Smart control panel: Developing conventional domestic infrastructures into ambient media

In this paper, we present novel development of domestic central heating control panel from conventional wall-mounted device to ambient media. We perform cycles of designs and evaluations in order to refine the understanding of the new media. Based on that we investigate potential methodologies to develop conventional devices into ambient media and, explore types of massages which may be provided by new ambient media

Designing intelligent domestic applications using wizard of oz methodology

In this paper we consider how ‘smartness’ should be designed to enhance the communication in the home. We aim to evoke a rethinking of how smart technologies should be embedded in perspectives of user needs. Through a set of experimental studies, which employ a Wizard of Oz (WoZ) as design and evaluation methodology, we observe and analyse user interactions accordingly with the wizard’s simulations. Based on experiment results, our argument is, designing smartness for communication in the home should not heavily rely on invisibly distributed sensors and networks due to interaction design misunderstandings that a large number of sensors and networks can make ambient intelligence with few user understandings. The results also argue that, smartness can be realised by first improving the integration of personal information into the environments, which is closely relevant to social routines

Designing interfaces to visualise domestic communication patterns

In this paper we propose an approach to visualise the domestic communication patterns by designing domestic interfaces. We conduct a review of literatures on the development of interaction interfaces including the design and evaluation methods, the communication patterns in the home, and the design methods for domestic infrastructures. Following an analysis of current design approaches and interface design and evaluation, we draw some implications from a practical consumption behaviour research; a study designed an unconventional control panel interface. And the evaluation results of the study provided us an illustration of new interface effectiveness by novel design approach. The study of interface design approach indicates that the pattern visualisation stretches insights into the design and understanding for domestic communicational patterns

Designing intelligent domestic applications using wizard of oz methodology

In this paper we consider how ‘smartness’ should be designed to enhance the communication in the home. We aim to evoke a rethinking of how smart technologies should be embedded in perspectives of user needs. Through a set of experimental studies, which employ a Wizard of Oz (WoZ) as design and evaluation methodology, we observe and analyse user interactions accordingly with the wizard’s simulations. Based on experiment results, our argument is, designing smartness for communication in the home should not heavily rely on invisibly distributed sensors and networks due to interaction design misunderstandings that a large number of sensors and networks can make ambient intelligence with few user understandings. The results also argue that, smartness can be realised by first improving the integration of personal information into the environments, which is closely relevant to social routines

Improving control panel consistency of wizard of oz design and evaluation studies

This paper investigates how a Wizard of Oz (WoZ) control panel could be developed to improve ‘between-subject’ consistency. To achieve this we conducted a comparative study of two control panels. Both control panels were used by the experimenter to ostensibly facilitate the design and evaluation of a novel domestic planning application allowing members of a family to coordinate a range of social arrangements and tasks. Based on video analysis and semi-formal interviews, the control panels as reliable design and evaluation tools were assessed. Results suggested that the component-separated control panel could obviously improve operational effectiveness thus enhancing system consistency

Designing and evaluating smart domestic technologies which use infrequent interaction

In the last decade research into ubiquitous computing has begun to examine the home environment both commercially and academically such as MIT, Samsung and Microsoft [Taylor et al 2007] although, as yet, smart homes have yet to move into significant reality [Davidoff et al, 2006b] due to old housing stock [Edwards & Grinter, 2001] which will require these new technologies to be integrated into a wide variety of legacy environments [Tolmi, 2007]. One of the reasons why the home has become important is simply due to the number of household computer-based systems available [Wray, 2007] making it a commercially valid exercise [Hindus, 1999] todate this has been primarily driven by technical innovation with user needs considered as a secondary issue [Hemmings et al. 2002; Haines et al. 2007]. However, domestic situations do not have the same focus on efficiency nor the same sense of shared objective as found in the workplace [Crabtree & Rodden, 2004] and must therefore be addressed differently to identify suitable technological solutions and social needs. Designers must understand routines, functions and social restraints within the home [Bernhaupt et al. 2008, Edwards & Grinter, 2001], in both the development of product concept [Gaver et al. 1999, Davidoff et al. 2006b] and the physical integration [Haines et al. 2006, Crabtree & Rodden 2004] to deliver useful and marketable domestic technologies. Many of the products used and proposed in these studies above place little emphasis on the potential frequency of their real-world use and how this might relate to behaviour and acceptance; therefore, in this study, we have begun to investigate whether or not intermittent use requires special attention in the design and evaluation process and whether this can be successfully anticipated and measured within a controlled laboratory environment

Improving prototype consistence for wizard-of-oz simulations and evaluations

In this paper we describe a study of the technique of Wizard of Oz (WoZ) in perspectives of maintaining the simulation consistence for domestic communication evaluations. This study employs evaluation methodologies such like heuristic evaluations and video analysis to compare and review the consistence during WoZ experiments. In specific, we address this consistence study through rapid prototype designs and iterative evaluations. Series of prototypes were developed based on our domestic communication platform and these prototype features were compared across iterative evaluations. The consequences of our prototype development and experimental evaluations show that the role of the wizard is vital to the effectiveness of WoZ studies, and variables which relate to the wizard’s operations such like personal preferences and interaction paces need to be carefully addressed to improve the consistence of system simulations. The conclusions of this study are based on comparisons of different control panel designs for the wizard, which indicate that simulation consistence can be augmented through interfaces with specific flexibility and customisations

Enhancing domestic communications through human-like social intelligence designs

In this paper we describe a study of the concept of social intelligence in perspectives of developing a communication agent within domestic scenarios. The study employs a methodology which is called Wizard of Oz (WoZ) to investigate the effectiveness of building up relationships between people through the intelligent communication agent as well as to understand designs and evaluations of such system with some social intelligence. Since designing intelligent systems with human-likeness progresses slowly under current technology conditions, we adopt the WoZ methodology to simulate complementary components of the system. From experiment observations and metadata analysis, our results show that designing a communication agent with social intelligence can rapidly build up relationships between people even those of strangers, and this also enhances people’s intentions of further engagements which may trigger some social behaviour in relation to communications such like sharing some feelings of using the system