Measuring User Experiences of Prototypical Autonomous Products in a Simulated Home Environment

Advances in sensor technology, embedded processing power, and modeling and reasoning software, have created the possibility for everyday products to sense the environment and pro-actively anticipate user needs. There is however a risk of creating environments in which people experience a lack of control. The aim of this study is to explore the degree in which people are willing to delegate control to a pro-active home atmosphere control system. The findings suggest that participants are willing to delegate control to easy-to-use systems, and they do not want to delegate control to complex and unpredictable systems. It is argued that the willingness to delegate should not be considered as a fixed degree, rather system initiative might depend on the situation at hand or on changes in time. Design research on mixed initiative systems faces a methodological challenge, in terms of measuring user experience of autonomous prototypes in a controlled way, while still preserving the sense of a r...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: HCI
• Authors: Martijn H. Vastenburg, David V. Keyson, Huib de Ridder
• Keywords: Anticipate User Needs, Atmosphere Control System, HCI 2007, Human Computer Interaction, Mixed Initiative Systems