Creating applications for smart artifacts - Bridging the gap between users and makers

Abstract

We developed an SDK consisting of an Arduino library and an Android application. The former simplifies the steps required by makers to create smart artifacts, while the latter enables users to orchestrate the functionality of said artifacts by means of an event-action paradigm based on simple conditional statements called rules. We conducted an evaluation with eight high school students, which comprised of us- ability tasks, a system usability scale questionnaire and a two-session workshop. Our results, although not conclusive, highlight a good usability of the application, as well as a marked confidence with the chosen paradigm. Moreover, the students have shown an inclination to imagine new ubiquitous computing applications, thus reinforcing our initial argumentation.