365 DAYS AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE IN HOMELAB - Philips Research

Ambient 05-05-2003 12:38 Pagina 29
are commonly used in tests of applications
where the attention of the user is critical (e.g.
control rooms in process industries or air
traffic control, drivers in cars, pilots in aircraft).
Once the sensors and transmitters become
small enough to make them wearable and noninvasive,
these methods may be ready to make
their entry into the usability lab.
Data mining and pattern detection
Enhanced and automated data collection
methods will lead to large data
sets, containing valuable
information awaiting discovery.
When we know what we are
looking for, e.g. if we want to
know how the number of errors
or the time needed to complete
a certain task varies between
several design prototypes of an
appliance, classical frequency
and duration-based statistics
will suffice. However, if we are
exploring sequential aspects of
user-system interaction, different methods are
needed, such as lag sequential analysis, Markov
chain analysis and T-pattern analysis. These
techniques are not new, but they have not been
extensively applied to usability research. They
need to be validated and software tools need to
be developed to make them accessible to
usability testers.
A good example is Theme, a tool capable of
detecting repeated patterns that are hidden to
observers and very hard or impossible to detect
with other available methods. It is particularly
suitable for analyzing behavioral data. Theme
is able to detect patterns that are obscured by
other events, and finds patterns that no form
of frequency count, lag sequential or time
series analysis can identify. As such, it is an
effective way to detect patterns in user-system
interaction and to identify the precursors or
consequences of specific behavioral events.
Theme has been used extensively in studies of
human communication, spoken dialogue,
gestures, protocol analysis, etc. The Philips
HomeLab is the first corporate user in the
domain of user-system interaction.
To wrap up the tour of new and future tools
for usability testers, a few words about data
visualization. With all the new data collection
and analysis methods coming along, we will be
seeing new graphical methods to visualize user
interaction with systems as well as usability
bottlenecks, with integrated coupling to video
and audio clips and raw data. Such tools will
enable us to take maximum advantage of the
rich information gathered in a laboratory such
as HomeLab.
HomeLab is already an exciting place to work.
I am sure it will be even more so in the
future!
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