Integrated user interfaces for the home environment

In this paper, we describe the development of a hand-held personal home assistant capable of controlling a wide range of electronic home devices. A demonstrator of the system was developed in the European project TIDE HEPHAISTOS (Home Environment Private Help AssISTant fOr elderly and diSabled). Its multimodal user interface is based on a coloured high resolution touch screen extended with speech input/output. The development process is focused on taking into account requirements of elderly people and people disabilities. The usability of the personal assistant was evaluated in a series of user tests with subjects from these particular user groups.