Evaluating the calmness of ubiquitous applications

Abstract

Evaluating the characteristics of ubiquitous applications is still in its infancy although this area is rapidly gaining importance as such applications are becoming common. We present a framework for evaluating the degree of calmness in ubiquitous applications. Calmness is a characteristic of the system that is experienced by the user in the usage situation, hence our evaluation framework is targeted at evaluating the technology in real usage context. We first identify the characteristics of calmness from the user's perspective and then use them to define the dimensions for our evaluation framework. As the framework is subjective in nature, calmness is not presented as numerical values but as graphics. The suggested presentation gives an overall understanding of the application characteristics at a glance. Further, it facilitates understanding the effects of different design and implementation choices and comparing different applications. We illustrate the framework by evaluating an application being currently constructed. This application will be evaluated in real usage context at the beginning of year 2004. We also compare related work with ours. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.