This presentation explores the development of design for new and emerging technologies, ranging from the design of user interfaces for computers to current practices and issues in the design of distributed socio-technical systems. Professor McAra-McWilliam will illustrate these issues through examples from her work at Philips Electronics in The Netherlands and the Royal College of Art in London.
Interactive
technologies are diversifying and increasingly becoming an integral part of our
everyday and working lives. Handheld devices, mobile and wireless technologies,
smart places, wearables and 'ubicomp' are some of the terms that have been
used to describe this new generation of technologies. More generally, the
phrase moving beyond the desktop is used to reflect a shift in focus from
developing software applications to run on workstations to a much wider set of
computer systems.
What are the challenges and issues facing those interested
in studying and designing the new spectrum of 'ubicomp' human-computer
interfaces? Are they any different from previous ones? If so, do we need to
shift our research efforts, creating a new set of models, concepts and methods
to address them?
To begin, we need to ask where is the interface in ubicomp.
By definition, ubicomp interfaces are assumed to be invisible and pervasive -
which is very different from the visible and fixed desktop interfaces we have
become accustomed to. Concomitantly, we need to ask does it makes sense to
continue talking about 'the user'. Many researchers and practitioners have
alternatively begun talking about the user experienceš, with the emphasis on
what the user encounters, feels, comes across, discovers, etc. in a ubicomp
environment rather than the user's needs, wants, preferences, etc. Both shifts
in focus have quite significant consequences requiring us to rethink how we
design and assess the different forms of interaction that arise in ubicomp.
In my talk, I'll begin addressing some of the new user
experience issues facing researchers and designers of ubicomp, focussing on how
different kinds of activities can be supported, extended and augmented using
different arrangements of technologies. I'll illustrate my talk with some
examples of novel learning experiences we have been creating using pervasive
technologies
In this short presentation, I want to consider whether the idea of making computers disappear is a desirable or practical goal. Though I understand what CSL at PARC were trying to do, it seems to me that they missed a crucial issue in understanding human action. I want to argue, and bring some evidence to show, that people try to get the functional powers of the computer out of the device itself and into the real world so as to make those functions tractable to their needs. One proof of this can be seen in the role of paper in the contemporary office. Paper, I will suggest, in all sorts of forms, A4, A1 wall chart size, and so on, is so important in the office not because it is a legacy of an old technology but because its use gets the inner workings of computers (used to produce much of the information on paper) out of the machine. In this sense, I want to suggest that the goal of ubicomp should be inverted: not invisibility but visibility, not the disappearing computer, but the computer you can see and control and touch; only in this way, I contend, can computing be made to support human action.