Introduction to ACQUA Beta

The following guide has the purpose to introduce you the ACQUA beta application, how it works and how you can interact with it.

NOTE: being under development ACQUA is subject to frequent changes and will be improved constantly. For this reason all kind of feedback are encouraged.

Index

  1. Context
    1. Goal
    2. QoE predictions
    3. Feedback
  2. Quickstart
    1. UI and Navigation
    2. QoE predictions
    3. Feedback
    4. Settings and Customisation
  3. FAQ
  4. Contacts

Context

Goal

ACQUA has a twofold goal:

  1. provide Quality of Experience (QoE) predictions of common applications,
  2. collect feedback and network measurements to enhance point 1).

Secondarily ACQUA provides statistics about: your current connectivity (such as delay, throughput and losses over your communication medium), how your connectivity affects your applications during your day.

In general ACQUA aims to provide awareness of your connectivity with a simple metric (the user Quality of Experience per application) suitable to non-technical users.

QoE predictions

Why?

Quality of Experience (QoE) predictions are used to show how applications are affected by your connectivity.

How?

By running network measurements our application is able to predict, via Decision Trees, how an application will behave. Our models are currently calibrated via controlled experimentation. For more details please refer to What is ACQUA?

Feedback

Why?

In order to extend our application and support more predictions we need data. Support for crowdsourcing is a central part of ACQUA. It has been therefore integrated in our application to extend it.

How?

Quality of Experience (QoE) feedback can be provided anytime by users, i.e., you can rate how you application behaves to improve our models. We will match the current network conditions to your rating to improve or create new models!

Quickstart

Here is a simple guide of how the functionalities of ACQUA appear in the application.

UI and Navigation

[ACQUA’s home screen]

 

QoE predictions

The Quality of Experience (QoE) is represented by the standard MOS scale (ranging from 1 to 5).

The following meter shows how each quality level is represented in the home view (worst to best):

This meter is common to each application supported by our application.

The rating is relative to the normal application behaviour:

  1. nothing works, the application is not usable at all due to the lack of connectivity (e.g., cannot load anything). The usability is completely compromised and the application cannot be used at all;
  2. bad usability, the application works with major disruption (e.g., frequent communication errors, non-tolerable delays are experienced). The usability of the application is seriously compromised and frustrating;
  3. average usability, the application is usable with clear but tolerable delays (e.g., long buffering before playing a video). The usability is acceptable but a bit frustrating.
  4. good usability, the application suffer of minor issues (e.g., slightly long delays, video interrupts for a few seconds). The usability is fine and not frustrating, only slightly less fluid than in perfect conditions.
  5. perfect usability, the network didn’t affect the expected usage of the application (e.g., smooth playback of a video). The application works at its best.

Feedback

Step 1. The Contribution button.

Feedback can be provided to rate the behaviour of an application at any time by tapping the Contribution button.

[Starting a Contribution]

You can also start a contribution by pressing the same button in a QoE tab. This will skip the step 2. as the contribution will refer to the application showed in that tab.

Step 2. Application selection.

You can rate applications that are not yet supported in the predictions.

[Selecting an Application]

Step 3. Rating.

Finally we can rate our experience. The rating follows a standard (MOS) ranging from 1 (worst) to 5 (best). Each value corresponds to the one shown in the predictions (see QoE predictions).

Specific aspects of an application can be rated (e.g., search a content, upload an image, make a video call).

NOTE: the provided rating (on a 1 to 5 scale) must be relative to the normal application behaviour:

  1. nothing works, the application is not usable at all due to the lack of connectivity (e.g., cannot load anything). The usability is completely compromised and the application cannot be used at all;
  2. bad usability, the application works with major disruption (e.g., frequent communication errors, non-tolerable delays are experienced). The usability of the application is seriously compromised and frustrating;
  3. average usability, the application is usable with clear but tolerable delays (e.g., long buffering before playing a video). The usability is acceptable but a bit frustrating.
  4. good usability, the application suffer of minor issues (e.g., slightly long delays, video interrupts for a few seconds). The usability is fine and not frustrating, only slightly less fluid than in perfect conditions.
  5. perfect usability, the network didn’t affect the expected usage of the application (e.g., smooth playback of a video). The application works at its best.

[Rating and Submitting a feedback]

Setting and Customisation

The home screen can be customised by adding / removing tabs in the home screen.

To add a tab simply press the + icon and add the tab from the list.

To remove a tab slide it to the right or left of the screen.

To modify the order of the tabs simply drag and drop them (some mobile-specific bugs have to be fixed).

[Example of Customisation of the Home Screen]

FAQ

  • What about my privacy?
    ACQUA does not collect any personal information without your consent; you can find more details in our Privacy Policy.
  • Which data do you collect?
    We collect only network measurements (RTT, Jitter, Throughput and Losses), the QoE predictions and your feedback. All those data are related by an unique ID of the installation (reinstalling the ACQUA will create a new ID completely unrelated with the previous one).
  • How are performed the measurements?
    We perform active measurements, sending probes to a landmark server in INRIA. Measurements are therefore more precise in Europe at this stage.
  • How to interpret the QoE values?
    The rating is relative to the normal application behaviour:

    1. nothing works, the application is not usable at all due to the lack of connectivity (e.g., cannot load anything). The usability is completely compromised and the application cannot be used at all;
    2. bad usability, the application works with major disruption (e.g., frequent communication errors, non-tolerable delays are experienced). The usability of the application is seriously compromised and frustrating;
    3. average usability, the application is usable with clear but tolerable delays (e.g., long buffering before playing a video). The usability is acceptable but a bit frustrating.
    4. good usability, the application suffer of minor issues (e.g., slightly long delays, video interrupts for a few seconds). The usability is fine and not frustrating, only slightly less fluid than in perfect conditions.
    5. perfect usability, the network didn’t affect the expected usage of the application (e.g., smooth playback of a video). The application works at its best.
  • Can I change the frequency of the measurements?
    Open Settings in the menu and select a different measurement period (default 1 minute).
  • Can I stop the measurements?
    Open Settings in the menu and press the pause symbol (button in the bottom right corner), to reactivate the measurements press again on it.
  • Are there limitations in the precision of the measurements?
    The throughput measurements are, at the moment, limited to up to 20Mbps. ACQUA is not adapted to estimate the maximum network speed of your network. This limit has been set for technical reason and is meaningful as at the moment we don’t target applications that demands more bandwidth.
  • Under which license the software is distributed?
    ACQUA beta is released under this License

 

Contacts

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