Usability Evaluation Framework of Smart Home Applications for Senior Citizens

Smart Home technology is becoming an integral tool for senior citizens. The Interface of smart home applications should be usable and compatible for senior citizens in order to provide an effective experience. For assessment of any application usability is the key attribute to measure its usefulness. Designing information and technology products for the home has drawn attention to the narrowness of traditional conceptions of usability; therefore evaluating usability is a vital task. Design methods and guidelines were developed in work contexts and so are mainly concerned with ease-of-learning, low level ease-of-use and task fit. With the rapid advancement of smart home technology, usability of smart home technology apps gains attention of modern researchers. The focus of this paper is to provide the usability evaluation framework to evaluate the UI of smart home technology (SHT) applications(apps). Existing interface design guidelines of SHT are reviewed in this paper. To ensure the effectiveness and reliability of the framework, it was validated by applying the proposed metrics and evaluation instruments in a usability study conducted on two SHT apps for senior citizens. Results gathered from usability testing proved that the framework is applicable for evaluation of SHT apps for senior citizens.