Towards usability evaluation for smart appliance ensembles

Abstract

Smart environments comprise users and devices to form ad-hoc an ensemble and assist the users to fulfill their tasks more efficiently and more conveniently. This introduces new challenges for usability evaluations. To cope with theses issues, we propose the application of task models. Following this approach the behavior of the users can be interpreted as a trace through the corresponding task model. We discuss our method of capturing, visualizing and analyzing traces through task models within smart environments. The paper provides the first results of a prototypical implementation. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.