Methods and Guidelines for the Design and Development of Domestic Ubiquitous Computing Applications

Bringing ubiquitous computing applications to home environments is a great challenge. In our research we investigate how applications can be conceived, designed, and implemented that fit into people´s lives. In particular we describe our experiments on how methods of user centered design and participatory design can be appropriated to find users´ requirements and design ideas for ubiquitous computing applications for the home. In particular we focus in the study reported on information presentation using display appliances. In a participatory design process, enhanced with technology probes, we discussed potential solutions for a specific home with 14 participants individually. Based on these individual solutions, fitting a single persona each, we specified the prototypes that would accommodate the user´s needs and that are generic in its applicability. This allows drawing a first set of guidelines for the design of display appliances in the home environment