Ubiquitous Computing

Computers everywhere

Thursday: presentations

UCook Team NoName Save the Best for Last Food Networking

Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp)

Move beyond desktop machine

Computing is embedded everywhere in the environment

A new paradigm??– “everyware”, “off the desktop”, “out of the box”, pervasive,

invisible, wearable, calm, anytime/anywhere/any place, …

Ubicomp Notions

Computing capabilities, any time, any place

“Invisible” resources

Machines sense users’ presence and act accordingly

Marc Weiser: The father of ubicomp

Chief Technologist Xerox PARC

Began Ubiquitous Computing Project in 1988

1991 Scientific American article got the ball rolling

http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html

Not an interface problem?

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear”

HCI: new focus on unobtrusiveness, invisibility– How do we make technology “vanish”?

Videos

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/corporate/future/hokusai/index.html

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/corporate/future/mobilelife/index.html

What interfaces did you see? How did users interact? What do you think of this vision?

Ubicomp is ...

Related to:– mobile computing– wearable computing– augmented reality

In contrast with:– virtual reality (augmented virtuality)

HCI Themes in Ubicomp

Some of the themes: Natural interaction Context-aware computing Automated capture and access Everyday computing

Natural Interaction

How do input and output change?– Different form factors, more devices

Input– Towards implicit information– Feeds context-aware computing (later)

Output– Towards distributed, peripheral and ambient

displays

Natural / implicit input

Integrate into human life

Pen inputGestureSpeechPerceptual UITangible UI

http://tangible.media.mit.edu/

Device scales

Inch– PDAs– Blackberry– Voice Recorders– smart phones

OQO

5.5”

3.1”

Device scales

Foot– notebooks– tablets– digital paper

Ultra mobile PC

Device scales

Yard– electronic whiteboards– plasma displays– smart bulletin boards

Another take on scales

Based on ownership and location

body desk room building

From the GMD Darmstadt web site on I-Land

Distributed Displays

The Everywhere Display Project at IBM

Microsoft Research Play Anywhere:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muibPAUvOXk&feature=related

Ambient Displays

The Information Percolator– http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~hudson/bubbles/

Ambient Orb– http://www.ambientdevices.com/

Peripheral Displays

Kimura

Digital Family Portrait

What is Context?

Any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity

Who, what, where, when

Why is it important?– information, usually implicit, that applications do

not have access to– It’s input that you don’t get in a GUI

Example: Location services

Outdoor– Global Positioning Satellites (GPS)– wireless/cellular networks

Indoor– active badges, electronic tags– vision– motion detectors, keyboard activity

How to Use Context

To present relevant information to someone– Mobile tour guide

To perform an action automatically– Print to nearest printer

To show an action that use can choose– Want to phone the number in this email?

Context-aware scenarios

Walk into room, lights, audio, etc. adjust to the presence of people

Communication between people (intercoms, phones, etc. ring to room with person)

Security, emergency calls based on people in the home

Monitor health, alert when needed

Automated capture and access

Use of computers to preserve records of the live experience for future use (Abowd & Mynatt 2000)

Points of consideration:– capture needs to be natural– user access is important– details of an experience is recorded as streams of

information

Capture & access applications

Compelling applications– Design records– Health care monitoring and therapies– Family memories

Annotations Fusion, indexing, summarization

Example: Personal Audio Loop

Designing for Everyday Activities

No clear beginning or end– Closure vs. flexibility and simplicity

Interruption is expected– Design for resumption

Concurrent activities– Monitoring for opportunity

Time is important discriminator– Interpret events

Associative models needed– Reacquire information from multiple pts of view

Technical Challenges

Connectivity – almost constant– How to gracefully handle changes?

Sensing– How to gather useful info? (i.e. location?)

Integration and analysis of data– How to recognize activity and recover when incorrect?– How to function at acceptable speeds?

Scale – both in information and size of displays

Challenge of Evaluation

Bleeding edge technology

Novelty

Unanticipated uses

Quantitative metrics

Variety of social implications/issues

Social issues

Privacy – who has access to data?

How do we make users aware of what technology is present?

Differing perspectives and opinions– Jane likes that the environment is aware she is

present, but John doesn’t…

Conclusions

Interfaces and interactions moving into the world

Real life interaction … noisy, erroneous Continuous interaction … time sensitive Design and evaluation get more complex

Now what? If you like this course…

ITIS 3150 (currently 3050) Rapid Prototyping and Interface Building

– Offered next fall by Dr. Latulipe Senior project or research

– If one isn’t listed, come talk to Dr. Latulipe or me Courses with HCI component: gaming, visualization,

software design Cognitive Science

– Minor: this course is one of the free electives– Paid Research Internship:

http://www.psych.uncc.edu/pagoolka/reu.html