2.5 Ubiquitous/Pervasive computing support

Transcription

1 2.5 Ubiquitous/Pervasive computing support Technology soon allows for Ubiquitous computing. The idea was introduced by Mark Weiser already in 1991 and refers to a situation where computers are networked and numerous, possibly hidden and executing everywhere in the physical environment. The computerised devices in other words are integrated into, and spread out over the background environment. Combined with sensors the resulting pervasive computing in principle can continuously monitor what a user does, record it, and react to commands given anytime, anywhere. The term pervasive computing was once described by the IBM chairman Lou Gerstner as;... A billion people interacting with a million E businesses with a trillion devices interconnected (Loke, 2006). Yet another related term is invisible computing introduced by Norman (1998). The focus is, or at least should be, on accomplishing something rather than on the tool. Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. / Mark Weiser Hundreds of computers in a room could seem intimidating at first, just as hundreds of volts coursing through wires in the walls did at one time / Mark Weiser The most profound technologies are those that disappear. / Mark Weiser Summaries of properties of Ubicomp systems reported in research over the last 10 years are given in Poslad (2009) and Ferscha (2003). Here are the most important listed to give a flavour of what we will discuss later: Ubicomp as a distributed system integration and coordination of devices and environments, support for mobility. Ubicomp as implicit interaction Human I/T interaction context supported with little or no human intervention, user aware, immersive, non intrusive, invisible, tangible, natural, proactive, affective, and emotive. Context aware situated, localized, particular, unique, adaptive, user aware, personalized, and environment aware (physical, virtual). Autonomous automatic, embedded, self managing, emergent Intelligent reactive, model/rule/policy based, multiple concurrent goals, learning, cooperative, collaborative, benevolent, competitive, orchestrated, task sharing, and knowledge sharing.

2 Anytime anywhere the trend is now, here, and for me (us). No technical limitations smart devices, smart interactions with situated coordinated interactions based on contextual information. Sensors and actuators part of the user interface smart environments built by smart devices and smart interactions, tagging, and adaptation. Cost of technology is not an issue. The researcher Paul Dourish notes that it is through interactive systems that we encounter and understand the world (Dourish, 2007). Consequently we will see the world with new eyes when given new ubiquitous tools. As an example maps help us to read our environment in a new way. At the same time the tool will support only some of the actions possible and thereby constrain our view of the world. Governance will try to align the world and the map, at times by changing the world if the function of the map is important enough. One example cited by Dourish is that uniform rectangular layout of cities simplifies planning and management, at the cost of adapting the physical environment to the plan. Another example is our use of statistics, which inevitably make us blind to differences and local particularities, the mean value rules. The most human thing about us is our technology / Marshall McLuhan How we choose to represent the world matters. How we design interfaces for ubiquitous environments and mobile devices will have much larger implications than we may think. If, for instance, text input is relatively more difficult than inputting an image, then our information environment will be even more image based in the future. If physical objects are used to input information, then these objects, for instance our hands, will acquire new affordances. We will see them with new eyes and associate them with new practices. This in turn will trigger the emergence of new behaviours. As a special case Dourish notes that everyday space is not fixed, but is something that is continuously negotiated and created from our actions. Mobile and pervasive technologies will give us new opportunities for the renegotiation of space. Consider how a mobile application that monitors and displays air pollution in a city might change the routes people take. On a more critical note Bell and Dourish question the promise of ubiquitous computing, as a world permeated with technology just around the corner (Bell, 2011). It has been around that corner since 1989 and that calls into question if it always will be there, out of reach. Or, are we perhaps already living embedded in ubiquitous technology, we just do not recognize its form? Think about music as a context and close to ubiquitous service medium in elevators, shops, movies, and earplugs. It increasingly takes place, time and gathers people.

3 How come that the dream is still with us? Is one partial answer that with ubiquitous computing placed in the near future then designers do not have to take responsibility for the present? Problems will disappear, as technology gets more advanced and anyway it is someone else s problem. Maybe the vision is outright wrong, only a lightly disguised techno utopia (Jose, 2011)? Another observation by Bell and Dourish is that The ubicomp world was meant to be clean and orderly. Rather than being invisible or unobtrusive, ubicomp devices are highly present, visible, and branded characterized by improvisation and appropriation. (Bell, 2011). A Seamlessly interconnected world is at best misleading vision and at worst a downright dangerous one where: Some cultural and social practices privilege disconnection, seams, distinct realms of activity and action, e.g. work and leisure (Andersson, 2007). Many benefit from noninteroperability. Many benefit from content regulation and protection. Practice is inevitably considerable messier. There is an inevitable messiness found as technology and the real world arrange themselves, but this is not only a problem: Yet we are not proposing that messiness is an obstacle, nor are we proposing that it would be appropriate to tidy up. We find messiness inspiring, productive, generative and engaging. Tidiness is static, rigid, fixed and closed; messiness is dynamic, adaptive, fluid and open. (Bell, 2011). We might not feel comfortable in the perfect orderly environment of the USS Enterprise starship in the Star Trek series. On the other hand ubiquitous computing has a potential to recombine practices and technologies in ways that are greater than the sum of their parts (Greenfield, 2006). We might be offered increased security and reduced insurance fees if we accept realtime monitoring of our health. The sensors and the infrastructure are soon available, if they not already are Challenges for user interface design User interfaces in intelligent ubiquitous computing environments have to accept the lack of a single focal point (Smith, 1999). Related events happen concurrently, at different locations. This further aggravates the problem of how to interact with the user. How do we for instance manage authentication for pervasive computing? Another issue is when several co located users simultaneously interact with the same interface, perhaps with conflicting goals. Also, the context of use will change as the user moves around, for example:

4 Users change interaction devices, e.g. to a smaller screen with new usability constraints. Social and other changing aspects of the environment distract users. The cognitive load in a pervasive computing environment could be high. There will happen many times at the same time at many places in the system, and changes could be quick. As quick as the fastest person in the system, or even faster when the system itself presents information. We humans have problems with parallel activities because we are highly sequential thinkers. We also have problems following dynamic processes, we prefer to freeze them and study them at one point in time at a time. Also, in a ubiquitous system there is no longer a single most important task, and maybe not even a single most important user. The goal could well be a system flexible enough to allow for the context, including humans, to modify the system. A designer provides predefined services, or suggests a platform that the users can augment; perhaps even develop new services by themselves. In principle a reflective system can adapt to anything, by modifying itself, but in practice there are numerous constraints. No technology is indefinitely malleable. The designer, material, original intention with the technology, and much more, limit the possibilities to modify a system in a given situation. It will always be hard work writing an essay on a pocket calculator. Because of the above, ubiquitous computing challenges the prevailing interaction styles (Shafer, 2001). As the physical environment becomes computerized anything in the environment and any combination of things are potential interaction devices. Either indirectly, as the environment tracks the thing, or directly using functionality built into the thing, including networking. The number and type of interaction devices might change throughout an activity. We might start an interaction in the car, continue while walking into the office building, and end it in the coffee room. The mouse, keyboard, and the computer display are special cases and not always available for interaction. Input through other means is maybe not that difficult to imagine and realise, but what about output? If there is no obvious output display device at hand, i.e. a PC, how is the user contacted? Speech is one alternative, but it is not always the best choice in a crowded room. Room lighting is another possibility; a purposeful blinking of the light is a good signal. It seems that there is a need for more options for output, preferably continuous in time. Privacy will also be an issue as information potentially spells out secrets looking for users, roaming screens and loudspeakers. If a phone also transmits context, is it obvious that bystanders want to participate in the context of a videoconference? Another example is that law can prohibit camera surveillance in public places, as it does in Sweden.

5 If the functionality of a device becomes less clear, because of the possibilities to build functionality into everything, its appearance will be even more important, at least from a usability point of view. This is a design challenge but since ubiquitous systems are very complex systems they cannot be built overnight. We will in other words all have a lot of time to get used to the new systems and how to design them. Some will lose a lot of money from mistakes made during this adaptation. We as designers will certainly learn a lot about how to make technology publicly available for general use, such that it does not disrupt existing social models and norms. Quite a setup for the rest of this book. We stress once more that the interface between the user and the system is of utmost importance and the mandatory requirement is that the system must be obvious to use Calm technology Always having to think about how to use the computer, or any other service, is tiresome, recall driving a car for the first time (or reading your first page of text). Every interaction initially has to be thought through and adapted to in such a way. We can reduce this cognitive workload if the system finds out, and performs, as many actions as it can by itself. If the road is blocked for instance, the car should stop. The term calm technology, suggested by Mark Weiser, tries to accomplish this by using ubiquitous computing where computation most of the time is performed in the periphery of users attention and is only occasionally directly attended to by the user (Weiser, 1996). The basic idea with this approach, which is also called foreground / background computing, is that technology should inform the user without demanding full attention all of the time. When the user decides to pay attention, maybe triggered by some unexpected event, supportive technology is brought into focus. One example where we still have not found a calm solution is e mail. Each arriving e mail interrupts, but is this the right way to do e mail? An example of a working solution is the slowly blinking sleep light on Apple computers. The following table adopted from (Buxton, 1995) classifies services into foreground and background applications. A foreground application is one where your attention is directed toward the application. Currently most applications are of this type, but as improved infrastructures gradually emerge the number of background applications will increase. A typical example of a background technology is electricity. Think about the situation when you understand that battery is low on your electric drill (Pierce, 2011). Foreground/Focused Background/Peripheral Human-Human Telephone call. Context enabled mobile phone, e.g. one which could say User is asleep Human-Thing Timer on your oven. Smart house that turns down the heat

6 Human-Information Selecting a link on a web page. at night. Advertisements on a web page. Table Foreground or background applications Applications will not restrict themselves to one cell only in the table, and they will adapt both to the situation and the user (Buxton, 1995). An advertisement that is selected pops up and is suddenly in the foreground. Your mobile phone could display the timer on your oven set by your wife, and you reset the timer via a web page after discussing the dinner menu with your wife over the phone. In order to reduce complexity in our lives many tasks are reduced to routines. We put on our shoes or open doors without giving much thought about how we do it, even though these actions are obviously important to our lives. Dourish (2004) suggested that all we do is embodied, i.e. non rationalising, intersubjective and physical bodily activities. Traditional HCI has a different perspective, rationalizing, objectifying and abstracting use and interaction. A third intermediary view is that users are constantly experiencing a multitude of heterogeneous media that do not properly align; there are perceivable seams that users must attend to (Chalmers, 2004b). This is a problem, but, we are good at it and we even exploit the seams when we account for them and appropriate the system to our particular needs. Being both unremarkable and central to life makes routines interesting (Newman, 2007). How can we identify them so that we can support routines by technology? Whenever we introduce unfamiliar technology, routines will be broken, a fact that naturally makes people suspicious of new technology. To understand impact of technology we consequently have to know about routines. This is particularly important with new technology in the home where daily routines are a defining character. Changing a daily routine in the home for the better is a designer s wet dream. Newman (2007) reports on the introduction of a new service in the meeting room that allows the participants to export the contents of their laptops to a shared display in the meeting room, without physically connecting the laptop to the screen. Connecting the laptop to the screen is a typical unremarkable activity and the cost of doing it is forgotten or ignored. A subtle result of the service was that participants in the meeting could sit anywhere in the room while showing things on the shared screen. The possibility to quickly change who is in charge of the shared resource could change the structure of meetings. Whether this new structure will work better than the old one is difficult to say. Probably people accustomed to the old order will complain about unstructured MTV like meetings. The example shows that the introduction of small micro applications supporting micro tasks can potentially have large implications for behaviour.

7 In our typical multitasking way of life we are accustomed to constantly being interrupted. This is not always what we want, and with additional technology we will get new sources of interruptions. Sources that will not respect angry looks or a raised eyebrow. Switching attention can be costly both at cognitive and social levels and result in information overload, stress, delays, errors, mistakes and frustration (Oulasvirta, 2004). Fortunately, if necessary we can and will adapt to most interruptions and turn them into routines. Better still is to get rid of the interruptions using smarter technology. One example is to use preattentive processing whereby information is displayed in the background/ periphery. Another approach is to try to prioritize, predict and schedule interruptions using software tools. Some interruptions might even be more important than the current task. A third way to avoid interruptions is to try delegating (routine) decisions to technology, but this have to be done with the golden rule in mind, let the humans do the difficult, the machines can do the rest. Related to the issue of interruptions is that with increased information density and demands on productivity, there are demands for multiple sources of information and parallel tasks. This raises the question of how to direct or schedule attention. News is broadcasted at the same time every night, and screen estate is allocated to the tickering news updates on the CNN news channel. The design challenge is to find a balance between distracting the user and providing the demanded service. The (useful) clock on your computer screen shows that solutions can be found. Another indirect, peripheral, background application was explored in the following experiment (McCarthy, 2001). A large screen was placed in a workplace hallway. The hallway sensed the identity of people passing by and adjusted the content shown to them on the display. This produced interesting emergent phenomena, as people knew that they affected the display. One of the problems for the researchers was how to collect information about people without raising security and integrity issues Slow technology Slow technology is another way to use technology in context focusing on providing technology for reflection and mental rest (Hallnäs, 2001). One example is an electronic doorbell, which not only signals that someone is at the door, but at the same time sends other messages. Each signal from the doorbell could give an additional clue to a secret, doorbell message. This is slow technology that makes us stop and reflect. Technology that deliberately consumes time rather than saving it. So, instead of placing the activity at the periphery of the user s perception as in calm technology, slow technology steals, and highlights a moment or two. This can be done in many ways (Hallnäs, 2001):

8 It takes time to identify what is happening. It takes time to learn and get accustomed to it. It takes time to understand why it works the way it works. It takes time to apply it. It takes time to find out the consequences using it. Usually we aim for fast technology, meant to increase productivity, inverting all the statements above, but in slow technology we try to make good out of bad by using the extra time spent by the application for reflection, creating new thoughts in the moments VI gained. The time spent in interactions could be days, weeks, or even years. In order for the scheme to work the information mappings used need to be consistent over a longer time and is must be rewarding to participate. The long time span implies an expression in the periphery that is not to loud in any sense. A similar approach to information presentation, also from Hallnäs (2001) is soniture. This is furniture and physical environments designed with add on sounds, creating an additional environmental dimension, e.g. a floor with its own audible interpretation of the steps it feels.