Quality of Experience and Human-computer Interaction: A Relation Overview Luis Guillermo Martinez Ballesteros, Zary Segall Mobile Services Lab KTH Royal Institute of Technology Kista, Sweden lgmb@kth.se,segall@kth.se Abstract—This paper first traces the historic evolution of the Quality of Experience (QoE) concept, and then connects common points between the study of user experience as practiced within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) disciplines and recent efforts to understand how user perception can be incorporated into the definition and management of resources in the area of (ICT). After an analysis of the history of QoE and an examination of its current role in HCI, some research challenges are proposed that open doors to future research projects. Keywords-Quality of Experience; Human Computer Interaction; Challenges in mobile environments I. INTRODUCTION The telecommunications industry has been a fertile area for applying user-centred solutions [1] as well as a vital part of the economies of all nations, shaping the quality of life of people around the world. It is this area where new research issues are emerging and changing the way that people interact with networks and content. Some of these efforts are oriented to technical developments, while others are focused on non-technical aspects, and it is in this new environment where concepts such as interaction, quality, content, context, and perception become more and more important to the market through operators, content providers, and handset manufacturers for whom the concept of user satisfaction is becoming a new competitive factor. A representative case is Apple; with the creation and consolidation of devices like the iPad and iPhone, this company opened the door to both a new market conception oriented to satisfy user needs through design and detail, and to a greater use of data networks by the same users through increased interest in applications and content. As a consequence of this phenomenon, recent years have witnessed an increase in the network traffic caused by a high demand for content, with users more and more interested in the quality of the content, not only from a network performance perspective, but also in how this content is distributed and consumed, including devices and interfaces. The new paradigmatic eco system (user-interface- network-content) requires novel and disruptive end-to-end considerations, in order to enable and sustain the next generation of services and user experience. In particular, networks are currently agnostic and have no knowledge about the type and characteristics of the specific mobile services they are providing. Further, there is a knowledge separation between service designers/builders, service providers, terminals, Operating Systems and networks. These facts are producing substantial resource optimization deficiencies and discontinuities that affect the user’s level of satisfaction. Although Quality of Experience (QoE) has made rapid gains as a new metric influencing the success or failure of new applications and services by involving the user’s perception in the evaluation process, most of the methodologies developed to measure it ([2]-[4]) depend largely on the end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, which can be categorized as a techno-centric approach. In response to this, a user-centric point of view is getting more attention as a new and interesting research topic where areas such as human-computer interaction (HCI) have shown interest in developing standardized assessment methodologies, optimization processes and metrics definitions taking into account concepts like User Experience (UX)([5]-[8]). While from a technical approach, user’s satisfaction is a result of the adjustment of some network parameters, with a user centric point of view; QoE has a multidimensional character and can be studied from an interdisciplinary perspective [7]. However, this multidimensional character and pluralism of perspectives have naturally contributed to the existence of several definitions and approaches to the same concept. This has not allowed the emergence of a single definition that encompasses within itself the multiplicity of concepts around QoE, as well as the options for standardization in the methods of evaluation, measurement and improvement of the QoE perceived by users. As mentioned by Moor et al. [8] “It is rather uncommon to integrate concepts from other fields less technical than telecommunications in definitions of QoE. A relevant example is the domain of HCI, in which concepts such as UX and ”Usability” closely related to QoE are very important.” The goal of this paper is to identify coincident points between techno-centric and user-centric approaches, taking into account a review of their respective historical evolution processes that allows one to establish a basis for the development of scheme that allocates resources in a wireless infrastructure based on the evaluated QoE obtained through the implementation of an assessment methodology. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In Section II, we present the QoE and the techno-centric approach 34 Copyright (c) IARIA, 2013. ISBN: 978-1-61208-313-1 MOBILITY 2013 : The Third International Conference on Mobile Services, Resources, and Users