NISHA: Novel Interface for Smart Home Applications for Arabic Regionsubtitle as Needed

Researchers have developed many devices and applications for smart homes to control home’s appliances. The main goal of this research is to propose a touch-based interface (namely, NISHA) for smart homes to meet user needs and requirements and is able to control any appliance in the house. This study is designed for people and circumstances in the Middle East countries (Jordan and West Bank) and therefore, is set out to design a user interface for smart home applications taking into consideration the economic, social, and technological differences. Referring to those differences, NISHA was designed in a classical representational design instead of a modern advanced one, based on virtual images instead of text, full control instead of automatic control, and very restrictive privacy issues for people of these countries still look at smart homes as a technology that threaten their privacy. Moreover, NISHA was tested and evaluated using heuristic and cognitive walk-through evaluation techniques. Evaluation results showed that 80% of users and experts were satisfied with NISHA as a user friendly interface, 90% of users were satisfied that NISHA met their expectations, and finally, 93% of users strongly asked to have NISHA in their daily lives. Keywords—Human Computer Interaction (HCI); HCI Design and evaluation methods; User Interface Design; User Centered Design; Smart Homes