Rainara Maia Carvalho

Using the GQM Method to Evaluate Calmness in Ubiquitous Applications

Ubiquitous systems change the way users interact with computers, because their services must be available everywhere at any time, supporting users in various everyday activities. An essential element for these systems is their calm interaction with users, which means the system should not disturb them unnecessarily. Literature currently lacks work focusing on how to evaluate calmness and case studies made in a real usage situation. The aim of this work is to propose a model, defined using the Goal-Question-Metric GQM method, for calmness evaluation in ubiquitous systems and to show our results from a case study with three ubiquitous applications.

Quality characteristics and measures for human---computer interaction evaluation in ubiquitous systems

The advent of ubiquitous systems places even more focus on users, since these systems must support their daily activities in such a transparent way that does not disturb them. Thus, much more attention should be provided to human–computer interaction (HCI) and, as a consequence, to its quality. Dealing with quality issues implies first the identification of the quality characteristics that should be achieved and, then, which software measures should be used to evaluate them in a target system. Therefore, this work aims to identify what quality characteristics and measures have been used for the HCI evaluation of ubiquitous systems. In order to achieve our goal, we performed a large literature review, using a systematic mapping study, and we present our results in this paper. We identified 41 pertinent papers that were deeply analyzed to extract quality characteristics and software measures. We found 186 quality characteristics, but since there were divergences on their definitions and duplicated characteristics, an analysis of synonyms by peer review based on the equivalence of definitions was also done. This analysis allowed us to define a final suitable set composed of 27 quality characteristics, where 21 are generic to any system but are particularized for ubiquitous applications and 6 are specific for this domain. We also found 218 citations of measures associated with the characteristics, although the majority of them are simple definitions with no detail about their measurement functions. Our results provide not only an overview of this area to guide researchers in directing their efforts but also it can help practitioners in evaluating ubiquitous systems using these measures.

What Changes from Ubiquitous Computing to Internet of Things in Interaction Evaluation

Internet of Things (IoT) is a new paradigm that includes a network of smart objects, which are embedded sensors, communicating using the Internet. One of the areas that are leading up to IoT is Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp). There are thus solutions such as frameworks, middlewares, and other development artifacts that come from the UbiComp community and can be used for IoT applications. On the other hand, the interaction evaluation of the applications can be more complex in IoT than in UbiComp systems, once we have two different perspectives: Human-Thing and Thing-Thing interactions. In this paper, based on the literature, our experience in these two domains, and case studies with Ubicomp and IoT applications, we discuss how we can benefit from the UbiComp move towards IoT, focusing on the main differences and similarities related to interaction evaluation. These differences open a set of questions that are also presented and discussed in this paper.

Machine Learning and Location Fingerprinting to Improve UX in a Ubiquitous Application

GREatPrint is a ubiquitous application that prints documents from mobile devices to the closest printer to the user at the GREat research lab. The first version of the application (GREatPrint V1) was evaluated and showed a low accuracy in the detection of the closest printer. In order to improve the application, this study proposes a new version of GREatPrint (GREatPrint V2) based on a machine learning algorithm and location fingerprinting technique. Therefore, this paper describes GREatPrint V2 with the approach used to improve its context-awareness. Also, it presents results from a case study performed to evaluate the user interaction quality through software quality measures for ubiquitous systems.

AQUArIUM - A suite of software measures for HCI quality evaluation of ubiquitous mobile applications

Five characteristics for HCI evaluation in ubiquitous applications are selected.Twenty-four quality measures to evaluate these five characteristics are proposed.A theoretical and empirical validations were performed. Ubiquitous computing has changed the way users interact with technology. Its applications are everywhere, supporting users in everyday activities in a transparent way with little or no need for attention. To ensure the adoption of these applications, it is essential to assess the quality of the interaction with its users. To do that, measurements can be applied to obtain data about quality characteristics in a software product. In a previous study about quality characteristics and software measures for ubiquitous computing, we have identified a gap in the literature regarding software measures for evaluating essential quality characteristics in ubiquitous systems. Therefore, this paper proposes a suite of well-defined software measures (twenty-four in total), called AQUArIUM, to evaluate human-computer interaction (HCI) in ubiquitous applications for mobile devices. These measures address five quality characteristics of ubiquitous computing: Context-awareness, Mobility, Attention, Calmness and Transparency. The proposed suite was validated theoretically and empirically. The results showed not only that the suite is feasible, but also that it indicates specific problems of HCI quality, which are helpful in improving the evaluated ubiquitous mobile application.

Evaluating an IoT Application Using Software Measures

Internet of Things (IoT) allows daily objects, with computing and communication capabilities, to connect to the Internet. In this scenario, an application called GREatRoom runs in an IoT environment, which has distributed wireless labels in places and objects, to detect the presence of nearby users, providing services intuitively and efficiently. Considering that IoT systems have quality characteristics of human-computer interaction similar to those of ubiquitous systems, this paper investigates the applicability of software measures from ubiquitous to IoT systems and presents the positive results achieved in this evaluation.

Recommendations for Usability Testing in Ubiquitous Applications

Ubiquitous systems change the way users interact with computers, because their services must be available anytime and everywhere, supporting users in several everyday activities. Thus, there is a high risk of users feeling annoyed and overwhelmed by ubiquitous systems. It is, therefore, essential to evaluate the quality of use in those systems. One of the methods to perform this activity is the usability testing. However, the traditional process does not take into account specific characteristics from ubiquitous systems, for example context-awareness, transparency, attention, calmness, and mobility. This paper provides eight recommendations for usability testing in ubiquitous applications based on a literature review and on the authors experience with the evaluation of those systems.

Correlations between invisibility and usability in ubicomp and IoT applications: partial results

Quality characteristics present several difficulties to be addressed. Negative correlations are one of these issues developers must deal during software development. These correlations mean that supporting a characteristic can negatively impact another one. A well-known solution to help developers identifying such correlations is through non-functional requirements (NFRs) catalogs. Although there are several correlations catalogs proposed in the literature, they do not take into account new characteristics that have arisen with the Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) and the Internet of Things (IoT) environment, such as Invisibility. In a previous study, a process for defining a catalog of correlations for quality characteristics was proposed. In this paper, we present partial results of the execution of this process for Invisibility and Usability. We also discuss some challenges regarding catalogs for quality characteristics.

When Technology Supports Urban Mobility: Improvements for Mobile Applications Based on a UX Evaluation

The development of applications that helps urban mobility has been pushed by the increase of processing capacity and miniaturization of the mobile device as well as the improvement of speed and availability of Internet. Such applications can support users in several activities such as tracing routes and searching for addresses. In this scenario, this work aims to: (i) understand how users use urban mobility applications; (ii) evaluate the quality of interaction and interface into real applications called “Waze” and “Meu Onibus”; and (iii) improve the applications based on the results of the evaluations. Moreover, this study also suggests a set of recommendations for urban mobility applications in developing countries like Brazil.