Warranting High Perceived Quality of Experience (PQoE) in Pervasive Interactive Multimedia Systems

This chapter presents an overview of diverse ethnographic praxis intended to know users and understand how the usage scenarios can influence the quality of their experiences when interacting with pervasive communication systems. Data gathering and evaluation techniques from users’ perspective, future interfaces, and applications for pervasive interactive multimedia systems (an evolved state of mobile and pervasive iTV) are discussed. This chapter also focuses on wellestablished ethnomethodologies that study users and their context in field living labs, cultural probes, focus groups, and on-the-field enactments, integrated within the participatory design process to create future scenarios and applications for pervasive interactive multimedia systems. IntroductIon Data gathering and evaluation activities that aim to understand the users’ point of view and their experiences when using a technology are a central element of user-centered design approaches such as Participatory Design and play a key role in the assurance of optimal user experiences (Douglas et al., 1993). Identifying appropriate requirements to make interactive systems accessible is not enough to ensure the relevance and personal satisfaction of the designed system for users. “Designers need more soft data about users such as they problems, preferences, lifestyles and aspirations” (Newel, 2006, p. 112). Traditional data gathering and evaluation methodologies such as focus groups, interviews, observation, usability labs, and expert based evaluation (e.g., heuristic evaluation) together with new experimental techniques such as in-situ evaluation (e.g., living labs, observa-