J Med Syst (2015) 39: 120 DOI 10.1007/s10916-015-0291-6 PATIENT FACING SYSTEMS Towards Context-Aware and User-Centered Analysis in Assistive Environments A Methodology and a Software Tool Jes ´ us Fontecha 1 · Ram´ on Herv´ as 1 · Tania Mond´ ejar 1 · Iv´ an Gonz ´ alez 1 · Jos´ e Bravo 1 Received: 20 March 2015 / Accepted: 20 July 2015 / Published online: 20 August 2015 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract One of the main challenges on Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is to reach an appropriate acceptance level of the assistive systems, as well as to analyze and monitor end user tasks in a feasible and efficient way. The development and evaluation of AAL solutions based on user-centered perspective help to achive these goals. In this work, we have designed a methodology to integrate and develop analytics user-centered tools into assistive systems. An analysis soft- ware tool gathers information of end users from adapted psychological questionnaires and naturalistic observation of their own context. The aim is to enable an in-deep analysis focused on improving the life quality of elderly people and their caregivers. This article is part of the Topical Collection on Patient Facing Systems  Jes´ us Fontecha jesus.fontecha@uclm.es Ram´ on Herv´ as ramon.hlucas@uclm.es Tania Mond´ ejar tania.mondejar@esmile.es Iv´ an Gonz´ alez ivan.gdiaz@uclm.es Jos´ e Bravo jose.bravo@uclm.es 1 Esc. Superior de Inform´ atica, Paseo de la Universidad, 4. 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain Keywords Ambient intelligence · Ambient assisted living · Methodology · User-centered analysis · Context-awareness · Psychological assessment Introduction Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is an initiative that pro- motes technological solutions to enhance the quality of life (QoL) of elderly people. There is an increasing number of solutions because of the evolution of assistive technologies and the public support in this area. In last years, an important number of assistive sys- tems applies user-centered participatory approaches that involve end-users during the whole project lifecycle [1]. The application of user-centered methods (scenarios, mock-ups, focus groups, interviews, real tests, naturalistic observa- tion, etc.) enhances the requirement acquisition, the effec- tive evaluation and, theatrically, ensures the final product acceptation. In general, the problem of these user-centered methods is that they require a huge human effort and interdis- ciplinary groups of work. Additionally, the user-centered evaluation tests are typically developed into a lab environ- ment. Even those tests conducted in the real user envi- ronment usually require experts observing the evaluation activities. This work deals with the problems described above. We have defined a conceptual methodology as a framework to create and deploy AAL systems focused on the analysis of user’s clinical aspects regarding quality of life (QoL). This methodology defines specifications to collect user require- ments from the environment, develop adaptable software