A Lightweight Experiment Management System for Handheld Computers

This paper describes a system that helps HCI practitioners and researchers manage and conduct experiments involving context-sensitive handheld applications, particularly related to navigation assistance. The system provides a software framework in which application, user interface and interaction monitoring components can be plugged, offering a simple interconnection protocol and minimising the programming overheads of implementation. We have focused our attention on dealing with the challenges presented by the limited memory and processing of handheld devices and the variety of data sources for mobile context-sensitive applications. In this paper we give an overview of the system’s functionality and architecture, discuss key challenges of supporting field-based experiments on handhelds and consider further developments of the system.