Designing for the Ubiquitous Computing era: towards the reinvention of everyday objects and the creation of new user experiences

Researchers of the Ubiquitous Computing community (Ubicomp) have been pursuing the vision of a world where technologies and services permeates every object of our lives for years. With components getting smaller, cheaper and more powerful, it has become possible to manufacture connected objects capable of interacting with resources of the World Wide Web. This opens up the possibility for researchers and practitioners to consider information as a design material and objects as platforms for services. By allowing users to personalize, complement or repurpose the functions of their objects, such services have a great impact on the way artifacts are designed. Designing for the Ubiquitous Era requires modifying our practice and reinforcing collaboration between disciplines at every steps of the creation process. In this article, we discuss the need to reinvent objects and to investigate the tools supporting the creation of rich services’ experiences

An IoT-based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings focusing on energy efficiency

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage iskey to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examinesways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both theusers (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizenś behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system's high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies andservices in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer newapp-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency ofthebuilding. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisionedhere (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity

Designing for justice in electricity systems: A comparison of smart grid experiments in the Netherlands

In future urban energy systems, smart grid systems will be crucial for the integration of renewable energy. However, their deployment has moral implications, for example regarding data privacy, user autonomy, or distribution of responsibilities. ‘Energy justice’ is one of the most comprehensive frameworks to address these implications, but remains limited regarding smart grids, and regarding concrete guidelines for designers and policymakers. In this paper, we fill this gap by answering the following research question: How do design choices in smart grid projects impact energy justice? Thereby, four smart grid pilot projects are evaluated in a comparative qualitative case study research design. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and a content analysis. Our findings contribute to the energy justice literature with insights regarding the design for distributive, recognition, and procedural justice. They underscore the importance of fairness in data governance, participatory design, user control and autonomy, technology inclusiveness, and the design for expansion and replication. Future research should explore the feasibility to govern smart grids as commons and the relationship between trust and perceptions of justice. We conclude with policy recommendations for funding future smart grid experiments and for facilitating the implementation of storage through electricity sector regulation

The Next Generation of Human-Drone Partnerships: Co-Designing an Emergency Response System

The use of semi-autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to support emergency response scenarios, such as fire surveillance and search and rescue, offers the potential for huge societal benefits. However, designing an effective solution in this complex domain represents a "wicked design" problem, requiring a careful balance between trade-offs associated with drone autonomy versus human control, mission functionality versus safety, and the diverse needs of different stakeholders. This paper focuses on designing for situational awareness (SA) using a scenario-driven, participatory design process. We developed SA cards describing six common design-problems, known as SA demons, and three new demons of importance to our domain. We then used these SA cards to equip domain experts with SA knowledge so that they could more fully engage in the design process. We designed a potentially reusable solution for achieving SA in multi-stakeholder, multi-UAV, emergency response applications.Comment: 10 Pages, 5 Figures, 2 Tables. This article is publishing in CHI202

Comparison of two approaches for web-based 3D visualization of smart building sensor data

Abstract. This thesis presents a comparative study on two different approaches for visualizing sensor data collected from smart buildings on the web using 3D virtual environments. The sensor data is provided by sensors that are deployed in real buildings to measure several environmental parameters including temperature, humidity, air quality and air pressure. The first approach uses the three.js WebGL framework to create the 3D model of a smart apartment where sensor data is illustrated with point and wall visualizations. Point visualizations show sensor values at the real locations of the sensors using text, icons or a mixture of the two. Wall visualizations display sensor values inside panels placed on the interior walls of the apartment. The second approach uses the Unity game engine to create the 3D model of a 4-floored hospice where sensor data is illustrated with aforementioned point visualizations and floor visualizations, where the sensor values are shown on the floor around the location of the sensors in form of color or other effects. The two approaches are compared with respect to their technical performance in terms of rendering speed, model size and request size, and with respect to the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two development environments as experienced in this thesis

Designing the user experience of a spatiotemporal automated home heating system: a holistic design and implementation process

This research explores technological interventions to reduce energy use in the domestic sector, a notable contributor to the global energy footprint. In the UK elevated challenges associated with renovating an outdated, poorly performing housing stock render a search for alternatives to provide immediate energy saving at low cost. To solve this problem, this thesis takes a holistic design approach to designing and implementing a spatiotemporal heating solution, and aims to investigate experiences of comfort, thermal comfort concepts for automated home heating, users’ interactions and experiences of living with such a system in context, and the underlying utility of quasi-autonomous spatiotemporal home heating. The mixed-methods research process was employed to explore and answer four questions: 1) what is the context within which these home heating interfaces are used, 2) to what extent can spatiotemporal automated heating minimise energy use while providing thermal comfort, 3) how are different heating strategies experienced by users, and 4) How do visibility of feedback, and intelligibility affect the user experience related to understanding and control? Ideation techniques were used to explore the context within which the designs are used with regard to all factors and actors in play and resulted in a conceptual model of the context to be used as a UX design brief. This developed model used mismatches between users’ expectations and reality to indicate potential thermal comfort behaviour actions and mapped the factors within the home context that affected these mismatches. Potential user inclusion through participatory design provided stakeholder insight and interface designs concepts to be developed into prototypes. The results of a prototype probe study using these prototypes showed that intelligibility should not be an interface design goal in itself, but rather fit in with broader UX design agenda regarding data levels, context specificity, and timescales. Increased autonomy in the system was shown not to directly diminish the experience of control, but rather, control or the lack of originated from an alignment of expectations and reality. A quasi-autonomous spatiotemporal heating system design (including a novel heating control algorithm) was coupled with the design of a smartphone interface and the resultant system was deployed in a low-technology solution demonstrating the potential for academic studies to explore such automated systems in-situ in the intended environment over a long period of time. Assessment of the novel control algorithm in an emulated environment demonstrated its fitness for purpose in reducing the amount of energy required to provide adequate levels of thermal comfort (by a factor of seven compared with EnergyStar recommended settings for programmable thermostats), and that these savings can be increased by including occupants’ thermal preference as a variable in the control algorithm. Field deployment of that algorithm in a low-tech sensor-based heating system assessed the user experience of the automated heating system and its mobile application-based control interface, as well as demonstrated the user thermal comfort experience of two different heating strategies. The results highlighted the potential to utilise the lower energy-use “minimise discomfort” strategy without compromising user thermal comfort in comparison to a “maximise comfort” strategy. Diverse heating system use behaviours were also identified and conceptualised alongside users’ experiences in line with the developed conceptual model. A rich picture analysis of all previous findings was utilised to provide a model of the design space for home automated heating systems, and was used to draw interface design guidelines for a broader range of home automation control interfaces. The work presented here served as important first steps in demonstrating the importance of assessing UX of automated home heating systems in situ over elongated periods of time. Novel contributions of (i) conceptual model of automated systems’ domestic context and thermal comfort behaviours within, (ii) nudging this behaviour by selecting a “minimise discomfort” heating strategy over “maximise comfort”, (iii) using UX to influence user expectations and subsequently energy behaviour, and (iv) inclusion of thermal preference in domestic heating control algorithm were all resultant of examining naturally occurring behaviours in their natural setting. As such, they are important exploratory discoveries and require replication, but provide new research directions that would allow reduction of domestic energy use without compromise

Interplayable surface: an exploration on augmented GUI that co-exists with physical environments

The main goal of this experiment-driven thesis is to envision and design an interactive GUI1(graphic user interface) that coexists with physical surfaces. Based on an understanding of user behavioral patterns for getting access to information in these types of situations, experimentations and prototypes are implemented and tested with participants. In particular, to observe the user behavioral pattern for augmented GUI within certain environments and circumstances, this thesis presents several types of participatory experimentations with physical GUIs. The experiment participants were encouraged to participate in re-creates and reorganizes physical GUI, relating to their own situational specificity or informational tendencies they have. Based on extracted insights from research and experiments, in the last phase, I propose two thesis models about how interactive GUI applies to a physical environment: simulation mock-ups for user scenarios of augmented GUI and interactive GUI surface combined with projection mapping. Related to people’s behavioral patterns on augmented GUI, the thesis models will show several types of information structures and interactions. Also, in framing the overall data structure and wireframe for the thesis product model, informative affordance corresponding with users’ situational specificity2 is considered as a crucial direction point, actualized on an artifact in a perceptible way. Through experimentally prototyping a thesis model, consequently, I would like to expand the speculative usability interactive GUI will feature in the near future

Interactive Demand Shifting in the context of Domestic Micro-Generation

The combination of ubiquitous computing and emerging energy technologies is radically changing the home energy landscape. Domestic micro-generation, dominated by solar photovoltaic, is increasing at a rapid pace. This represents an opportunity for creating and altering energy behaviours. However, these transformations generate new challenges that we call the domestic energy gap: domestic electricity consumption and microgeneration are out of sync. Micro-generation is mainly uncontrollable production relying on weather while domestic energy consumption tends to happen mostly during the evening. This thesis focuses on understanding and supporting new domestic practices in the context of domestic solar electricity generation, looking at ‘Demand-Shifting’. Specifically, we look at how can digital tools leverage Demand-Shifting practices in the context of domestic micro-generation? Relying on a mixed-method approach, we provide a qualitative and quantitative answer with the collaboration of 38 participating households in several field studies including two spanning more than eight months. Through a deep investigation of laundry and electric mobility routines in the context of domestic micro-generation, we emphasised a natural engagement into Demand-Shifting which appeared as a complex and time-consuming task for participants which was not visible when we analysed their quantitative data. We revealed this complexity through Participatory Data Analyses, a method we designed to analyse the data in collaboration with the participating householders. This provided us with a comprehensive view of the relationship between domestic micro-generation and daily routines. Finally, we highlight the need for timely and contextual support through the deployment of interventions in-the-wild. Building on discussions of our findings in perspective of the literature, we propose a conceptual framework to support domestic interactive Demand-Shifting