Software Design Issues for Experimentation in Ubiquitous Computing

Designing smart user interfaces is a key challenge in making a new appliance useful. This is especially difficult to achieve when input devices such as keyboard and mouse which allow a very flexible way of interaction with the system in a static environment are not handy in a mobile environment. Good user interface design is not the application of magic but an iterative process of engineering. One technique of interface engineers is experimentation with users. Most experimentation is done by watching the user and the system from outside and treating it as a black box. We see the need for what we call experimentation-ready software that supports researchers in data gathering and data processing. We show that software techniques to realize this are already available. They are currently used for other purposes. We show that design patterns and other techniques can be applied and that the overhead for enabling experimentation will be small. We present the experimental setup of an environment for ubiquitous computing in automobiles.     «

Designing smart user interfaces is a key challenge in making a new appliance useful. This is especially difficult to achieve when input devices such as keyboard and mouse which allow a very flexible way of interaction with the system in a static environment are not handy in a mobile environment. Good user interface design is not the application of magic but an iterative process of engineering. One technique of interface engineers is experimentation with users. Most experimentation is done by wat...     »