NordiCHI 2006, Workshop #3
Duration: 9:00 – 17:00 (two days), Saturday and Sunday 14.-15.10
Location: Oslo School of Architecture & Design (AHO)
Near field interactions: User-centred interactions with the internet of things
Worskhop site: http://www.nearfield.org/2006/06/workshop-near-field-interactions
October 14. and 15. (two days)
Expected number, balance and selection of participants
15-20 participants, from a mixed background: human factors, mobile technology, social science, interaction and industrial design. Application by short position paper in the areas of tangible or embodied interaction with networked objects.
Workshop theme and goals
The so-called 'Internet of Things' is a vision of the future of networked things; things that share a record of their interactions with people, context and other objects. This may give rise to a new ecology of things, and consequently to a different set of social practices and human relationships to objects and spaces.
Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC) are two technologies at the front of the 'internet of things' curve. NFC in particular has been designed to increase the usability of mobile devices and to integrate networked services into physical space. NFC introduces a sense of 'touch', where interactions between devices are initiated by physical proximity. This is particularly relevant as mobile devices become the access points or 'wands' to networked functions and services.
The workshop will investigate the design of networked things through a hands-on process of making. The aim is to look at physical as well as digital design problems.
The main themes for the workshop are:
• How will the physical form of everyday objects and spaces be transformed by networks and near field interactions?
• How do we encourage playful, experimental and exploratory use of networked things?
• What social practices may be supported, transformed or disrupted by networked things?
Some secondary questions may be:
• How can the design of physical objects help in overcoming potential information or interaction overload, and how does search or findability change when in a physical context?
• What kind of user-communities will develop around the technology, and how do we encourage user-driven, social innovation?
• What interaction models can we bring to the internet of things? Do the fields of embodied interaction, tangible, social, ubiquitous or pervasive computing cover the required ground for designers?
Relevance to the field
It has been 15 years since Mark Weiser introduced the idea of ubiquitous computing. Now technologies like RFID and NFC are becoming mass-market commodities, products and services are starting to show distinct traits of ubicomp behaviour. This workshop intends to build knowledge around the hands-on problems and opportunities of designing networked things.
The 'internet of things' is currently discussed in abstracted and technical terms, using language borrowed from networks and the internet. What is urgently needed is a user-centred approach to understand the physical and social relationships between people and the networked things they interact with. This involves broadening the discussion to include issues within interaction design, industrial design and the HCI fields of embodied interaction, social and tangible computing.
This workshop fits within the themes of innovative interface design, ambient intelligence and ubiquitous, pervasive, and mobile interaction listed as Nordichi conference topics.
Intended audience
The workshop aims to attract an audience from human factors, mobile technology, social science, interaction and industrial design. The outcomes should be in a range of implementation styles allowing for a variety of outputs that speaks to a wide audience.
Description of activities planned
The workshop will begin with short participant presentations of work in the area, invited participants will give a longer lecture on the area each morning. Groups of 3-4 people, each with different skills and backgrounds will then work on application areas, concepts and prototypes. Prototypes may take the form of physical models, scenarios or enactments.
We will focus on the design of simple, effective products that afford interesting interactions, rather than focusing on technical or network issues. We intend to encourage the use of AHO's wood, plastic and rapid prototyping workshops to create physical prototypes of selected concepts. AHO will provide student assistants for the creation of 3D or physical models and workshop assistance.
The workshop will conclude with a discussion of the social implications of the proposed designs, and should result in an exhibition of the work.
Submissions
Please contact Timo Arnall for more information: timo.arnall@aho.no
Organisers' names and backgrounds
Timo Arnall
Timo Arnall is a designer and researcher at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design (AHO). Timo's research looks at practices around ubiquitous computing in urban space. At the moment his work focuses on the personal and social use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies, looking for potential interactions with objects and city spaces through mobile devices. Previously his research looked at flyposting and stickering in public space, suggesting possible design strategies for combining physical marking and digital spatial annotation. Timo leads the research project 'Touch' at AHO, looking at the use of mobile technology and Near Field Communication.
www.elasticspace.com/about/
+47 404 95 735
Nicolas Nova
Nicolas Nova is a Ph.D. student at the CRAFT (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne) working on the CatchBob! project. His current research is directed towards the understanding of how people use location-awareness information when collaborating in mobile settings, with a peculiar focus on pervasive games. After an undergraduate degree in cognitive sciences, he completed a master in human-computer interaction and educational technologies at TECFA (University of Geneva, Switzerland). His work is at the crossroads of cognitive psychology/ergonomics and human-computer interaction; relying on those disciplines to gain better understanding of how people use technology such as mobile and ubiquitous computing.
http://tecfa.unige.ch/~nova/
Julian Bleecker
Julian Bleecker heads the Mobile and Pervasive Lab, a near-future think tank and research and development lab at the School of Cinema-TV and the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California. Bleecker is an expert technologist with over 20 years of hands-on experience. He is fluent in many modern programming languages and best-practices development approaches for distributed networked systems, desktops and mobile devices. He is Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California in the School of Cinema-TV's Interactive Media Division and is a researcher at USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy.
www.techkwondo.com/bio/ |
