Web-Based System Development for Usability Evaluation of Ubiquitous Computing Device

Recently, with the development of electronic technology, information technology (IT) devices that satisfy user requirements, such as PMP (Portable Multimedia Player), PDA (Personal Data Assistant), UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computer) and mobile phones have been developed. These devices are making wireless communication and network communication more accessible, and by the ubiquitous paradigm, provide accessibility of information everywhere. The appearance of these devices and the development of the technology are integrating and converging in the IT devices. Therefore, there are significant changes in the purpose and environment of IT device applications. This is due to the modification of the environment in which the device is used (not only in a passive state but also in a motional state), which has a greater influence on usability. Therefore, a new methodology is required to evaluate the usability of the devices. In previous studies, by gathering and integrating the usability factors and ubiquitous characteristics, the Ubiquitous Evaluation Factor was obtained. For each factor of ubiquitous devices, deconstruction was accomplished for each usability evaluation. Through this process, components of ubiquitous devices could be extracted. Evaluation scores of ubiquitous device components and the score of the evaluation of each usability factor could be obtained from the usability evaluation. This evaluation framework was developed as a Web-based system to let the users perform the usability evaluation without having trouble with the location. This system was developed in Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition platform. Web Server IIS (Internet Information Server) 6.0 was used, and MS-SQL 2000 was used for the database server. For development of language, ASP (Active Server Page) was used, which is run in IIS. This study is meaningful in that through a Web-based system, various people could easily access the device, and in that evaluation of a portion of the device as well as the entire device is possible.