1. DESIGNING SMART THINGS
USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN FOR NETWORKED
DEVICES
Mike Kuniavsky
Interaction South America
San Francisco
December, 2011

10. UBICOMP

16. THREE CORE TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

17. 1. INFORMATION PROCESSING IS CHEAP
1989 2011
$1500* $0.50
* CPI Adjusted to 2008, original price: $900

19. 2. NETWORKING IS PERVASIVE

22. 3. POWER

24.  16MIPS
 640X480 24-BIT LCD VIDEO CONTROLLER
 USB 2.0
 24 A/D CHANNELS (FOR AUDIO AND I/O)
 CAPACITIVE SENSING (FOR MULTI-TOUCH)
 1 CM SQUARE
 $5 (IN QUANTITY)
 PIC24FJ256DA210 PRODUCT FAMILY

25. A WORLD OF SMART THINGS

26. INFORMATION IS A MATERIAL

27. SUMMARY
 Our relationship to our environment is fundamentally changing
through embedded information technology and networking.
 Ubiquitous computing is the most common name for this change
(though it has others: pervasive computing, ambient intelligence,
the Internet of Things, etc.)
 It’s a result of:
– Cheap processing
– Cheap, pervasive networking
– Low-power, but still powerful, embedded processors
 Which came together to create a tipping point (roughly speaking in
2005).
 People are using these technologies to compete by embedding
information processing into a wide variety of everyday objects.
 In effect treating information as a novel material to design with.

28. Q&A

29. UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING UX

30. PETER BOERSMA’S UX DESIGN DEFINITION

31. User Experience
Design
Industrial Design
UBICOMP UX DESIGN
Service Design
Architecture
Product Design
Networked device design
Mech/EE
Engineering
(ubiquitous computing UX design)

32. FROM BITS TO ATOMS

33. CORE UX DESIGN TRENDS

34. GENERIC TO SPECIFIC

35. LOCAL TO REMOTE

36. TERMINALS
APPLIANCES

37. CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHIFTING FROM
APPLIANCES TO TERMINALS
≠ =
≠ =

38. Laptop
AVATARS

39. SERVICE AVATARS
SERVICE
AVATARS

40. WE SEE THROUGH SOFTWARE AND DEVICES

41. TERMINAL EXAMPLE: NETFLIX

45. APPLIANCE AVATAR: VITALITY

51. INFORMATION SHADOWS

57. APPLIANCE + NETWORK + INFORMATION SHADOW
= THE INTERNET OF THINGS

63. PRODUCT SERVICE SYSTEMS

70. SUMMARY
 Ubicomp adds a number of disciplines to traditional UX: industrial design,
service design, product design, architecture, engineering.
 Cheap processing creates a broad UX shift from generic devices and software
to specialized devices and software, while cheap networking moves services
from local to remote.
 This creates two broad classes of network-connected devices: specialized
appliances and generic terminals in different form factors (which the CE
industry primarily focuses on).
 A larger shift is to service avatars which are devices and software that are
tightly coupled to specific online services. People see through the devices and
software to the service.
 Meanwhile, unique identification of physical objects leads to cloud-based
information shadows for everyday things.
 These blur the lines between physical objects, digital objects and
fundamentally change notions of ownership as product service systems
replace everyday products with subscriptions.
 And this, in a nutshell, is The Internet of Things..

71. Q&A

72. 15 MINUTE BREAK!

73. EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

75. NFC/RFID

76. CONTENT BASED RETRIEVAL

78. SYSTEMS ON A CHIP (SOCS)
 16MIPS
 640X480 24-BIT LCD VIDEO CONTROLLER
 USB 2.0
 24 A/D CHANNELS (FOR AUDIO AND I/O)
 CAPACITIVE SENSING (FOR MULTI-TOUCH)
 1 CM SQUARE
 $5 (IN QUANTITY)
 PIC24FJ256DA210 PRODUCT FAMILY

79. PICOPROJECTORS

81. GPU

83. MULTITOUCH/GESTURAL INTERACTION

85. SMART MATERIALS

87. ULTRACAPACITORS

88. EVERYTHING AS A SERVICE

89. INTERESTING EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
 NFC/RFID
 Content based retrieval
 Systems on a chip
 Picoprojectors
 GPUs
 Multitouch/Gestural interaction
 Smart materials
 Ultracapacitors
 Everything as a service

90. APPLICATION DOMAINS

91. CLOTHING

94. APPLIANCES AND FURNITURE

96. CARS

97. URBAN LIFE

98. INFORMATION AS DECORATION

99. BEHAVIOR CHANGE

102. INFRASTRUCTURE ACCESS

103. INTERESTING APPLICATION DOMAINS
 Clothing and jewelry
 Furniture and appliances
 Cars
 Urban life
 Information as decoration
 Behavior change and health
 Infrastructure access

104. DISCUSSION!

105. THE INTERNET REFRIGERATOR
1998 1999 2000 2002

106. LUNCH!

107. DISCUSSION!

108. THE IPOD

109. ARTIFACTS AND SERVICES FROM THE NEAR FUTURE

112. EXTRAPOLATION

113. SCALES OF EXPERIENCE

114. Scale
Label
Examples
1 cm
covert
RFID, nail polish, cochlear implant
10 cm
mobile
phone handset, portable media player, wallet
1 m
personal
chair, car, ATM, payphone, laptop
10 m
environmental
wall, door, chandelier
100 m
architectural
church clock, billboard, bus
1000 m
urban
street intersection, landmark, crowd

115. DISCONNECTS

116. MANAGING TASK DISCONNECTS
 Task continuity
– “Task continuity requires interfaces that support the transfer and
recovery of state and activity context.”
– “The ability to recover the last few actions that were performed
on one device so that they can be taken into account while
migrating the task to another device.”
 Knowledge continuity
– “Knowledge continuity requires visual continuity, both graphical
and textual, successful partitioning of data and functionality, and
procedural consistency.”
From Pyla et al (2006).

119. SWIM LANE DIAGRAMS

120. FINAL Q&A AND
DISCUSSION

121. Mike Kuniavsky
mikek@thingm.com