Framework for Visual Analysis of User Behaviour in Ambient Intelligence Environment

Ambient intelligence is a rapidly developing field that is led by the necessity of ubiquitous computing. People are surrounded by computers in most of their daily activities; i.e. in cars, homes, offices and public areas, and supplied by various services on mobile phones, PDAs, or interactive kiosks. There are several projects that demonstrate potentials of ubiquitous computing, e.g. in a museum (Gallud et al., 2007), in a home (i2home, 2009), or in an office (Waibel, 2009). In our case, the ambient intelligence environment consists of two components, a mechanism for detection of user behaviour and an application that supports specific user scenario or set of scenarios (ambient intelligence applications). Along with increased complexity of the systems and user workflows in an ambient intelligence environment, the usability and functionality of both components must be ensured. Traditional approaches of usability testing are suitable for testing individual components in an isolated manner. However, usability of the whole system can significantly differ from the usability of individual components. A reason for testing of individual components is the inability to setup a complete environment of supporting technologies as they are still under development or yet non-existent in early phases of system design. Unfortunately, these phases are the ones where a correct design decisions are crucial, because they influence further development of the whole system. In this paper we introduce a framework for testing applications in ambient intelligence environments. The concept is derived from the methodologies of desktop application usability testing combined with evaluation of user behaviour in an ambient intelligence environment. It is based on our experience with user behaviour recording, which is visualized and investigated mainly in a virtual environment. The visualization serves as a tool for analyzing complex situations and detection of usability issues in ambient intelligence applications. 4

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