Evaluating an ambient display for the home

We present our experiences with evaluating an ambient display for the home using two different evaluation techniques: the recently proposed `Heuristic Evaluation of Ambient Displays' and an in situ, 3-week long, Wizard of Oz evaluation. We compare the list of usability violations found in the heuristic evaluation to the set of problems that were discovered in the in situ evaluation. Overall, the `Heuristic Evaluation of Ambient Displays' was effective ? 75% of known usability problems were found by eight evaluators (39-55% were found by 3-5 evaluators). However, the most severe usability problem found in the in situ evaluation was not identified in the heuristic evaluation. Because the problem directly violated one of the heuristics, we believe that the problem is not with the heuristics, but rather that evaluators have minimal experience with ambient displays for the home. Author Keywords Heuristic Evaluation, ambient displays, peripheral displays, discount usability method...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Sunny Consolvo, Jeffrey Towle
• Keywords: CHI 2005, Heuristic Evaluation, Human Computer Interaction, Keywords Heuristic Evaluation, Situ Evaluation