Abstract
To be successful, ubicomp applications must be designed with their environment and users in mind and evaluated to confirm that they do not disrupt the users’ natural workflow. Well-established techniques for understanding users and their environment exist, but are not specifically designed to assess how well the computing and physical task environments blend. We present strengths and weaknesses of several qualitative and quantitative user study techniques for ubicomp. We applied these techniques to the design and evaluation of a ubicomp application for cell biology laboratories (Labscape). We describe how these techniques helped identify design considerations that were crucial for Labscape’s adoption and demonstrate their ability to measure how effectively applications blend into an environment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abowd, G.D.: “Classroom 2000: An experiment with the instrumentation of a living educational environment.” IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 38 (1999)
Abowd, G.D., Mynatt, E.D.: “Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing.” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol. 7. (Mar 2000) 29–58
Abowd, G.D., Mynatt, E.D., Rodden, T.: “The Human Experience.” IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 1 (Jan-Mar 2002) 48–57
Arnstein, L.F., Borriello, G., Consolvo, S., Franza, B.R., Hung, C., Su, J., Zhou, Q.H.: “Labscape: Design of a Smart Environment for the Cell Biology Laboratory.” To appear in IEEE Pervasive Computing
Arnstein, L.F., Grimm, R., Hung, C., Kang, J.H., LaMarca, A., Sigurdsson, S., Su, J., Borriello, G.: “Systems Support for Ubiquitous Computing: A Case Study of two Implementations of Labscape.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Zurich, Springer Verlag (2002)
Burrell, J., Gay, G.: “E-graffiti: Evaluating Real-world Use of a Context-aware System.” Interacting with Computers, Article 1228 (2002)
Cheverst, K., Davies, N., Mitchell, K., Friday, A.: “Experiences of Developing and Deploying a Context-Aware Tourist Guide: The GUIDE Project.” Proceedings of the 6 thAnnual Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Boston (2000)
Cohen, J. “A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales.” Educational and Psychological Measurement, Vol. 20 (1960) 37–46
Hackos, J.T., Redish, J.C.: User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York Chichester Weinheim Brisbane Singapore Toronto (1998)
Hilbert, D.M., Redmiles, D.F.: “Extracting Usability Information from User Interface Events.” ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), Vol. 32, Issue 4. (Dec 2000)
Lysakowski: “Comparing Paper and Electronic Laboratory Notebooks, Parts I and II.” Scientific Computing and Automation Magazine (March 1997 & May 1997)
Moran, T.P., Palen, L., Harrison, S., Chiu, P., Kimber, D., Minneman, S., van Melle, W., Zellweger, P.: “’I’ll Get That Off the Audio’: A Case Study of Salvaging Multimedia Meeting Records.” CHI Conference Proceedings (1997)
Myers, J.D., Fox-Dobbs, C., Laird, J., Le, D., Reich, D., Curtz, T.: “Electronic Laboratory Notebooks for Collaborative Research.” Proceedings of IEEE WET ICE, Stanford, CA (1996)
Norman, D.A.: The Design of Everyday Things. Currency and Doubleday, New York London Toronto Sydney Auckland (1988) 12–17
Osofsky, J.D. (ed.): Handbook of Infant Development. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York Chichester Brisbane Toronto (1979)
Rubin, J.: Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York Chichester Brisbane Toronto Singapore (1994)
Sackett, G.P. (ed.): Observing Behavior, Vol. II: Data Collection and Analysis Methods. University Park Press, Baltimore London Tokyo (1978)
Sanderson, P.M., Scott, J.J.P., Johnston, T., Mainzer, J., Watanabe, L.M., James, J.M.: “MacSHAPA and the Enterprise of Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis (ESDA).” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Vol. 41 (1994)
Scholtz, J., Herman, M., Laskowski, S., Smailagic, A., Siewiorek, D.: “Workshop on Evaluation Methodologies for Ubiquitous Computing.” http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/ubicomp01/, UbiComp ‘01 (October 2001)
Schutt, R.K.: Investigating the Social World. 3rd ed. Pine Forge Press, California (2001)
Weiser, M.: “The Computer for the 21st Century.” Scientific American (Sept 1991) 94–104
Weiser, M.: “Some Computer Science Issues in Ubiquitous Computing.” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 36, Issue 7 (July 1993) 75–84
Wood, L.E.: “Semi-Structured Interviewing for User-Centered Design.” ACM Interactions, Vol. 4, Issue 2 (Mar & Apr 1997) 48–61
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Consolvo, S., Arnstein, L., Franza, B.R. (2002). User Study Techniques in the Design and Evaluation of a Ubicomp Environment. In: Borriello, G., Holmquist, L.E. (eds) UbiComp 2002: Ubiquitous Computing. UbiComp 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2498. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45809-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45809-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44267-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45809-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive