Evaluation - methodology for telematic application systems

摘要

Telematics applications are applications based on the integration of information and communication technologies and services, e.g. tele-medicine systems, telework systems, traffic management systems. New technologies in this field are potentially very important for co-operation and exchange of information within and between organisations and communities. There is however a critical aspect in the development of these applications: the design and evaluation of these new technologies are often mainly technology-driven. The development and introduction of new technologies would progress more adequately if they could be evaluated systematically from a users point of view. In evaluating user aspects of telematic applications, a set of related interacting factors should be considered: i.e. the interaction of users, tasks and technical system in a 'context-of-use'. In this Special Interest Group attention is given to approaches and methods to evaluate telematic applications from a user(organisation) perspective and in the framework of the total development process. This implies simultaneous attention to several questions: to what extent is the interface 'usable', to what cum is interpersonal communication adequate, and what are the effects on task performance and (organisational) context.