
with a great number of interaction partners [4] and through Applied Information Technology FIT in St. Augustin,
distributed devices [3] in a large physical space [4]. The fact Germany. He holds a diploma and a doctorate degree in Applied
that UbiComp is often seen as everyday computing, which i s Computer Science from the Johannes Kepler University Linz,
‘characterised by continuously present, integrative, and Austria.
Figure 1. User-Centred Design Process for Ubiquitous Computing.
[6] Iachello, G., Truong, K.N., Abowd, G.D., Hayes, G.R. and
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Stevens, M. Prototyping and Sampling Experience to
Thanks to the members of the Cooperative Media Evaluate Ubiquitous Computing Privacy in the Real World.
Lab—especially to Christoph Beckmann and Maximilian In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human
Schirmer. Factors in Computing Systems – CHI 2006 (Apr. 24-27,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada). ACM, New York, NY, USA,
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