My Short Paper on Literature Seminar 2

II:1 introduces the concept of calm technology that engages both the “center” and the “periphery” of our attention, and in fact moves easily back and forth between the two, and this is encalming. According to II:1 calm technology does have the advantages of :

• enriching our space of artifacts;
• enriching our opportunities for being with other people;
• playing a central role in a more humanly empowered twenty-first century.

As an interaction designer, by studying II:1, I learn to design a product which engages both the “center” and the “periphery” of our attention and moves back and forth between the two, to achieve an enriched sense of locatedness. The other important point is that the way to become attuned to more information is to attend to it less.

Criticizing the traditional usability engineering and testing, II:2 introduces to the concept of “new usability”. II:2 argues that established methodologies are ill-suited to the context of emerging interactive products, and the business context in which they will be developed and applied to the market. II:2 particularly questions the effectiveness of laboratory-based usability testing approaches in the new context. Based on II:2, the “new usability” challenge is how to respond quickly to emerging technologies and applications and the following questions lie at the heart of the “new usability” research agenda:

• What is the role of usability testing and its relationship to usability inspections and enquiries in usability engineering methodologies and tools that can be applied that can be applied successfully to emerging interactive products?
• What new usability engineering and testing methodologies are required for the new context?

II:3 seeks to summarize the past trends in ubiquities computing (ubicomp) and outlines remaining challenges in the three themes of “natural interfaces”, “context-aware applications”, and “automated capture and access” by providing some interesting samples. II:3 also points to the undertaking issues of “scale”, which is implicit in the definition of ubicomp research: computational devices, physical space, people, time are mentioned as dimensions of scaling.

II:3 describes “everyday computing” as an emerging area of interaction research and addresses some required features of informal, daily activities, e.g. “interruption is expected”, …

Then, II:3 focuses on four challenges of research in everyday computing. Finally, II:3 addresses two important topics for ubicomp research: evaluation and social implication.

To me, this paper is the most helpful and thoughtful paper in this collection.

II:4 (The Invisible Computer) begins with a good sentence: “we are analog beings trapped in a digital world, and the worst part is, we did to ourselves”. By this introduction, II:4 provides some comparisons between humans and computers and between biological and technological evolution, and emphasizing the ever-increasing pace of change, points to the issues raised by treating people like machines. Finally, II:4 offers humans and computers as cooperating systems. The style of writing of this paper is interesting for me.

II:5 presents an ethnographic study of family communication and the role of new media in supporting emotional closeness. I learned a lot from the method used in this study, especially the way it considers and interprets the personal objects and family communication. This kind of study has enabled II:5 to get a better understanding of communication patterns and the use of communication technology in domestic life. The three prototypes developed in II:5 (lumicard, tree-lamp, 6^th sense) are good and interesting ideas, but the discussion provided at the end of paper requires more elaboration.

The last paper, II:6 has helpful points for interaction designers from urban planning perspective. II:6 argues that it is time to start inspirational research into the nature of newly emerging technological urban spaces. At the intersection of mobile and social computing, II:6 motivates a discussion about research on understanding this emerging space of computing within and across our public urban landscapes, “Urban Atmosphere”. This research could address four urban sub-themes: Place, Community, Infrastructure, and Traversal. II:6 offers Urban Probe as a “lightweight, provocative, intervention, methodology designed to rapidly deconstruct urban situations, reveal new opportunities for technology in urban spaces, and guide future long term research in urban computing“.

References:

II-1: Weiser, M & Seely Brown, J (1996): The coming age of calm technology. Working Paper, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, pp 1-7

II-2: Thomas, P & Macredie, R (2002): Introduction to the New Usability. ACM transactions on CHI, vol 9, no 2, June 2002, pp 69-73

II-3: Abowd, G.D & Mynatt, E.D (2000): Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing. ACM Transactions on HCI, vol 7, no 1, March 2002, pp 29-58

II-4: Norman, D.A (1998): The Invisible Computer, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, excerpt from the book (chapter 7)

II-5: Tollmar, K & Persson, J (2002): Understanding Remote Presence. In Proceedings of Nordic CHI 2002.

II-6: Paulos, E & Jenkins, T (2005): Urban Probes: Encountering Our Emerging Urban Atmospheres. In Proceedings of CHI 2005, Portland, April 2005, pp 341-350