Comments on the Compendium

II:1

The area of focus of this paper is on “Calm Technology”, which forms part of the Ubiquitous Computing era. This concept of calmness implies that while we have computers everywhere around us, they should be design in such a way so that the people being shared by the computers remain serene and in control. The authors argues that the way technology can be calming is by the way it engages our attention. Calm technology engages both the center and periphery of our attention and moves back and forth between the two. The author defines periphery as to things that we are attuned to without to attending to explicitly. A technology may enhance the peripheral reach by bringing more details in the periphery. Calm technology could definitely play a big part while designing new technologies due to the large amount of information that would be flowing. This would enable us be more attuned to this information inflow but attend to it less, so that we can do more in the real world.

II:2

As domestic technology becomes more integrated and more complex, there is a need for better understanding this “new usability”. The users should be able to explore the different facets of the technology without much difficulty but the present usability engineering methods provide little support in understanding how use develops from first meeting with the whole product. For the authors, the answer lies in the activity theory, which emphasizes that the context of use is central to understanding technology. Usability is becoming a central issue in design of a vast range of technologies and some businesses are struggling with some demanding usability techniques. Traditional approaches of ensuring usability such as laboratory-based usability testing is being quite obsolete. The new usability challenge is how to quickly respond to emerging technologies and applications. Usability engineering and usability tests need to be more calibrated so that they can allow the creation of highly usable technologies.
II:3

This paper discusses the concept of Ubiquitous Computing and its three main interaction themes which are: natural interfaces, context-aware applications and automated capture and access. The concept natural interface is a very important one since it is through interfaces that users interact with a technology. Interaction through voice has been tried previously but has been found to hard to implement. Context-aware computing is equally essential since it incorporates knowledge about time, history, location with who the users are and how/why they will be using it. Ubiquitous applications also strive to automate the capture of live experiences and provide universal access to those experiences later on. Also discussed in the paper is the concept of “everyday computing” which results from considering the consequences of scaling ubiquitous computing with respect to time.


II:4

This paper describes the many differences that exist in the ways of computation between a human being and a computer. While a human being makes decisions based on experience, situation and the computers follow a set of codes and algorithms. For a best performance, there needs to be a proper interaction between humans and computer. Also for a good interactive experience, the computer should provide a level of usability that is multidimensional and which has a wide of complexity which can be used by both beginners and experts. This interaction is determined by the designers and he can make it as he wants it to be.

II:5


In this paper the authors discuss the study of a new media for interpersonal communication. The effect of light is used as a means of communication. The authors called their area of research as telematic emotional communication. The project that they carried out investigated inter family communication as well. The approach used was a design driven approach where the first step was Observation on normal users as an ethnographic study. Situational scenarios were then used to detect any patterns among the users. Afterwards prototypes were developed by exploring the interaction while communicating with the artifact. While interacting with the artifact users wrote down their feelings and experiences in a logbook. This kind of study can be important while developing technologies for the household so that a better product can be developed.

II:6

The authors of this paper discuss the research made on the emerging mobile computing tools on the urban landscape which are called Urban Atmospheres. The research challenge is to understand how the fabric of digital and wireless computing would influence, disrupt, expand and be integrated into social patters within the public urban landscapes. Use of urban probes is the methodology used for exploring the computation in the urban environment. These probes exploit methods of deep observation together with experimentation and concrete interventions in urbanism. The authors conducted an experiment, using a trashcan as a probe to explore themes in a small urban microcosm. Their goal was to reveal the patters of usage and flows surrounding trash and trashcans in the city, challenge assumptions about the use of trashcans and gain qualitative insights into urban trash and its connection to everyday stories of people and place. The results from the Urban probes methodology were used to influence the design of a functional urban artifact.