Interactions - November/December 2008 - Cultural and Personal Impact (Page 22)

synthesis—and saved us weeks of wrong directions.

November + December 2008

Respect the Society of Devices

Few devices exist in a vacuum. General-purpose computers are designed largely to stand alone or exist as a hub connecting a bunch of peripherals. Technology-savvy Westerners simultaneously carry (or ride in) a large number of devices, everything from laptops to smart key fobs.

Riffing off of Marvin Minsky’s Society of Mind, let’s call this technology cloud the society of devices. Each device does something specific, and some are more powerful than others. How do they all work together? How do they integrate into the larger set of devices and services out in the world?

On the interaction-design level, this means understanding users and their needs in light of the all of the devices that they may have. For example, while it’s possible to get email on many different devices, presenting it in a way that respects the unique constraints of a device and stays consistent with other devices becomes key when helping people transition between them. Text email accomplishes this using a universal format (text) with a well-defined structure (To:, From:, etc.). The minute that an attachment is included or there is HTML in the message, that consistency vanishes.

and large. Too many quickly overwhelm vision, our primary sense, and become a distraction, rather than a tool. However, not all information is so primary that it requires the attention of our primary sense.

Industrial design incorporates the physical senses of temperature, texture, and vibration into devices. Ubicomp UX is essentially the coupling of these two sets of ideas to create behaviors that match information priority with available sensory bandwidth and less cognitive load.

For example, say I’m looking for a new apartment in the town where I already live. I don’t need to move, but I’d like to. I set my (hypothetical) GPS unit to down-load a data stream of apartments that match my criteria of price, size, neighborhood, and proximity to at least three cafes with free Wi-Fi. As I drive/ride/ walk around the city when I approach one of these locations, the GPS vibrates in proportion to how well it matches my criteria. I don’t need to look at it; I just need to feel it to get the crucial piece of information.

We designed BlinkM, a smart LED, with this in mind. It’s designed for interaction designers, industrial designers, and artists to prototype sketch ideas in hardware. The user experience around it emphasizes its role as a material. We designed it to be inexpensive, robust, and to offer just enough capabilities to be easy to work with immediately, while still remaining openended.

I believe that ubiquitous computing technologies are incredibly powerful. However, ubicomp user experience design is still a very young discipline, without a track record of obvious best practices. In its failures, we see the inadequacy of applying older design paradigms to the capabilities of new technologies. If design people first encounter new technologies through design, then careful reflection on our design processes early on is essential for increasing the chances of technology’s positive impact. That time is now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Kuniavsky is a writer,
designer, and researcher
exploring the intersections
of high technology and
everyday life. People
around the world use his 2003 book,
Observing the User Experience, to under-
stand the relationship between people and
products. He is a cofounder of ThingM, a
ubiquitous computing development studio
and was a founding partner of Adaptive
Path, a San Francisco design consultancy.
His next book will discuss ubiquitous com-
puting user experience design. He blogs at
orangecone.com.

Create Physical Behaviors, Not Visual Representations Screen interface design is essentially a visual practice, with some audio. But screens are expensive, power hungry,

Use Information Processing As a Material When a designer can include information processing in a product for very little cost, the calculation becomes not one of complexity, but of competitive advantage. Including a CPU to produce behaviors in a product becomes a line item when deciding what to make it out of, rather than the expensive core around which to wrap a case. And like a material, that information processing capability creates some new capabilities, and imposes new constraints.