User Experience Test Next to the results of the user test, prototypes with a subset of functionalities were created and deployed in a family home with the objective of getting feedback on the user experience of the guiding interaction.
The deployment home The deployment home had three floors and was located in Almere. The home had three permanent occupants. Of the three permanent occupants one was not part of the family, but rented a room in the home. Therefore, two prototypes were deployed with the two remaining occupants: A father (54 years old) and his daughter (17 years old). They had the most stable life pattern and matched the situation of the Chabots the best. (Appendix I)
The Setup The prototypes were placed on two separate floors. The father had the prototype placed on his desk in the office and the daughter had the prototype placed on her nightstand in room 1. The deployment was carried out over a period of five days and the participants were asked to keep an observational log based on their experience of living with the system (See Appendix K). These diaries were then used as a basis for a follow up interview as prescribed by the “diary method” (Zimmerman & Wieder, 1977). Having the prototypes fixed to a specific location in the home meant that planning using direct user input was not possible. A schedule was instead implemented by having the family plan out the time-period in advance which was then pre-programmed and set to trigger the system events from the location of the designers. Changes in plans would then be communicated to the project group in order to adapt the pre-programmed schedule. Finally the participants were prepared through a brief introduction. (see Appendix J)
Fig.12: Prototype placement
Fig.13: Prototype used for deployment
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