365 DAYS AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE IN HOMELAB - Philips Research

Ambient 05-05-2003 12:38 Pagina 31
wake-up call in the morning or in more
relaxed situations in the evening? What
degrees of difference in intelligence would
user groups like to have and what are the
control mechanisms they will request? These
are only some of the questions to be tackled.
There are many more!
Studying the needs of users, anticipating the
interaction requirements based on solid data
and studying the experience in the
interaction with artifacts, the synergy of
artifacts and intelligent environments can
only be accomplished by setting up and
utilizing flexible user-experience study
environments. Environments like HomeLab
are a prerequisite for facing the challenges of
developing user experience knowledge,
which will guide people-oriented product
design. Multidimensional and open study
environments allow research on different
levels: basic interaction research towards
basic understanding of interaction
parameters, and applied interaction research
towards specific artifacts and environments
in different stages of design and
development. Multidimensional means the
possibility to study a multidimensional
combination of user experience factors.
Open means covering all situations, both
those that can be foreseen and those that
cannot. There is an incredible power in
utilizing this type of environment to gain
insights into the behavior of people and feed
these insights into innovation cycles.
Studying the user experience within the
Ambient Intelligence society means coming
up with new methods to obtain these
insights in a variety of situations, to
efficiently integrate these insights, in the
development of new potentials and creation
cycles, and to develop a well-coordinated
knowledge mosaic related to user experience
factors. Knowledge to help us address the
challenge of the upcoming ambient society
is available but fragmented. Strategies are
needed to connect the pieces and develop
well-formulated roadmaps for usageoriented
interaction. Enriched user
experience environments have to be set up
to support the vast amount of data
collection and analysis and the study of the
user experience in context.
If that is done, Ambient Intelligence will
deliver real benefits! If not, will fail!
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