User-Centred Development of Mobile Interfaces to a Pervasive Computing Environment

A challenging issue for HCI is the development of usable mobile interfaces for interactions with a complex pervasive environment. We consider a need for interfaces which automatically adapt their interaction and presentation capabilities on the user´s situational needs and expectations to decrease the complexity of the environment and increase the usability of the system. Therefore, a rule-set is required which gives knowledge on the mobile interface´s adaptations as a consequence on a user´s situations within the environment. This rule-set iteratively emerges within a user-centred development process by considering and testing each contextual situation of the user when interacting with the mobile interface. In this paper we describe an approach of a usage model for specifying each context of the user and the environment as well as the user´s goals and mental model. Moreover, we describe our used user-centred process to develop the usage model and rule-set, practical experience in development of mobile interfaces, some guidelines and our planned future work.