New ITG Guideline for the Usability Evaluation of Smart Home Environments

As a complement to the 2011 ITG Guideline 2.1-01 on the evaluation of terminal devices, a new ITG guideline on the usability of smart home environments has been drafted. This guideline addresses services and applications which allow for an implicit interaction between user and system taking place in an environment equipped with networked sensors and actuators, partially also without any dedicated user interface. The present paper reviews the current draft of the guideline by describing its scope, the underlying system set-up, the usability aspects and the evaluation criteria which might be considered relevant.