Supporting Device Discovery and Spontaneous Interaction with Spatial References

The RELATE interaction model is designed to support spontaneous interaction of mobile users with devices and services in their environment. The model is based on spatial references that capture the spatial relationship of a user’s device with other co-located devices. Spatial references are obtained by relative position sensing and integrated in the mobile user interface to spatially visualize the arrangement of discovered devices, and to provide direct access for interaction across devices. In this paper we discuss two prototype systems demonstrating the utility of the model in collaborative and mobile settings, and present a study on usability of spatial list and map representations for device selection

Mobility is the Message: Experiments with Mobile Media Sharing

This thesis explores new mobile media sharing applications by building, deploying, and studying their use. While we share media in many different ways both on the web and on mobile phones, there are few ways of sharing media with people physically near us. Studied were three designed and built systems: Push!Music, Columbus, and Portrait Catalog, as well as a fourth commercially available system – Foursquare. This thesis offers four contributions: First, it explores the design space of co-present media sharing of four test systems. Second, through user studies of these systems it reports on how these come to be used. Third, it explores new ways of conducting trials as the technical mobile landscape has changed. Last, we look at how the technical solutions demonstrate different lines of thinking from how similar solutions might look today. Through a Human-Computer Interaction methodology of design, build, and study, we look at systems through the eyes of embodied interaction and examine how the systems come to be in use. Using Goffman’s understanding of social order, we see how these mobile media sharing systems allow people to actively present themselves through these media. In turn, using McLuhan’s way of understanding media, we reflect on how these new systems enable a new type of medium distinct from the web centric media, and how this relates directly to mobility. While media sharing is something that takes place everywhere in western society, it is still tied to the way media is shared through computers. Although often mobile, they do not consider the mobile settings. The systems in this thesis treat mobility as an opportunity for design. It is still left to see how this mobile media sharing will come to present itself in people’s everyday life, and when it does, how we will come to understand it and how it will transform society as a medium distinct from those before. This thesis gives a glimpse at what this future will look like

Contextual mobile adaptation

Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) involves systems that attempt to fit in with users’ context and interaction. Researchers agree that system adaptation is a key issue in ubicomp because it can be hard to predict changes in contexts, needs and uses. Even with the best planning, it is impossible to foresee all uses of software at the design stage. In order for software to continue to be helpful and appropriate it should, ideally, be as dynamic as the environment in which it operates. Changes in user requirements, contexts of use and system resources mean software should also adapt to better support these changes. An area in which adaptation is clearly lacking is in ubicomp systems, especially those designed for mobile devices. By improving techniques and infrastructure to support adaptation it is possible for ubicomp systems to not only sense and adapt to the environments they are running in, but also retrieve and install new functionality so as to better support the dynamic context and needs of users in such environments. Dynamic adaptation of software refers to the act of changing the structure of some part of a software system as it executes, without stopping or restarting it. One of the core goals of this thesis is to discover if such adaptation is feasible, useful and appropriate in the mobile environment, and how designers can create more adaptive and flexible ubicomp systems and associated user experiences. Through a detailed study of existing literature and experience of several early systems, this thesis presents design issues and requirements for adaptive ubicomp systems. This thesis presents the Domino framework, and demonstrates that a mobile collaborative software adaptation framework is achievable. This system can recommend future adaptations based on a history of use. The framework demonstrates that wireless network connections between mobile devices can be used to transport usage logs and software components, with such connections made either in chance encounters or in designed multi–user interactions. Another aim of the thesis is to discover if users can comprehend and smoothly interact with systems that are adapting. To evaluate Domino, a multiplayer game called Castles has been developed, in which game buildings are in fact software modules that are recommended and transferred between players. This evaluation showed that people are comfortable receiving semi–automated software recommendations; these complement traditional recommendation methods such as word of mouth and online forums, with the system’s support freeing users to discuss more in–depth aspects of the system, such as tactics and strategies for use, rather than forcing them to discover, acquire and integrate software by themselves

Ubiquitous Computing

The aim of this book is to give a treatment of the actively developed domain of Ubiquitous computing. Originally proposed by Mark D. Weiser, the concept of Ubiquitous computing enables a real-time global sensing, context-aware informational retrieval, multi-modal interaction with the user and enhanced visualization capabilities. In effect, Ubiquitous computing environments give extremely new and futuristic abilities to look at and interact with our habitat at any time and from anywhere. In that domain, researchers are confronted with many foundational, technological and engineering issues which were not known before. Detailed cross-disciplinary coverage of these issues is really needed today for further progress and widening of application range. This book collects twelve original works of researchers from eleven countries, which are clustered into four sections: Foundations, Security and Privacy, Integration and Middleware, Practical Applications

Making ubicomp acceptable in the home

This thesis is concerned with the uses of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technologies in everyday domestic settings. In contrast to goal-oriented technology adoption (e.g. in the workplace), the integration of pervasive technology in the home faces not only social but also physical and technical constraints. We propose a design framework for the introduction of ubicomp technology into today’s homes that, firstly, considers a holistic approach to integrating pervasive technology; secondly, takes into account social factors and domestic activity when defining the nature of the system’s interaction; and thirdly, allows the user to adapt the system’s interaction and collaboration. Most of the work to date on domestic ubicomp takes the customization of domestic spaces for granted, presuming that the integration of sensing technologies can be accomplished to any required degree and usually assuming that context-aware systems have to be proactive, limiting users to the role of consumers of the system’s actions rather than allowing them a more participative or cooperative role. We have applied our framework to design a domestic ubicomp system to support parents with childcare in the home. The “Context-Aware Room” and the “The Parent-Child Companion Tool” prototypes are built to take account of the interaction between the social and physical and the social and digital contexts in order to address issues of integration of sensing technology, socially respectful collaboration and system adaptation. Two studies explore the potential social acceptance of the PChCT. The panel study considers parents’ overall perceptions of whether these kinds of ubicomp tools might help with parental tasks. The usability study considers the usefulness and usability of the PChCT. The results of the study reflect a positive attitude to the PChCT. Parents liked the collaborative resources and facilities to tailor collaboration. Further work might be done to assess how the system’s adaptation might fit within a wider context of user needs. Nevertheless, we argue that the use of our framework can lead to more socially acceptable ubicomp experiences in the home

Supporting Location Privacy Management through Feedback and Control

Participation in modern, socially-focused digital systems involves a large degree of privacy management, i.e. controlling who may access what information under what circumstances. Effective privacy management (control) requires that mobile systems’ users be able to make informed privacy decisions as their experience and knowledge of a system progresses. By informed, we mean users be aware of the actual information flow. Moreover, privacy preferences vary across the context and it is hard to define privacy policy that reflects the dynamic nature of our lives. This research explores the problem of supporting awareness of information flow and designing usable interfaces for maintaining privacy policies ad-hoc. We borrow from the world of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and propose to incorporate social translucence, a design approach that “supports coherent behaviour by making participants and their activities visible to one another”. We use the characteristics of social translucence, namely visibility, awareness and accountability in order to introduce social norms in spatially dispersed systems. Our research is driven by two questions: (1) how can artifacts from real world social interaction, such as responsibility, be embedded into mobile interaction; and (2) can systems be designed in which both privacy violations and the burden of privacy management is minimized. The contributions of our work are: (1) an implementation of Buddy Tracker, privacy-aware location-sharing application based on the social translucence; (2) the design and evaluation of the concept of real-time feedback as a means of incorporating social translucence in location-sharing scenarios; and finally (3) a novel interface for ad-hoc privacy management called Privacy-Shake. We explore the role of real-time feedback for privacy management in the context of Buddy Tracker. Informed by focus group discussions, interviews, surveys and two field trials of Buddy Tracker we found that when using a system that provided real-time feedback, people were more accountable for their actions and reduced the number of unreasonable location requests. From our observations we develop concrete design guidelines for incorporating real-time feedback into information sharing applications in a manner that ensures social acceptance of the technology

Futures in the making: Practices to anticipate 'ubiquitous computing'

Kinsley, S. 2012, The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning A, 2012, Vol. 44, Issue 7, pp. 1554 – 1569 doi:10.1068/a45168. This a post-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Environment and Planning A. Copyright © 2012 PionThis paper addresses the discourse for a proactive thinking of futurity, intimately concerned with technology, which comes to an influential fruition in the discussion and representation of ‘ubiquitous computing’. The imagination, proposal, or playing out of ubiquitous computing environments are bound up with particular ways of constructing futurity. This paper charts the techniques used in ubiquitous computing development to negotiate that futurity. In so doing, it engages with recent geographical debates around anticipation and futurity. The discussion accordingly proceeds in four parts. First, the spatial imagination engendered by the development of ubiquitous computing is explored. Second, particular techniques in ubiquitous computing research and development for anticipating future technology use, and their limits, are discussed through empirical findings. Third, anticipatory knowledge is explored as the basis for stable means of future orientation, which both generates and derives from the techniques for anticipating futures. Fourth, the importance of studying future orientation is situated in relation to the somewhat contradictory nature of anticipatory knowledges of ubicomp and related forms of spatial imagination

Automatic detection of accommodation steps as an indicator of knowledge maturing

Jointly working on shared digital artifacts – such as wikis – is a well-tried method of developing knowledge collectively within a group or organization. Our assumption is that such knowledge maturing is an accommodation process that can be measured by taking the writing process itself into account. This paper describes the development of a tool that detects accommodation automatically with the help of machine learning algorithms. We applied a software framework for task detection to the automatic identification of accommodation processes within a wiki. To set up the learning algorithms and test its performance, we conducted an empirical study, in which participants had to contribute to a wiki and, at the same time, identify their own tasks. Two domain experts evaluated the participants’ micro-tasks with regard to accommodation. We then applied an ontology-based task detection approach that identified accommodation with a rate of 79.12%. The potential use of our tool for measuring knowledge maturing online is discussed