Albrecht Kurze

Produce. annotate. archive. repurpose --: accelerating the composition and metadata accumulation of tv content

Supporting most aspects of a media providers real workflows such as production, distribution, content description, archiving, and re-use of video items, we developed a holistic framework to solve issues such as lack of human resources, necessity of parallel media distribution, and retrieving previously archived content through editors or consumers.

Loaded Dice: Exploring the Design Space of Connected Devices with Blind and Visually Impaired People

This paper proposes Loaded Dice, two wireless connected Arduino based, 3D-printed cubes consisting of various sensors in one cube and various actuators in the other. It is an interactive tool intended to support co-design activities with blind and visually impaired people within the design space of smart connected devices. The design rationale and design process that led to the implementation of the interactive co-design tool are described as well as the interactive tool itself and an analysis of how co-designers utilized it within a co-design workshop to explore the technology of smart and connected devices. Findings from this workshop are presented. The proposed interactive tool and supporting co-design activities proved to be empowering and engaging to imagine and ideate future technologies based around the IoT.

Smart Connected Sensations: Co-Creating Smart Connected Applications through Distributed Serendipity

This demo presents Loaded Dice, two wirelessly connected Arduino based, 3D-printed cubes consisting of sensors in one die and actuators in the other. It is an interactive tool to support co-design activities. This demo focuses on a work-in-progress application during the conference for participants to explore the design space of smart connected devices by rolling the dice in different rooms for exploring serendipitous qualities of smart connected sensations.

Exploring the Playfulness of Tools for Co-Designing Smart Connected Devices: A Case Study with Blind and Visually Impaired Students

In this paper we compare two tools for co-designing smart connected devices on their playfulness. First littleBits, a commercially available tool and Loaded Dice, a self developed tool, are introduced. Second frameworks for comparing the playfulness of such tools are briefly reviewed. We then report on co-design sessions we conducted with blind and visually impaired students and compare those sessions on the playfulness of the two tools. It is shown how tools that engage in playful exploration sustain successful co-design sessions, while tools with a lower level of playfulness constrain such co-design sessions to an extent where more functional and less imaginative design concepts are produced.

Sensing Home: Participatory Exploration of Smart Sensors in the Home

More and more things in the home are sensor equipped and connected to an all encompassing Internet of Things (IoT). These »smart« things may offer novel ways to interact but also raise questions around their social implications. While participatory research on IoT for the smart city has shown that technically functioning IoT toolkits are valuable research tools, surprisingly few such toolkits exist for participatory research on the smart home. Thus, we have developed the toolkit »Sensing Home« to involve people into designing and understanding use and context of IoT in the home. We will report on the design, development, and subsequent field studies of Sensing Home. Three use cases will be presented, to discuss how Sensing Home enabled several modes of participatory exploration. The first use case reports on people developing custom sensor applications within their homes. The second use case describes how students appropriated Sensing Home for empirical in-the-wild studies of smart sensing in the home. For the third use case, Sensing Home was deployed in households to explore and to make sense of collected sensor data together with inhabitants.

Sensing Home: Designing an Open Tool That Lets People Collect and Interpret Simple Sensor Data from Their Homes

Abstract The Internet of Things in the home is a design space with huge potential. With sensors getting smaller and cheaper, smart sensor equipped objects will become an integral, preinstalled part of the future home. With this article we will reflect on Sensing Home, a design tool to explore sensors in the home together with people. Sensing Home allows people to integrate sensors and connectivity into mundane domestic products in order to make them smart. As such, it can be used by people to experience and explore sensors in the home and daily life. They may explore possible use cases, appropriate sensor technology, and learn about this technology through use. At the same time people may also be empowered to understand the issues and implications of sensors in the home. We present the design rationale of Sensing Home, five usage examples of how Sensing Home allowed people to explore sensor technology, and the deployment of Sensing Home together with a self-developed group discussion method to empower people to understand the benefits and pitfalls of sensors in their home. The article ends with a brief reflection whether Sensing Home is a probe or a toolkit.

Bricks, Blocks, Boxes, Cubes, and Dice: On the Role of Cubic Shapes for the Design of Tangible Interactive Devices

Cubic shapes play an astonishing role in the design of tangible interactive devices. Due to our curiosity for this widespread design preference lasting over thirty years, we constituted a literature survey of papers, books and products since the late 1970s. Out of a corpus of fourty-seven papers, books and products that propose cubic shapes for tangible interactive devices we trace the origins of cubicle tangibles and highlight the rationale for their application. Through a comparative study, we analyze the properties of this shape for tangible interaction design and classify these along the themes of: Manipulation as Input, Placement in Space as Input, Arrangement, Multifunctionality, Randomness, Togetherness & Variations, Physical Qualities, Container, and Pedestal for Output. We propose a taxonomy for cubic shaped tangible interactive devices based on the reviewed contributions, in order to support researchers and designers in their future work of designing cubic shaped tangible interactive devices.

Wicked, Open, Collaborative: Why Research through Design Matters for HCI Research

Abstract In contrast to the first and second wave of Human Computer Interaction, the third wave grapples with wicked problems. However, re-solutions to wicked problems embodied in artifacts frame and change the understanding of the problem itself. Research through Design (RtD) is a constructive methodology to understand this interplay of problem framing through designing artifacts. RtD is also suited to resurface the theory within those artifacts through annotation. These annotations expose and emphasize qualities, values and assumptions held within artifacts by its creators. In addition to those modes for annotation, we will suggest two additional abstract frames through which RtD artifacts can be further annotated: Open Research Agenda and Interdisciplinarity. We will apply both frames to one research artifact, Loaded Dice to distill qualities from this artifact’s framing. Through this we will show how creating and deploying an artifact can change its environment which also includes its creators.

Sensor-Probes zur partizipativen Entwicklung für das Internet der Dinge

Wie können vernetzte Produkte für das „Smart Home“ unter Einbeziehung von Verwenderinnen und Verwendern gestaltet werden? Der Beitrag diskutiert diese Frage unter Rückgriff auf das Konzept „situierter Daten“, das in einer methodischen Kombination von Sensordaten und den sozialen Praktiken der Akteure und Akteurinnen besteht. Zur Umsetzung dieser Methodik wird ein dreiteiliges System aus vernetzten Sensoren, Cultural Probe-Studie und (Gruppen-) Diskussionsformat präsentiert.

Bausteine des personalisierten Video Publishing

Zusammenfassung Die zunehmende Menge an Quellen audiovisueller Medien vor allem jenseits des klassischen TV erfordert schon allein aus Quantitätsgründen eine auf die Interessen der Zuschauer adaptierbare Präsentationsform. Hinzu kommen Kriterien wie Zeit- und Ortsunabhängigkeit sowie natürlich inhaltliche Gesichtspunkte. Bedenkt man ein Gesamtsystem zur personalisierten Veröffentlichung audiovisueller Medien, so muss es aus verschiedenen technologischen Bausteinen bestehen, die innerhalb der Informatik meist in unterschiedlichen fachlichen Bereichen beheimatet sind. Es werden zwei solcher Bausteine vorgestellt: Die semi-automatische Annotation sowie Produktion und Playout unterschiedlicher Medienströme. Abstract The increasing amount of audiovisual media, especially beyond the traditional TV needs presentations adaptable to the users needs. This is due to quantity as well as criteria such as time and location independence, and of course substantive aspects. Given an overall system for the personalized publication of audiovisual media, it must consist of various technological components that are usually located in different professional fi elds of computer science. We present two such elements: the semi-automatic annotation as well as production and playout of different media streams.