Direct end-user interaction with and through IoT devices

Research addressing the Internet of Things (IoT) has been predominantly concerned with the interconnection of physical devices. However, increasingly complex application scenarios require us to further investigate the interface between IoT devices and users. In this book chapter, we explore the possibilities of direct end-user interaction with and through IoT devices. We do this by examining the increasing automation of environmental factors, such as temperature and lighting, in open-office environments. Increasing automation offers many benefits around responsiveness of buildings to environmental conditions and improved energy efficiency, but can result in a reduction in office inhabitants’ options for manual control of their environment. To inquire into this issue, we designed and evaluated an IoT device called the MiniOrb. The device employs tangible and ambient interaction and feedback mechanisms to support office environment inhabitants in maintaining awareness about environmental conditions. It reports on their subjective perceptions and opinions around comfort levels in the office and receives feedback on how their individual preferences compare with their colleagues’. A mobile-device-based version of the application was also created. Employing screen and touch interactions, this version of the interface enables users to access the same information as the tangible device, but with different degrees of input precision and ambient interaction. We describe the design of the system along with the results of a trial of the device with real users, including a post-trial interview. The results shed light on how IoT devices can support direct end-user interaction by combining ambient and tangible interaction approaches. Such devices can mediate the interpretation of sensed data by end-users, as well as help collect crowd-sourced data that directly relate to sensed data