INTERACT2005 Special: Smart Spaces make People Smarter

"Trust and Incidental Interaction: Would you let a Talking Paper Clip run YOUR Home?" at the INTERACT 2005 conference, held in Rome towards the end of last year, featured - among others - Norbert A. Streitz of Fraunhofer IPSI's Research Division AMBIENTE Smart Environments of the Future, explaining his answer to the panel question. It may be helpful to refer back to the first article in this series When Interactions happen without You for background.

Streitz talked about how computers used to be primary artefacts but have become secondary artefacts, in that they now part of compound systems and have moved into the background in several ways:
* Physical Disappearance (mainly due to miniaturization)
* Mental Disappearance (changing human perception of computing devices)

Several questions arise from this shift:
* How can people interact with invisible devices?
* nHow do people migrate from explicit interfaces/ interactions to implicit interfaces/ interaction?
* How can we design for transparency and make people understand the interface ?
* How can we design for a coherent experience?
* What should happen in case of errors or malfunctioning which are not explicitly perceived?
* How can we design for user's control and address the resulting privacy issues in sensor-enriched (or 'polluted') environments ?

He contrasted System-oriented, importunate smartness with people-oriented, empowering smartness. The former involves more or less automatic behaviour based on collected data, but this is fraught with problems, such as the refrigerator ordering items although we can¡¦t consume them due to circumstances beyond the refrigerator's knowledge such as unanticipated absence, illness. The latter implies that the human is in the loop and can take mature actions based on suggestions and recommendations. 'Smart spaces make people smarter,' he suggested. But this recognition brings a further set of questions: 'How much feedback do we want? How much can we process? How can people know what is going on, when they are not aware of it? When they don't 'see' the sensors, or the computer?'

He pointed to some work at his lab on categorising experiences in this context. Indirect and mediated experiences include the following:
- making invisible things "visible" (e.g., radioactivity, network traffic)
- aggregating parameters to convey higher level concepts (activities of a person, atmosphere/ambience of a room/building)
- social experiences (awareness, connectedness)

And he concluded by returning to the paper clip. 'I would allow the talking paper clip to support me in running my home by making suggestions, keeping me in the loop and making me smarter in interacting with and using my home and experiencing it in new ways. Smart spaces make people smarter.'

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