INTERACTION DESIGN FOR PERVASIVE COMPUTING

Interaction Design for Pervasive Computing

Interaction Design for Pervasive Computing

Introduction

Interaction Design for Pervasive Computing

Pervasive computing was supposed to be part of our everyday life and promised to assist us in all our activities regardless of our location. This vision of pervasive computing is that, ultimately, our whole society will benefit from such systems, and not just a few people doing very constrained tasks within physical “islands” of computing support. A pervasive system cannot reach its full potential - and cannot really be described as pervasive - when it is limited to, say, a “smart house” or a “smart car”. If the whole of society is to benefit from such systems, then the whole of society must be part of such a system. Thus, the social issues that arise are not just side effects or problems that can be dealt with ad hoc, but are at the heart of the challenge and the solution. The point of departure for my research has been the traditional HCI wisdom of designing a system for a user performing a task in a domain (Goggin, 2006, 63-85).

In light of the potential of pervasive systems for both success and disaster, the paper has extended this traditional framework to address the social issues which are unavoidable when dealing with pervasive systems. Social issues and considerations lie at the heart of my framework which translates user-task-domain to citizen-spherespace. Most of the ideas have borrowed from this domain deal with the impact of the design of public spaces on societies and communities, the psychological impact of space on humans, and finally some more general ideas on the design and manipulation of space.

Literature Review: Interaction Design for Pervasive Computing

Perspectives

Information technologies are taking on a large role in human social lives. Computers used to be tools that specialists employed to accomplish specific tasks. The revolutions in personal computing and communication networks, however, have broadened the application of information technology. Individuals now use computers to communicate with others and to work on a variety of tasks. Computing is no longer the domain of a few specialists. With the advent of pervasive computing, computers are leaving the largely sedentary and solitary desktop environment and are entering into human social lives in an unprecedented manner. We think of pervasive computing as a move from an interaction between an individual and a single device to an abundance of networked mobile and embedded computing devices that individuals and groups use across a variety of tasks and places. Important market trends in collaborative applications, mobile devices, and knowledge management reflect this change.

According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, the collaborative applications market is expected to reach $2.1 billion in 1999, growing 19 percent from 1998 (Cohen, 2006, 161-173). This explosion of collaborative applications will change the way users compute. By lowering the barriers to communication, these applications support interaction among workers, between companies, between companies and consumers, and among consumers.

The market research firm Frost and Sullivan projects the mobile computing market ...