Physicality quantitative evaluation method

Abstract

The physical interaction aspects of embedded systems have been neglected in comparison to internal software issues in the software engineering field. Physical interfaces suffer from interaction complexities leading to usage difficulty and poor acceptance by the end-users. Meanwhile, the usability techniques focus on the overall usability issues while overlooking the in-depth physicality aspects of the interface and interaction. This study proposes a physicality-focused quantitative evaluation method to assist the embedded system developers in managing the interaction complexities of their products. The acceptance of the embedded system developers towards the proposed method was assessed by means of a user study. The results suggested their strong acceptance. The aim of this study is to re-emphasise the natural physical aspects of embedded system interfaces leading to intuitive interaction.