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.     

Interacting with proactive public displays

In this paper we describe the design and architecture of an adaptive proactive environment in which information, which reflects the communal interests of current inhabitants, is proactively displayed on large-scale public displays. Adaptation is achieved through implicit communication between the environment and personal sensor devices worn by users. These devices, called Pendle, serve two purposes: they store and make available to the environment user preferences, and they allow users to override the environment's proactive behavior by means of simple gestures. The result is a smooth integration of environment-controlled interaction (experienced by the user as implicit interaction, triggered by their presence) and user-controlled explicit interaction. Initial results show that user-controlled adaptation leads to an engaging user experience that is unobtrusive and not distracting.     

Disseminating trust information in wearable communities

This paper describes a framework for managing and distributing trust information in a community of mobile and wearable computer users. Trust information in the form of reputations are used to aid users during their social interactions with the rest of the community.     

Wearable communities: augmenting social networks with wearable computers

Wearable communities-social networks based on computer-augmented face-to-face encounters-present both social and technical design challenges. Our WearCom design methodology permits rapid prototyping of wearable community systems to facilitate community building.     

NETMAN: The design of a collaborative wearable computer system

This paper presents a wearable groupware system designed to enhance the communication and cooperation of highly mobile network technicians. It provides technicians in the field with the capabilities for realtime audioconferencing, transmission of video images back to the office, and contextsensitive access to a shared notebook. An infrared locationtracking device allows for the automatic retrieval of notebook entries depending on the user's current location.     

Building intelligent environments with Smart-Its

Smart-Its are self-contained, stick-on computers that attach to everyday objects. These augmented objects become soft media, enabling dynamic digital relationships with users and each other. In the Smart-Its project, we are developing technology to realize a vision of computation everywhere, where computer technology seamlessly integrates into everyday life, supporting users in their daily tasks. By embedding sensors, computation, and communication into common artifacts, future computing applications can adapt to human users rather than the other way around. However, it's currently difficult to develop this type of ubiquitous computing because of the lack of toolkits integrating both the required hardware and software. Therefore, we are creating a class of small computers - called Smart-Its - equipped with wireless communication and sensors to make it possible to create smart artifacts with little overhead.     

Physical prototyping with Smart-Its

Exploring novel ubiquitous computing systems and applications inevitably requires prototyping physical components. Smart-Its are hardware and software components that augment physical objects with embedded processing and interaction to address this need. Our work, which uses small computing devices called Smart-Its, addresses the need to create embedded interactive systems that disappear from the foreground to become secondary to the physical objects with which people interact during everyday activities. Such systems create new design challenges related to prototyping with embedded technologies and require careful consideration of the physical design context.     

Smart Objects as Building Blocks for the Internet of Things

The combination of the Internet and emerging technologies such as near-field communications, real-time localization, and embedded sensors lets us transform everyday objects into smart objects that can understand and react to their environment. Such objects are building blocks for the Internet of Things and enable novel computing applications. As a step toward design and architectural principles for smart objects, the authors introduce a hierarchy of architectures with increasing levels of real-world awareness and interactivity. In particular, they describe activity-, policy-, and process-aware smart objects and demonstrate how the respective architectural abstractions support increasingly complex application.