• Figure 2; The five dimensions of proxemics for ubicomp.

 

Distance
Orientation
Movement
Identity
Location

 

to find and exchange files. In practice, this means that, from a person’s perspective, the vast majority of devices are blind to the presence of other devices. What makes this even more problematic is that these devices are also blind to the non-computational aspects of the room—the people, other non-digital objects, the room’s semi-fixed and fixed features—all of which may affect their intended use. While a portable device may recognize that another device is in range (e.g., via Bluetooth), it cannot tell if that second device is in the same room or a different one.

This is where proxemics can help. Just as people expect increasing engagement and intimacy as they approach others, so should they naturally expect increasing connectivity and interaction possibilities as they bring their devices in close proximity to one another and to other things in the ecology.

 

January + February 2011

interactions

of ubicomp—described it as technologies that disappear, that “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it,” where computers are integrated “seamlessly into the world” [ 3]. He envisioned many computers per person, all inter-connected. The form factor of the device would heavily influence what it would be used for: inch-scale displays as notes, foot-scale displays as paper, yard-size displays as whiteboards. Devices would know about their location and surrounding, where behavior and function would depend to some extent on environmental context (we now call this context-aware computing).

Twenty years later, it appears that we have arrived at Weiser’s vision, what with the common use of smartphones, tablets, laptops, large digital touch surfaces, and other information appliances. Yet we haven’t. There are still considerable problems that make these devices far from seamless. For example, consider the digital ecology of the living room shown in Figure 1. It includes various devices (the digital surface, the information appliances, and the things people carry, such as smartphones and tablets). While most devices are networked, actually interconnecting these devices is painful without extensive knowledge, and it requires time to configure and debug. Even when devices are connected, performing tasks among them is usually tedious—for example, navigating through network and local folders

operationalizing Proximity
for ubicomp
Before jumping into things, we
need to operationalize the concept
of proximity in ubicomp, that is, to
make proximity measurable. Hall’s
theory of proxemics saw interper-
sonal distance encompassing not
only pure distance, but social and
cultural elements as well. Ubicomp
proxemics is somewhat different,
as it concerns inter-entity distance,
where entities can be a mix of
people, digital devices, and non-
digital things. Since we want to
design ubicomp applications that
somehow sense proximity, we have
to be clear about what measures
proximity will include. Our own
notion of proxemic dimensions for
ubicomp is characterized in Figure 2
and explained below. Each of these
dimensions can also be considered
in a variety of ways, suggesting
measures that can vary by fidelity
and the values they return—dis-
crete or continuous.