The context toolkit: aiding the development of context-enabled applications
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Developing a context-aware electronic tourist guide: some issues and experiences
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
System architecture directions for networked sensors
ACM SIGPLAN Notices
The nesC language: A holistic approach to networked embedded systems
PLDI '03 Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2003 conference on Programming language design and implementation
Examining mobile phone text legibility while walking
CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A service-oriented middleware for building context-aware services
Journal of Network and Computer Applications
The effect of context and application type on mobile usability: an empirical study
ACSC '05 Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Australasian conference on Computer Science - Volume 38
Usability evaluation for mobile device: a comparison of laboratory and field tests
Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services
ICMB '06 Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Business
Capturing the effects of context on human performance in mobile computing systems
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
Exploring context-awareness for ubiquitous computing in the healthcare domain
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
An Autonomic Context Management System for Pervasive Computing
PERCOM '08 Proceedings of the 2008 Sixth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications
A context-aware Tour Guide: User implications
Mobile Information Systems
Architecture for the development of context-sensitive mobile applications
Mobile Information Systems - Mobile Systems and Applications
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia
PersonisAD: distributed, active, scrutable model framework for context-aware services
PERVASIVE'07 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Pervasive computing
Architectural and implementation issues for a context-aware hypermedia platform
Journal of Mobile Multimedia
PERVASIVE'05 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Pervasive Computing
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In usability evaluations, experiments are often conducted in closed laboratory situations to avoid disturbing influences. Due to non-realistic usage assumptions, this approach has important shortcomings when mobile Human Computer Interactions (m-HCIs) have to be evaluated. On the other hand, field studies allow to perform experiments close to real-world conditions, but potentially introduce influences caused by the environment, which have not been fully investigated so far. With this work, we contribute to distinguishing application shortcomings from environmental disturbances which both potentially cause decreased user performance. Our approach is based on monitoring environmental conditions during the usability experiment, such as light, acceleration, sound, temperature, and humidity, and relating them to user actions. Therefore, a mobile context-framework has been developed based on a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) carried together with a mobile PC. We present results of a small study (seven persons) in the lab which pointed at increased delays and error rates of user interactions under induced environmental disturbances. Hereby, we demonstrate the potential of environmental monitoring for understanding user performance. Additionally, we present novel results of a usability study carried out in the field where we tested 19 persons under varying environmental conditions. The results showed that error rate and delay are influenced by environmental parameters, but in a more complex way than expected a-priori.