Assembling the Ubiquitous Home

1
Assembling the Ubiquitous Home

• Between the dazzle of a new building and its
  eventual corpse lies the unappreciated,
  undocumented, awkward-seeming time when it was
  alive to evolution those are the best years,
  the time when the building can engage us at our
  own level of complexity.
• Stewart Brand How Buildings Learn, Viking 1994

• Overview
• Rationale exploiting architectural models to
  inform ubiquitous computing
• Ethnographic study of spatial dynamics of
  interaction
• Developing a component model and jigsaw editor to
  support the dynamics of interaction
• Elaborating interaction mechanisms that support
  the assembly of ubiquitous computing in the home
  with potential end-users

2
The Six Ss

• An evolutionary model of the home
• Site where the home is situated
• Structure the architectural skeleton of the
  building
• Skin the cladding of the building (stone, brick,
  wood, etc.)
• Services water, electricity, waste, etc.
• Space-plan the interior layout of the home
  (including walls, doors, cupboards, shelves,
  etc.)
• Stuff mobilia or artefacts that are located
  within the space-plan

3
Understanding the Interplay between the
Space-plan and Stuff

• The unappreciated, undocumented, awkward-seeming
  time when the building engages us at our own
  level of complexity
• Relevance to design ubiquitous computing devices
  will be situated within the Space-plan and Stuff
  of the home
• Understanding interplay in terms of the missing
  what of the architectural model social
  interaction
• Interaction the dynamic that shapes the home and
  provides for its evolution
• Developing ubiquitous computing for the home may
  be usefully informed by considering the interplay
  between the two from the point of view of
  interaction

4
Making the Interplay Visible

• Ethnographic studies
• A range of studies conducted in the UK as part of
  the completed ACCORD project and the ongoing
  EQUATOR project (http//machen.mrl.nott.ac.uk/home
  .html)
• Reported in design literature (CHI 02, DIS 02,
  HOIT 03, CSCW 03, UbiComp 03, ECSCW 03, JCSCW
  next issue)
• Studies show how and in what ways space-plan and
  stuff are organizational features of interaction
• Of particular note,
• Ecological habitats
• Activity centres
• Coordinate displays

5
The Functional Character of the Space-plan

• Different spatial sites assume different
  functions at different times

6
Stuff and the Reflexive Production of the
Space-plan

• Bricolage assembly and manipulation of stuff at
  functional sites

7
The Interplay between Space-plan and Stuff

• Placement and assembly
• Requirements for ubiquitous computing
• Piecemeal migration (Edwards Grinter 2001)
• Developing support for the real-time dynamics of
  interaction
• Configuration and reconfiguration assembling and
  manipulating the bricolage
• Making ubiquitous computing part of the everyday
  stuff of the home (Tolmie et al. CHI 2003)

8
Supporting the Dynamics of Interaction

• Configuring ubiquitous stuff
• A compositional approach
• Physical to digital transformers
• Digital to physical transformers
• Digital transformers
• A basic interaction mechanism
• The jigsaw editor

9
Elaborating the Design Space

• Learning from potential end-users
• To understand the intuitive availability and
  efficacy of the jigsaw-based approach from
  inhabitants point of view.
• To uncover inhabitants understanding of
  abstraction in order that we might keep the level
  of complexity with in reach of their practical
  reasoning.
• To develop insights into what sorts of devices
  might fit into real home environments and so
  inform continued development of new devices and
  components.

10
Working with Potential End-users

• Cooperative Analysis of the Design Space
• Paper-based mock-ups and seed scenarios as
  triggers for cooperative analysis (Ehn Kyng
  1991)
• Married with situated evaluation (Twidale et al.
  1994)
• 3 criteria of analysis (Mogensen 1994)
• Seeing the sense of the technology
• Recognizing the relevance of the technology
• Appropriation of the technology

11
Outcomes

• Inspiring Design
• Veracity of underlying design concepts and
  interaction mechanism
• Future projections
• Elaborating design space in context of everyday
  life
• Not requirements but a grounded form of
  inspiration for design

12
Responding to User Projections

• Developing new devices, components and
  applications

13
Reflections

• Broader lessons
• Inhabitants as designers and developers
• Reasoning with diverse elements
• Interleaving the new and the old
• Linking outside the home
• Future work

14
Assembling the Ubiquitous Home

• Conclusion
• Exploiting architectural model to support design
  of ubiquitous computing for the home
• Using ethnography to investigate the interplay
  between space-plan and stuff
• Designing for dynamics of interaction
• Developing a component model and jigsaw editor
• Elaborating through user participation