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April 25, 2007

Sweet Temptation however ... :)

"Smart home" is absolutely sweet temptation for me, my family, and most people.
Many people and companies talked and designed about smart home or intelligent home from a long time ago, but it did not spread widely. Why? This reason is from interaction problems between people and machine rather than economic problems.
I think “smart home” is not just separated high technology, on the other hands “smart home” is system with various technologies as mentioned Lynn's paper. “Smart home” is living creature to interact with human.
Actually, I have experience to visit a modeling house of smart home in South Korea.
When I entered front door of smart home, virtual secretary who is woman with beautiful voice say "Good morning, please scanning your eyes.” In spite of embarrass, I tried to scan my eye but I failed because I did not register in their DB. So Guide helps me to register my information. And then tried again, virtual secretary told me that “Hello, JungMin Shin.” The front door opened, and as soon as I moved to living room lights turned on and sweet music flowed out. Furthermore there were many kinds of great electronics, and it also had color-therapy system in bathroom. It was looks great but I felt that it was natural for me for example virtual secretary’s voice.
The interaction between me and smart home was not good because our interaction was just one way communication. They, smart home system, only have a limited interaction rules.
It needs customized as described the paper. The paper mentioned that home buyers of the future may design their own house. This is also great solution, but it did not focus on interaction between machine and human.
To tempt people perfectly or to be abandoned perfected from people...
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Malleable Technology

It seems what we practiced in and after class today could fall into the category of defamiliarization as Bell et al. point out: “The personal history section of the technology biography often elicited reflections on social practices and technologies that have now disappeared. This kind of reflection on the past often defamiliarized the present.” (p.158). One main concern in our discussion today was speed of technological adaptation and alienation when transitioning between different social spaces that practice different technological realizations. What I found useful among other things in Bell et al. is to read an engagement with technological practices from a timeline perspective as an interpretation of the existing and currently “natural” from a distanced view point. Personal stories seem particularly suitable for this practice; they not only engage in a certain joy for teller (and hopefully listener), but defamiliarize both on an individual and an collective level. Relating this to last week’s reading, we learned about two non-traditional ways of thinking how one might act through technology – last week from an artistic viewpoint, this week from a (radical?) ethnographic view point, both of course complementing each other.

In contrast, reading the paper on intimacy, we are confronted with a similar domain but a totally different argument. I was surprised by the approach the authors took to wrap “old” approaches of technology design for home and public as represented by smart home design, “female task” automation, autonomous agents, etc. in a nice package of malleable, playful, pleasurable thingies, pillows (not that we haven’t seen the pillow idea before ;). While the authors argue for design that engages in experimental intimacy (not just among users but among technology and users), for enjoyment, play and self-awareness, the pillow design embodies almost the opposite.
The user literally remains sitting among an augmenting and transparent installation of technology hidden in soft, malleable, tangible everyday objects understanding only to a minimal degree where technology around him actually happens. The technology tries to make sense through interpretation of itself, of the user and the context. Instead of making use of technology in a different sense, it remains a servant in the background (with female connotations – pillow, cushions, soft, malleable, emotional clearly represent - one could argue - typically associated female “characteristics”) neither engaging the user in critical awareness (as suggested in the beginning of the paper) nor does it engage in something along the line of defamiliarizing practices.
However, this also seems too harsh of a critique. I still think that the underlying idea that a quality of experience arises through mutual (inter)acting of machine, human and context as useful – even though the authors seemed to focus more on a reaction upon each other based on certain measurable data. Establishing an “appropriate environmental adaptation” as suggested in the paper could be translated into an intimacy among actants that provides a feeling/intimacy for each other. I understand that pillows are supposed to be soft, but why don’t feel the technology? Why not making it readable through described experimental characteristics: playing, feeling, sensing, moving and henceforth creating a space that is not just mediated on a multi-dimensional entity level? Technology doesn’t have to fit into our everyday objects, but it can – and this is partially its beauty. Technology is as malleable as the pillow , but this remains opaque to the user. Approaches like the PillowTalk would have the ability to move on from a literary concept of defamiliarizing and translating it into an everyday practice.

April 24, 2007

Papers we couldn't discuss enough

Today, we've intensively discussed "Technosocial Situations: Emergent Structures of Mobile Email Use" paper but due to time limitation the other two papers were not discussed in much detail. I feel "Unremarkable Computing." and especially "Cultural Mobilities: Diversity and Agency in Urban Computing" papers deserves better understanding through discussion.
Whenever appropriate, I will try to revisit these papers and open up discussions in future discussions.

Purpose of Pleasure?

In the blogs I am continuing to pursue a question that has only just barely been touched upon in class and I'm sure we'll get around to it sometime. I am trying to understand what guidance if any this course will provide on how we are to make decisions in designing technology. One sense I have about UbiComp is that it is not only an area of research but also a kind of guideline for these kinds of decisions, but I'm not sure what that is.
In the Schiphorst article I am taken aback by the phrase "the expression of intimacy is vital in person and social interaction. It is reflected in the persistent desire to create technologies that simulate touch, body contact, and 'near-space' interaction." In this quote there seems to be two things that confuse me. One is that in order to design for intimacy we must first demonstrate that intimacy serves a purpose. This sets the stage for designers to include a diversity of concerns when designing but still to formulate all design decisions as serving a purpose. We require intimacy therefore technology should afford intimacy. The second one is a reflexivity; that we know that we desire intimacy based on what we tend to design. This is a conflation that has been confusing me thus far about this same question of how we should make design decisions. If we make them based on our own desires and then try to understand those desires. I'm confused.
This article demonstrates its motivation through the metaphors that pillows already serve and afford. They also seem to justify their design as an exploration, like a probe to take something that is intimate, design something for it, and see what else we can learn about intimacy. I find this very incomplete. It seems to conform to the idea that our decisions don't really matter because they are always going to probe. If we are going to take up metaphors as motivation for design, that is fine, but isn't that unequal to justifying why we will take up the metaphor?
They say it is a "choreographic experiment" and then they say they will evaluate its general usability. When they describe their objectives on p25 I get more confused. The evaluation seems only to tell us information pertinent to the creation of future move.me pillows so that they can make "educated decisions" about how to develop their tool. The goal shifts towards being about making sure the users "understand" the pillows and move.me system. How do you measure effectiveness of the system as they say they want to? At the end it seems that learning how to get data out of the adaptation of people to a technology is a goal so that the move.me experiment can be used as a platform for future designs that use the probe-observe-redesign formula. Is that a sufficient contribution for an article? Can we talk about the formula that this article uses, and whether this is typical for the TEI conference. How does this compare with HCI and UbiComp conferences?
The tone of the paper is "we propose" these technologies and here is "why." What are the acceptable why's?
Questions:
What is meant by this phrase "post-optimal?" What does the "post" imply?
"Value fiction" Huh?
What is this focus on contextualizing information? Contextualizing seems to go against some of the ideas we have been learning about in class.

Story to share

It seems like we can and nearly do spend the whole of class telling stories, which I find in itself quite interesting. I thought I would share this one for what it is worth, on the blog, since we'll be moving onto other topics.
My friend was on route from Santa Barbara last Friday and coming to stay the night so we could hang out in the morning. We followed the typical cell-phone-dependent habit of calling periodically to exchange status and directions. So my directions about the desitination, my apt, got more specific the closer he got. At about 1 hour away he realized that his cell phone battery was running low so he pulled over to get the final directions, down to the last turn, and to write them down. Later, with what little battery power he had left, he called as he got to California Ave, so that I knew to expect him shortly. That is the point at which I would head down to greet him in the parking lot because it is too complicated to explain the way that the numbering of apartments works in the VDC complex etc. And then I didn't hear from him for over an hour.
After standing in the parking lot for a bit, I tried calling him again. By now myself and my girlfriend were both calling. We realized that his phone must have died. After 20 minutes one of us got in a car and drove down to California, not knowing exactly what to look for or do, but just to do something. At 45 minutes we got worried and called the UCI police to find out about any accidents. We knew that he probably just got lost (between California Ave and our apt which is ridiculous), but we also figured that within that time he would have found his way to an outlet somewhere, as he had when he pulled over to get directions earlier, and would have called us, so we were worried.
When thinking over what to do while waiting for him, we also thought through the options he had. University Center would likely have people to ask directions and even outlets to call etc. We figured he might have gotten so frustrated that he went to just go find a hotel for the night, but we still couldn't figure out why he hadn't at least called so that we wouldn't worry.
What I find interesting about this story is what he in fact did do. He found his way to the Palo Verde apartments and figured he was in the right dorm area. So he spent about a half hour circling the lot looking for our car, figuring that way he would know which building we were in. After spending a while at that he did get frustrated and left to get a hotel in Long Beach since that is where he was more familiar with the area, and called us from there.
It almost seems like the idea of searching for our car as a signifier of where we were comes from this same modality of using the cell phone to communicate our presence with greater precision in the last mile. The car was a substitute for the same purpose. That is, I already know I'm on the right street, now I need to narrow down on the right apt. That was the purpose of the last mile phone call which he wasn't able to make. That is why, I think, he didn't even consider the more traditional technique of going back to a city center area to find resources to complete his call or get directions.

This just indicates to me the way in which we not only ascribe meanings to new technosocial arrangements but also lose meanings from previous ones even when the infrastructures that support them are still in place.

April 23, 2007

Why do people choose new mobile technology?

The paper by Dourish et al shows new approach to the relationship between mobility and technology. I pretty much like the last and this week’s topic because it makes me be able to understand social phenomena and technologies with a diverse point of view. Obviously, our today’s life is surrounded by new technologies which support mobility as a main feature. However, the technologies provide us not only more convenient and active life style but also create a social gap between people who use those technologies and people who is not inspired to use new technologies. I think most people who are not interested in the new technologies think that they do not need those technologies because new technologies are designed for limited domain of people. So, I completely agree with Dourish’s ideas that designing “for mobility” must be design for a host if different potential mobilities.
In addition to the Dourish’s paper’s ideas, I think we also have to concern about people who have accepted new technology as a part of their life style. Are they completely satisfied by the new technologies? Are they using mobile technologies because they really want it? In my case, for example, I am continuously bothered by new mobile technologies. In many times, I really don’t want to take my laptop to somewhere because it is very heavy, and I have to pay attention to my expensive devices. And what if my laptop is broken down by accident? I’ll lose every important data, and I have to spend a lot of time to set new system up. But, in many times, it is required to take my laptop to some places. That’s why I'm using a laptop and I feel like I’m continuously bothered by technology. Thus, I think we also have to concern about why they use new technology, when they are encouraged to adopt new technology, and how they think about new technology.

Intimate Strangers

While I was doing some background research on the topic for this week's class discussion I found an essay by Hidenori Tomita titled "Keitai and the Intimate Stranger." I was immediately attracted to it because like most of you, I was trying to put some intellectual meat on the topic of the inextricable collusion between devices and social action. This is how it usually works - artifacts have politics, devices have social actions, networks cannot be separated from the socially contingent, historically contexualized activities by which they are imagined, designed, constructed and used.

I was reading the essay as a way to work through some thoughts around the relationship between extant social practices and "new" social practices. I wanted to see if I felt okay taking a position that says that social practices that were "illegible" to people could not effectively become mobile social software services. But instead I stumbled on something completely new - they were called proximity-based "meet-up" applications - some examples of which are Nokia Sensor, Mobiluck, 6th Sense, BuddyPing, Meetro, Mobido, Streethive, WhoAt, Netomat and Dodgeball. These projects are “social" in the sense that they mediate face-to-face encounters with friends, friends of a friend or even strangers if the parties are within physical proximity of one another, either through self-identified location, AGPS location derived from location-aware handsets, Bluetooth “sniffing" or other means. The variety of applications that establish intimate contact between strangers for the purposes of dating relationships are especially prominent. Some more digging made it evident that the mobile world is simply crawling with these applications.

But, herein lies my quandry - it seems speculative to me that people would be willing to digitally "project" information about themselves so that nearby strangers can find out about them and possibly "meet up." This is entirely a gut instinct based on the sense that people don't do so "normally", prior to the introduction of instruments that allow such digital billboarding. And toss in there concerns about sharing one's identity, privacy, surveillance concerns, etc. - it just seems like this is a bad, bad idea. But, my instincts evidently only count for a tiny bit in this regard.

But the essay gave me some good insights not only on the social practice of meeting someone anonymously using telephone-based networks but, more importantly, how to analytically frame and think through how extant social imaginaries can become part of new technosocial practices. The author starts by describing a children's picture book called Arashi no Yoruni (One Stormy Night) that describes a goat and a wolf who find shelter from a storm together in a pitch-black shack. They become friends, not knowing that their relationship is hunter and prey. This "anonymity shield" provides the architecture for anonymous, intimate configurations of social beings. It resonates with an existing imaginary - having engaging contact with strangers and even foes anonymously. The intimate stranger can only count as “new" in that the technosocial resources that facilitate the configuration provides the shield of anonymity. From a mobile social software design perspective, the “intimate stranger" is a technosocial design composed of anonymity networks, the fluidity of social action at a distance that mobility allows, the desire for intimate contact.

April 22, 2007

Alternatives

Dourish et al say that they are unsure whether the word mobility does any conceptual work at all. I tend to agree with this statement even after reading their article. If it seems that we should design for a specific site of mobility (since mobility is really plural and heterogeneous) is the mobility of the specific locale even the quality that needs to be highlighted? If we move to a diverse set of mobilities, from which we can't generalize a singular mobility, then what meaning is left to this word? It almost begins to seem that we are designing for a set of actions which happen to do with movement through space but that this movement is not even principal for the design. Maybe I need some more examples to help. I understand the alternative conceptions of mobility such as those from Aboriginal Australia, but I don't understand alternative mobilities in technologies designed for them. The mobile cosmopolitans offered as examples seem to use the technologies at their disposal in plural ways, which means that the technology need not be designed with a diversity of mobilities in mind. The people left out of the technology in these stories, who ride the bus, aren't clear examples of failures of design either.
As deCerteau frames the designer as part of the strategic, how can design be part of resistence? Can it be? Even in the example of UnderSound, is this tactical or strategic? What does it mean to be socially responsible in design when design is delegated to the strategic and resistence to the user even when the designer has kept all of the diversity and heterogeneity of the users in mind?
Likewise what does it mean to be socially responsible by designing for plurality and diversity? One thing I have begun to take away from this course and others is that UbiComp is, among other things, a project concerned with creating a greater diversity of opportunities through technology. Is increasing the set of alternatives and diversity of technological opportunities necessarily socially responsible, or is it just an acknowledgement that designing for only one version is not responsible? Maybe it is a way of being socially irresponsible but with less discrimination?
I know that in part we are to simply take the messages of these articles as disclaimers that there are other ways of looking at technology. But there is also this statement that we need a "new foundation for design." What kind of foundation do we get from diversity and heterogeneity and plurality?
I don't ask these questions because I disagree, but because I want to know if the answers to these questions are supplied somewhere or if the writers and designers thinking about this have yet to answer this question.
It seems to me that there may be some answers to these questions, that designers need to supply technology that is intended for tactical use, but that relinquishing all strategy is akin to not designing, that is, not having any desired outcome and isn't it most designers' calling to design because they have something they want to implement, some vision? Visionless sounds boring.
I would imagine that the socially responsible project would not be ubicomp but rather participatory design, or making design more popularly accessible, or creating objects of such simplicity that they carry no infrastructure, no limitations, only opportunities. And is there such a thing? Ubicomp may be other good things but is it socially responsible? I don't know why I am harping on this social responsibility thing...
I guess a more relevant question is about how designers ought to make decisions. A designer is always going to have a selection they can make from a set of opportunities and a set of hindrances afforded by technology they design and they will need something to guide that decision. I would like to know what designers currently employ to make that decision. Dourish et al critique the perspectives that look for ways to mobilize more activites from the static realm, to effectively and efficiently deproblematize space, but in the counterexamples how did the designers make these decisions about what to enable and what to hinder? The counterexamples explain alternative designs but not what strategy (or tactics) they employed.
Paul said in class that we are not to take away that message that, since we can't predict use, we just needn't care at all. I'm trying to find the alternative message....

The role of sms in romantic relationships in contemporary India

The paper by Ito et al provides a fascinating account of the role of cellphones in urban Japan. The current blog entry is a consequence of the ensuing thought-process wherein I theorize a correlation between the usage of sms and the development of a romantic affair between 2 individuals in urban India. All the hypotheses (or a lack of) is based on observations of my own life and life of others in contemporary India.
Cellphone usage in urban India has reached a level which can be compared to the account provided by Ito in his paper. It has truly become ubiquitous in the sense that a normal social life is inconceivable without a cellphone especially in the big cities. SMS or text messaging plays a very important role both as a medium of communication and as a token of social conduct. People, especially the ones going through the different phases of 'dating' or 'romantic liaisons', rely heavily on the strategic usage of SMS to achieve their respective goals. I theorize that the use of SMS as the dominant form of communication is entwined with the different phases of establishing a romantic connection. Since I observed this behavior mostly in a corporate environment, my 'theory' may not empirically reflect the social habits of teens but there is a strong logical suggestion that it may.
Romantic encounters usually begin with the first few meetings face-to-face in a workplace, or outside by means of mutual acquaintances in a neutral social gathering such as a birthday party or weddings. After the cellphone numbers are exchanged, the first few days/weeks are heavily dominated by exchanging text messages with an occasional voice call. This phase is the one in which both or atleast one of the two involved, send probing messages which are socially neutral but also laced with romantic 'feelers'. Things are kept formal and an interesting syntax of feedback comes into play e.g. the use of a late reply to indicate 'not interested' or 'change the topic'. This is also the time when the majority of the 'failed connections' fail. As time progresses, the relationship moves to the next phase, which I call the 'buddy' phase. The man and the woman in question become friends and enter the outer circle of confidants. More of one's personal and past life is shared, and they usually meet in social gatherings e.g. with a group of friends in a public place. In this phase, voice calls generally taken over SMSing as the dominant form of communication, in terms of time spent. Long voice calls are made and usual involve light neutral chat which is also socially acceptable to be received during office hours. Texting becomes more informal yet still remains neutral and is used for more mundane tasks such as co-ordination during 'meet-ups', and these texts are kept relatively short. Forwarding sms jokes or other such trivialities is also common during such time. The rationale is that SMS is used primarily as a 'maintainer' of connection rather than using it to discuss or convey important aspects of one's feelings towards the other. A conversation, i.e. a sequence of logically connected SMSs, can last for hours on the end, however the frequency of exchanges is relatively moderate.
However, this role is again reversed during the next phase of the relationship, where the two have gone beyond being buddies and have acknowledged to each other the romantic side of their feelings. The rate of voice calls falls, and rarely is one expected to receive the calls during busy office hours. Even if one does then the receiver goes to a secluded place in the office (which is hard to find) to be out of ear-shot, and the voice is hushed.
Texting or SMSing is used to convey either graphic aspects of sexual conduct, or alternatively to send sweet romantic nothings or progressive sweet somethings, and becomes the dominant form of communication especially during the commute to office. If you find men or women tapping at their cellphone's keypad during lunch or during the daily commute, and smiling or blushing at the same time, you have a good guess of what is going on. I would like to point out that in India it is socially acceptable to make or receive voice calls in a public place/transportation vehicle e.g. Trains or Buses, therefore people will prefer calling rather than extended texting if there is nothing 'mushy' about the topic. People would go to length to keep the content of their SMS inbox private and many a scandals ensue when it becomes public. Here SMS is a double-edged sword and the true king of the clandestine.
The last phase of the relationship is the fruition, wherein both the parties acknowledge each other's 'status' in public and amongst their friend circle. In this phase, voice call again takes over SMS as the prominent form of communication. SMS becomes 'matter-of-fact' and loses its strategic value that it had during the previous phase when things were still under the carpet. Voice calls are acknowledged during office hours, in public and during commute. And generally the voice calls have brief romantic content but the better details are kept to the late evening 'good-night-call' ritual.

I could elaborate more about the phases and other characteristics of cellphone usage but I do not want to jabber on.
However, all observations which I made above have been drawn from a large sample space consisting of more than 2 dozen individuals between age 22-30, married or unmarried, employed in various industries and various companies, with most numerous being software engineers.

Unremarkable computing and commputing mobility

In the "unremarkable computing", the authors mention about "unremarkable" routine in our daily lives. In my point of view, designing an "unremarkable computer" is very challenging. Nowaday, no one can predict where technology will lead us. Unremarkable even in our routine might become obsolete and design goal to augement the resources/actions might also become insignificant. For example, knocking on door might be obsolete in house equipped with sound proof door... is it more easy/reasonable to build it with simple design and observe how the society adapt to it (extreme computing?) rather than overdesign it?

Domain knowledge for Ubiquitous Computing :)

It's an obviously interesting topic for me; I just managed to solve "mobility as problem" using technology before reading Paul's paper. However, this paper changed this issue from "mobility as problem" to "mobility as opportunity.” I really like the idea which is changed my fixed idea about mobility as problem. Although many companies conducted usability test for various circumstance and users in industrial field, it’s just to solve technical errors and inconvenient factor. Furthermore, people who have different knowledge domains such as geographers, social scientists and software engineer are participating with significant roles; actually it was shock for me because we only made a team with SW engineers, HW engineers, UI engineers whenever I joined TF team for mobile device. How various domains’ experts participate for ubiquitous computing project?
The most interesting thing is mobility as collective which is mentioned very much a relational view of mobility in this paper. If we regard as individual view, it shows us about actions and experiences. However, if we regard as collaborative view, it shows us the ways which can means some kinds of patterns. What field do we adopt this idea after gathering the mobility information as collective?
As this paper shown using the London Underground as an example, it is very suitable story. Imagine other examples such as individual car or airplane. I think it has different types of mobility.
Tolmie’s paper named "Unremarkable computing”, shown the exciting instances. I fully understand and agree what he said and it is right in limited situation such as examples in this paper. In the first example, done in the doing: the Knock on the Door, basically they have common knowledge to collect a child form school and cultural background. Is this learning through experiences or is this only common sense through cultural and social background?
And they did not consider cultural differences between western area and eastern area. I think that obviously there has the gap from different culture. For example, when someone beckons to a person in Korea, we used different gesture from the united state. The gesture which used in the United States is very rude action because it only use for calling puppy in Korea.

A collective? “Doing” and “re-doing” in hybrid spaces

“Doing” as site for production of social, cultural and technological meaning can be read as one of the main underlying themes of this week's reading. No matter if called technosocial systems, hybrid space, collective experience, hybrid collectivity, the idea of a mutually defining, enabling and constricting network of technologies, people and idiosyncratic localities is based on the notion of making sense through doing. Dourish, Anderson and Nafus suggest that instead of expanding technologically possible usages of mobile communication technologies we should rather depart from an understanding of different forms of mobilities. Here, spatial meaning and how movement through space is made meaningful evolves through everyday practice, tactical appropriation of pre-given spatial and social infrastructures. The authors point out that, while mobile communication technologies can give agency to a specific group of people (in this case cosmopolitans), other groups that penetrate the same spatial but different social setting often remain outside the technologically mediated space that extends beyond the visible and immediate reachable. Ito and Okabe for example demonstrate how mobile communication technology can extend the social space of Japanese youth culture, creating a sense of persistency of social interactions and relationships, whereas for older generations usage of mobile technology remains considered as disruption or even replacement of face-to-face interactions.
Both studies exemplify the importance of understanding highly situated actions, local (in the physical and social sense) differences, which establish the basis for creating meaning by acting in hybrid spaces. Tolmie et al. define this notion of situated action through mutual accountabilities/intelligibilities in daily routines. Technology and actions as part of the routine are defined as unremarkable, which stands in contrast to “marking out” routines in order to describe them. As a member of a group, no matter if it’s the social network of a Japanese teenager or a family household, socially and spatially embedded routines become resources to translate “invisible” into accountable actions.
While all of the three papers argue for consideration of the local, and situated actions, the approaches taken are quite distinct from each other. While Dourish et al. and Tolmie et al. suggest to depart from an understanding of the activity itself (mobility and routine), Ito and Okabe use the virtual communication space, which extends from physical interactions into remote presence through mobile communication technology, as a site of investigation. However, all three studies argue for considering the technical and the social, past and presence, here and there, as inseparable concepts of a collective doing, an underlying network that enables agency. We derive that invisible computing is not necessarily about hiding technological artifacts, but embedding them into socially, spatially and temporally defined practices.
A concept that I found missing here is to draw a relation to studies on larger, global phenomena, transnationalism, gender issues, etc. If we try to understand situated mobilities and situated routines, and how they represent themselves through tactical actions, it seems crucial to relate these to each other and to a collective as well as an individual history, and the many stories constructed over time and floating through different spaces. As practices evolve over time and are transformed by culturally diverse players, by present tangible and imaginary artifacts, technology is not only the tool to create meaning for specific situations and for a specific group of people, but becomes associated with the diverse spatially, socially and temporally constructed meanings, that link into each other and define technological advancement as well as daily appropriation. A collective requires an understanding not only of its historical, individual, local, physical and virtual nodes, but also an understanding in terms of how these nodes link to each other and of what happens between them. It is more than an accumulation of individual stories, of multiple personas; rather constitutes of spatial, temporal, emotional, digital, physical, etc. relational lines in-between. Is technology always both, relational link and node? Site and tool? Supporting and destructing? Can we design for one or the other? Shall we always design for both? Can we design for both?
This relates to another recent field of investigation in Ubicomp – as partially brought up in the papers from last week - where (mobile) technology is not only considered as appropriated artifact applied to smoothly glide from one routine into the other, for extending social spaces into worlds where time matters in a difference sense, but as Dourish et al. point out, it is more than an “anytime and anywhere” and can alter habitual/unremarkable actions to raise awareness of misperceptions, social differences, of patterns that are performed based on philosophies that might be worth rethinking, etc.; technology does not only play a role for “doing” , for acting in hybrid spaces, but also for doing differently, for re-thinking and reevaluating present “doings”, for constructing hybrid spaces. In this sense, notions such as the collective itself have to be used carefully. While the collective making sense through relationships between the individual and his doings, and a collective defined as interactions between mutually defining entities, demonstrate a valuable viewpoint for understanding socio-technical systems, a danger of generalization remains. The collective is quickly confused with a group of people that shares same interest and preferences, and that strives for the same goal. Practices that differ across genders and cultures have often been undermined by definitions of a collective, either by simply ignoring “minor” social groups or by marginalizing them. A challenge hence can be seen in technological systems that support a notion of a collective among individuals, their actions and artifacts, but that simultaneously disrupt traditional ways of doing, of enacting roles and routines.

April 18, 2007

Infrastructure and new technology..

In the Mainwaring’s paper, he investigated four categories people who were living “off the grid,” and showed us what they really want. I was a little bit surprised because what they really want is not to create new infrastructure which is opposed to current infrastructure, but to fill their desire on the infrastructure.
I thought people always try to make new infrastructure to meet their needs before. But, it was not.
While I was reading this paper, I realized that to develop a new ubiquitous system, we have to concern not only about what people really want, but also what people are going to lose due to the side-effect of the new system creating a gap between infrastructure and desire.
Actually, we cannot live far away from ubiquitous infrastructure because one of our basic needs is to be socialization that means to follow standard infrastructure. At the same point of view, if the ubicomp technology could not completely meet public interests, it would not be accepted by people and would bother people as well. So, I have a question here. If we develop a new technology which have not existed before, how can we prove that it is really necessary to people? And, how can we know it can be seamlessly adopted into our life?

How can We overcome the gap between Ubiquitous infrastructure and User's Desire?

Mainwarning's paper mentioned the gap between the standard of infrastructure and user's needs and desires. This fact is very important and helpful to design and implement ubiquitous computing system.
The discrepancy makes to decrease the utilization of ubiquitous system in the real world. How can we overcome the gap between infrastructure and user's desire?
In this paper, the author describes those users who were on “off the grid" wish to come back "on the grid". I think there are two more options except returning "on the grid". First option is to fill the gap using other technologies, and the other option is to take training. Actually, a company which has various solutions for ubiquitous computing announced a new solution for transferring data, but the motion for sending data is so strange. A user who has mobile device throws the music file to targeting object such as speaker or audio device.
After doing the music file maybe transfers from a user's device to audio device. Because throwing motion is not natural, most user do not agree that this throwing motion is ease and convenient for user. Instead of stupid motion, we can get solutions using other technology. Is it possible to completely overcome the gap using other technology and training?

Using the Internet

The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach, by Daniel Miller and Don Slater. Despite the nondescript name, the book is a very rich text about internet use in Trinidad. The authors find much higher internet penetration rates than they had expected, and they find that Trinidadians (at the time) used the internet in a very wide variety of ways, in cybercafes, at neighbors’ houses, with friends.

I’ve been thinking about the way that internet use is embedded in people’s lives. I know that now that I work at home, I surf the net in an entirely different way than I did when I was a 9-5er with plenty of free time on my hands. When I’m laptopping around the country, I use the internet very differently from when I’ve just got my machine on so that my giant torrent of CSI can finish up. Anyway, I was reading this article by John Carey on how people actually use the web, and I came upon this very intruiging paragraph:

"Lifestyles of people in the study group had a strong impact on how and when they use the Web. Consider first a group of three recent college graduates who shared anapartment in Manhattan. They have very hectic and irregular schedules. On any given evening, one might be at a gym; another out on a date; or the three of them might be visiting a local sports bar. Much of their media use moved later into the evening and their apartment was crammed with media options: multiple televisions, PCs, cellphones, videogame consoles and MP-3 players. They also had broadband access to the Web and a wireless network. To reach them, media had to fit flexibly into their irregular schedules because they might not be available when regularly scheduled media were playing. Television was limited by having a schedule; the Web and other media such as videogames were generally schedule-free and therefore fit more easily into the routines of people with hectic, irregular schedules."

This basically describes me and everyone I know. Let’s look at TV: there are a few people I know who will make sure they see a certain program, and make it part of their weekly routine: folding laundry while watching Desperate Housewives, for example. But for most of the people I know, there are two options:
1. Pay for a DVR
2. Get all your media from the web.
Since 2 is basically free, since we all have broadband anyway, there’s not much compelling reason to do 1. When I’m watching TV on my computer, it becomes just another website that I’m looking at, often in a corner of the screen, movies and TV shows from past and present, US and abroad, cult and mainstream, cable and network are all undifferentiated.

But back to the internet: it becomes so hard to differentiate types of “media” from one another. Going physically to the movies, to me, is a fun activity to do with friends that displaces going to a club or a show if we’re feeling tired or there’s something really cool on. It’s not like I choose between going out to the movies and watching TV. Internet, video games, TV, DVDs are all kind of part of the same thing for me, and since I’m online most of the time, I’m usually working, taking a brief surfing break, working, watching an episode, working, etc. This is a pattern of media use that just doesn’t fit within old media models.

Some interesting conclusions from the book:
- There is no such thing as the Internet. There are a number of different media and contents which people assemble into 'their' Internet. This is however a clearly debatable stand.
- The Internet has considerably strengthened the nuclear family throughout the Trinidadian Diaspora, allowing closer relations between parents and children and between siblings. It has had an equally strong impact on the extended family.

A short note about the other 2 papers - Crafting participation: designing ecologies, configuring experience (Heath, Luff, vom Lehn, Hindmarsh, 2002) talks about how visual art from the Renaissance onward (use paintings as specific examples) were designed to engage a viewer more and make the viewer an “active spectator”. The context of the spectator - their location, perspective of the artwork and the relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and surrounding physical elements were taken into account to create different viewing experiences. An example given is of artwork in a chapel. A figure on an altarpiece might be gazing towards an image of a saint in the roof of the chapel. Upon seeing the figure a viewer will follow its gaze and discover the saint.

I think I have read about how artists do this before but today I am relating it to research considering a person’s location, physical relationship to other objects, etc. in the design of new technologies. How our devices might respond to our physical context, how technology can be used to create even more drastic variations on how we experience our environment, depending on our location within it was something that definitely piqued by curiosity.

The Mainwaring paper is an interesting demonstration of how infrastructures are often taken for granted by “users” draws important questions, practices and problems that can be useful to reflect on in ubiquitous computing design. There are very pertinent ideas here that needs more reflection about how to deepen different investigation regarding space, infrastructures and people’s behavior. To me, the crux of this entire paper can be summarised from just this following extract: "The challenge, then, as we see it, is for ubicomp systems that seek not to automate or even augment/amplify human skills but to exercise and celebrate them, to encourage active engagement, and provide resources to individuals and communities for continuous change and exercise."


April 17, 2007

Short question

In chapter 3 in the book "Where the action is", our professor mentioned about air traffic controllers using flight strip as a requirement for managing air space. Does that mean the system's interaction is so poorly design and non-user friendly ( "tangible" enough) that make it neccessary to use pen and paper to keep track of flights activity or else it "would pose extreme difficulties"?

Control maniacs, asocials or just challange lovers; who are these infrastructure discontents?

When I was reading the "Infrastructures and Their Discontents......" paper, I was clearly surprised with how discontent people be to the everyday infrastructures. Trying to emulate a school in a house room, converting your actual life to a 60 year long survivor episode in the middle of nowhere, turning into a nosy freak that is thinking about putting a camera into neighbors house, etc. All these seem to crazy to me but, they have some initiative ideas behind them which may worth investigating further.

I like going to camping or hiking and resting in an environment that is far away from everyday distractions, but I see it as a vacation not a whole lifestyle. Although I can understand why people would go such a vacation, I cannot comprehend why they would willingly live in an environment that is miles away from any infrastructure. All these granted services and infrastructures (such as electricity, supermarkets, etc) may make us lazy and ignorant in actively fighting against the nature but they certainly increase our productivity in our profession and make life easier for us. Moreover, infrastructures are built around where the people live and being away from infrastructures means being away from other people. When we look at the interviewed couple in the paper, they are actually producing electricity whenever they need, they use laptops, they have a plumbing system so they are actually setting up all the infrastructures they escaped from in a smaller scale. So, they are either escaping from other people (maybe because they are asocial or afraid of other people) or they are challenge or control freaks looking for adventure or absolute control in their environment. But on the other hand, having a distant house that we can escape on weekends sounds good to almost everybody. So, maybe its the freedom that drives for being discontent and the fear of being alone that connects us back to the infrastructures.

But what about being nosy and monitoring the neighbors. Hmm, again it is crazy at first but nobody wants a murderer or sex-offender as a neighbor as well. So, it is just an extreme of something that we all have. But I don't agree the authors classification of "security seekers" as discontent from the infrastructures. They are actually connected to the infrastructures but they just want their connection to be under control. They want cameras on their doors, alarms on their windows and their phone number to be not published. I think this is just resulting from the bad infrastructure itself, security infrastructure is not satisfactory and people are looking for improvements. However, in its later stages it results in disconnection from the infrastructures. Gated community residents and home-schoolers exemplifies the case where people gets disconnected from the infrastructures just because they think they can do better than the public service. Gated community thinks they can manage security and order better than the police and public authorities, home-schoolers think that they can provide better education than the public schools. I personally disagree to all such enterprises since they would encourage social classes, discourage social thinking and would result in social disorder in its later stages. The correct approach should be improving the already available common infrastructure instead of everybody building its own.

Interaction with and through

I think that our discussion today in lecture about social production is relevant to the book chapter on Internet usage among Trinidadians. Miller and Slater explain (how their book will explain) how Trinidadian core values get re-enacted and performed through the Internet. That is that the Internet has meaning in and of itself, as a site through which to produce Trinidadian-ness (Trini-ness). In this way Trinidadians interact with the Internet as a part of a material culture. But the Internet is also a medium through which they interact with other people and materials, and through which they imagine futures. This blending of what at least seemed to me like material culture theory and media theory seems like a nice blending of the perspectives that we discussed in lecture. A question I have is where does media theory come in? Is it social shaping or social impact or social production or does it subdivide into all of these?
I think that another way of breaking down the articles for this week, that I had been thinking about, is different ways in which to consider the "local" as relevant to interaction. Local histories and cultures are relevant to interaction. And local surroundings that might not take into account the histories and cultures of the people involved are also relevant.
One issue that I think these articles raise is how to generalize from the local to the global or theoretical. If these articles show just how much local matters, then how are we to learn anything about interaction in a general way to be applied to design principles, other than the knowledge that we must design with the local in mind? Miller and Slater suggest that a comparative method of ethnography should reveal general claims about the Internet, but I am left unconvinced. Partly this is because they range back and forth between speaking of specifics and generalities without making a clear distinction about when it is appropriate to generalize. They discuss the issue of transcending the local but then their language is inconsistent. I didn't always know when they were speaking about the Internet in Trinidadian terms or general terms.
The same is true when we think about the participants in the Heath et al paper. They are not described as embedded in cultural histories or core values as the Trinidadians were by Miller and Slater. But the importance of the people within their surroundings are important. So we have a different sense of how to examine the local, but in each case I still have the question of how much we can generalize from these studies.

Technically challenged and paranoid

I was pretty amused by the field study in Mainwaring's paper wherein the author described an upscale american family which have gone to quite some length to feel secured in their home/neighborhood. They are aptly classified as 'security seekers' but it amazes me when 'Loni', the family member interviewed states that she prefers to have most of her financial transactions over the internet which she believes is least susceptible to identity thefts. Common-sense and a lil'bit of technical awareness suggests otherwise. Internet is the most viable medium for identity thefts, which a smart (which most of them are) tech thief can easily exploit without even personally knowing the victim. The victim can be in suburbia Arizona, whereas the perpetrator can be sitting in a dingy basement somewhere in eastern Europe. With internet, comes borderless crime, or cyber crime which is much more difficult to contain than your average neighborhood thefts.
So it is with alarm that I conceive that as our world becomes more and more wired and as we get into the age of true ubiquitous computing, it'll become harder for people to protect their privacy and be protected from information hijackers and financial frauds. Consequently, our society may become more closed, where people communicate online behind layers of security, and as the medium becomes more and more complex the security loopholes increase. Commonsense says that a machine with higher number of moving parts has a higher chance of failure than a simpler one. I may be deemed a pariah for even suggesting such a sinister angle to the otherwise boundless world of Ubicomp, but it seems logical. I can definitely say that I have a greater number of mechanisms in place to protect myself against identity thefts and frauds than I had 5 years ago.
But as the case of Loni suggests, people have and will develop a greater sense of trust and security as we progress to a more integrated environment with a larger number of devices connected or simply online. But this trust is misplaced. An intelligent cabinet shelf which detects empty medical supplies and orders them automatically can be hacked into to find a re-order of Viagra, and such an information can be made public to the embarrassment of the victim if nothing more nefarious. In present world such an information is much more difficult to obtain.This is a just an example (a weird one though) but I think that the reader would get my point.

Imagined materiality or material imaginations?

Making “noticeable”, “sense”, and “visible”, being able to inspect, see, observe and report upon activities lays at the heart of “tangible computing” particular when seen in contrast to approaches on abstraction through hiding. The readings of this week demonstrate that a “making visible” does not necessarily correlate with a physical re-representation of the unspoken and hidden. Instead a visibility of (physical, digital and imaginary) objects and artifacts is achieved through actions and activities by oneself and others in one’s spatial and social context. Heath et al. argue that “material features of objects and the ecology in which they lie, reflexively inform the production and intelligibility of conduct and interaction”. We are speaking of a materiality that does not necessarily relate to physical properties, but as Miller and Slater point out, to a rather Latourian notion of hybrid objects and actions. The action in a mediated space is interwoven with conduct in a physical space. In Heath et al., an art installation makes actions visible through incorporating them into an object (through digital mediation), whereas Miller and Slater define virtuality itself as a hybrid form, an assimilation of another medium into social practices, not less real than the physical object it requires to be accessed, both embedded in social spaces. Observations during the museum exhibition reveal that actions as language between conduct and objects can be found in gestures, pointing, and laughing (quite physical reactions). What people do, what kind of activities they perform makes taken-for-granted and invisible infrastructures visible. To embody these actions into objects can transform familiar into questionable, opaque into transparent. What remains unclear to me is how to balance tangible and virtual materiality, when shall we transform into hybrid spaces, when shall we keep a clear distinction? Seamfulness can raise awareness, but can also be disturbing, noise (as evident in Mainwaring et al.). There is no distinct line between appropriation, critical awareness, emotive interaction and automation, efficiency and qualm-ness, however dichotomies in everyday practice and language remain. Making sense through seeing others’ activities and actions with and through objects might work in an enclosed and experimental environment such as the museum exhibition, but is much more difficult to design for in a more complex social and spatial setting. What if the material imaginations of one group support margins to the group who can't share the imaginations because of a lack of resources, infrastructures, and money? - the imagined materiality on the one hand and the socially and spatially manifested, materially performed imaginations (becoming realities) construct boundaries that are translated into theoretical dichotomies.
Visibility and materiality do not imply “easier” appropriation, but maybe facilitate communication through material imaginaries? The visible action only exists in relationship to its complementary partner, the imagination of how action is (should be?) lived.
When actions link conduct and material realities, how does social order arise within or from shared practices? How do we act in transparent dichotomies, can we come with a new language that is based on a “new” materiality instead of vocabulary?

April 12, 2007

My Short short entry

When I was reading the paper by Eva Hornecker in which she describes Tangible interaction (which was originally described by Ishii et al), my mind recollected an example in which the use of space as an input device was actually shown in practice (or simulated). This was the movie 'Minority Report' which shows the actors controlling a computer with the flow or action of hands and fingers in free space. The computer through some 'undescribed technology' was able to capture the location, orientation and movement of an actor's limbs and converted then to actions on screen.I suppose that would come closest to a 'Tangible UI' as depicted in popular media. It came across as very powerful, not to forget the transparent computer screens which also formed chambers or confined work areas and aided collaboration and a feeling of seamless human-human, human-computer interaction.

Short Entry

Thanks Arun for the clear overview of the issues that are coming out of these papers. And also for the link to MIT's website, the examples of projects are really helpful for understanding the distinctions we are trying to make in class.
A few questions:
"We live between two worlds" is on the front page of this website. In class can we address this "two-world" idea and whether different people in the community address the combination of these spaces in different ways. For example in the "Getting a Grip on Tangible Interaction" paper they discuss different viewpoints on TUIs and for me the "expressive-movement-centered" and the "space-centered" viewpoints are much more accessible than the "data-centered" view. Can we unpack the data-centered view? So is the data view the viewpoint responsible for the "two" worlds? According to these authors the data view focuses on transversals between them or the ways in which they are coupled, and on representation.
I don't understand the sentence defining the data view of TUI as "utilizing physical representations and manipulation of digital data, offering interactive couplings of physical artifacts with 'computationally mediated digital information.'"

I was curious, in thinking about Sparky, about the hand and how it is coupled with the mouse in a way that the hand itself might become a "generic and transient intermediary" since the hand itself becomes tool and somewhat disembodied.

Is embodiment really undisembodiment? That is, do we only say embodiment because, as Paul explained, we have overemphasized identity of the self with mind, eye, thought, and immaterial rationality? Does embodiment signify more than that?

April 11, 2007

First Blog

A simple definition of Tangible User Interface, from hereon referred to as TUI, is a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. TUI is something I have only very recently rediscovered. Some time ago, I did read an article about it, but only now after reading these academic papers, I have found out that this field is growing very quickly with a lot of people working on it to come up with newer and more innovative solutions.

The idea is quite simple: use physical objects (sometimes even tools we use every day) in order to interact and work with computers. This concept means that through the use of technologies like computer vision, tracking devices, touch screens etc., the system is able to know how the user is manipulating a collection of physical objects, and then able to translate these actions into events in the computer interface.

The 'Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms' paper by Hiroshi Ishii is considered one of the pioneering publications in the field and the author referred to as the parent of TUI. Professor Hiroshi Ishii is in fact, the leader of one of the most important research groups working on this area, the tangible media group at MIT. If you want to see how a group of researchers can combine work and fun, research and pleasure, visit their website and see some of the projects they have developed and are currently working on.
http://tangible.media.mit.edu/
Some of the videos on the website are exciting and a lotta fun to watch and learn. Although it is clear that TUI has a great future, there's still a lot to do in order to see real TUI applications. The key is to be able to find something clearly easier to do with a TUI than with any other approach.

The paper on Tangible Interaction by Eva Hornecker addresses an important issue in the field of tangible interactions: the lack of proper design methodologies/principles/knowledge. The principles they consider aims at providing 'guidance' to both design decisions and conception of the design process as well as creating a context for an interaction experience (rather than focusing on simply technological/ergonomic issues).

What impressed me the most though was the attempt by the researchers to try and design interaction as a whole rather than just designing an interface, which puts the entire human and social interaction point of view into perspective. The framework proposed here looks to be comprehensive in addressing all the necessary aspects of tangible interaction giving appropriate attention to detail in every one of the 'themes'. It is evident from this reading that without considering the user experience criteria of tangible interaction, which has not been paid too much attention to in the past, it is not possible to come up with an effective design process for TUI based systems.

Something interesting I found online and wanted to share with the class - Tangint , a new wiki, has been launched to serve the international community of researchers, designers, artists, and other practioners in the area of tangible interfaces and, more generally, tangible interaction. The Tangint editors are Brygg Ullmer of the Tangible Visualization group, Louisana State University; Eva Hornecker of the Interact Lab, University of Sussex and Albrecht Schmidt of the Embedded Interaction group, University of Munich.
http://wiki.cct.lsu.edu/tangint/space/start

Interaction Design concerns the interaction between people and products in which information technology is a central component. This can, for instance, be the design of the complex interface between the driver and the network of computers controlling a modern car, the interface and gameplay of modern computer games, the next generation of mobile communication devices or the integration of computational technology into our everyday things, such as ’intelligent clothes’. Regardless of application area, a design perspective on the interaction between people and technology is central. This makes interaction design an increasingly important area in application and systems development, as well as in industrial and product design.

'Thinking through Doing' - I guess at some level I have always been a supporter and a follower of that. And especially in the case of Interaction design, what better way can there be to positively conclude how interactions are going to take place and how an application should be constructed to meet those interactions in the required fashion. The paper also talks about many other aspects of the human interaction that we normally take for granted and tend to utilise at a subconscious level such as action-centered skills, motor memory or situation based learning. As tough as it is, the best interaction design would and should definitely take into account all of these factors and in essence design a system such is infact the world in which the person interacts. In other words, the user should never be intended to do anything that he would normally NOT do - in the world, during his/her day - and also do what he would without having to externalize himself from the system - in essence, 'live the system'. I guess this is a far fetched goal but atleast now we have something to progress towards - in my opinion, a 'liveable' design !

I found the 'From Hand-held to Body-worn' paper by Jin Moen to be interesting and at the same time quite amusing. Movement interaction is obviously a very integral part of tangible interaction since most forms of human interactions are inherently based on motion. Although most of us conceive a majority of our interactions to be hand-based, it is important in the overall picture to look at the entire body as one, whole entity capable of tangible interaction.

Agreed - a people oriented approach is definitely important in working towards movement or gestural interactions, but is that the primary concern ? The first time I saw an ad for the new Nintendo Wii on TV, I was amazed - how did they design those movements and figure out a way to express them so realistically on the screen ? And the more I thought about it, I kept coming back to the fact that the most critical step in solving that problem was to come up with the gestural grammar/vocabulary - how to describe those movements (both the physical ones and the translations into their virtual counterparts) That is why the author of this paper picked modern dance to conduct his study - there is a predefined vocabulary of movements to base the interaction on.

I do like the time-space-force theory for movement definiton and the BodyBug prototype although its pretty simple and hardly accurate. But I do believe that more such case studies need to conducted on simple movements with people in real-life situations, where they behave like they normally would in their own environment. This would give us a better understanding of movement interaction in terms of designing systems that are intended to invisibly exist in the user's world. Also, considerable effort has to go into accurately and effectively mapping physical movements into the digital realm. Some of the other issues that concern movement interactions are public vs private spaces and multi-user interactions.

This is my first blog ever and the first blog of the class, so please forgive me for any 'un-blog-like' language. I only hope to get better as the quarter progresses.

Arun.