Exiting the cleanroom: on ecological validity and ubiquitous computing

Over the past decade and a half, considerable time and money has been invested in the realization of ubiquitous computing. Yet iterative design is still difficult and rare, which limits the speed with which the field can move forward. Based on the literature and interviews with 28 developers, we show how issues of sensing and scale cause ubicomp systems to resist iteration, prototype creation, and ecologically valid evaluation. Our work has focused in particular on a tool for enabling qualitative techniques for need finding and early stage design and testing. We present our work on the Momento tool, and discuss a series of studies that was conducted using Momento including a diary study, a field study of an early prototype desktop/mobile application, and a field study of a Wizard-of-Oz mobile prototype.