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.