Evaluating Pervasive and Ubiquitous Systems

Recognized evaluation strategies are essential to systematically advance a research field´s state of the art. Pervasive and ubiquitous computing need such strategies to mature as a discipline and to enable researchers to objectively assess and compare new techniques´ contributions. Researchers have shown that evaluating ubiquitous systems can be difficult, so approaches tend to be subjective, piecemeal, or both. To ensure that the validity and usability of proposed systems won´t be compromised, researchers must reach consensus on a set of standard evaluation methods for ubiquitous systems. Otherwise, methods for scientifically testing and presenting state-of-the-art advances will remain unclear. In this article, the organizers from four different workshop series, each focused on this topic, summarize and discuss the main outcomes of these events.