Abstract

Evaluation has been suggested to be one of the main trends in current NIME research. However, the meaning of the term for the community may not be as clear as it seems. In order to explore this issue, we have analyzed all papers and posters published in the proceedings of the NIME conference from 2012 to 2014. For each publication that explicitly mentioned the term “evaluation”, we looked for: a) What targets and stakeholders were considered? b) What goals were set? c) What criteria were used? d) What methods were used? e) How long did the evaluation last? Results show different understandings of evaluation, with little consistency regarding the usage of the word. Surprisingly in some cases, not even basic information such as goal, criteria and methods were provided. In this paper, we attempt to provide an idea of what “evaluation” means for the NIME community, pushing the discussion towards how could we make a better use of evaluation on NIME design and what criteria should be used regarding each goal.