Connecting The Things To The Internet: An Evaluation Of Four Configuration Strategies For Wi-Fi Devices With Minimal User Interfaces

The availability of low-power Wi-Fi radio modules opens up opportunities to leverage the existing prevalent Wi-Fi infrastructure for large-scale trials and deployments of Ubicomp technology. In this paper we address the challenge of supporting end-users, especially when they are not technical experts, in connecting new low-power, low-cost Wi-Fi devices with very minimal UIs to an existing, secure Wi-Fi infrastructure. We report two usability studies through which 30 participants, with no formal technical training, compared 4 alternative configuration techniques, selected based on cost and consumption constraints, and on adoption in off-the-shelf products. Through an analysis of success rate and causes of failure, our results indicate that two techniques are noticeably more usable than others. These are a web-based configuration mechanism, where users connect to an access point on the Wi-Fi device, and one that makes use of a standard audio cable to connect a smartphone to the device to be configured.