From technology prototypes to ethnographic studies: A review of ubicomp research

In this paper, the accepted submissions published on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing (HUC) and Ubicomp conferences between 1999 and 2007 are reviewed. We classify 244 papers into six distinct categories and analyze the change in the distribution of the papers in these categories over the period under review. The strongest change trends identified in the analysis are the decrease in the number of application and interaction related papers and the increase in the number of user studies. We recognized three major issues that we think are missing in the reviewed research: internetrelated research, research on technology adaptation and acceptance among end users, and reports on the largescale deployment of ubiquitous systems. Furthermore we describe the stateoftheart in ubiquitous computing in the sense of design space as defined by Stankiewitz. In this regard the field has evolved from technological prototypingoriented art towards end userdriven approaches where real world constraints are taken moreseriously. A need for future work on user acceptance, interoperability and privacy issues is suggested.