Ben Bedwell

An information plane architecture supporting home network management

Home networks have evolved to become small-scale versions of enterprise networks. The tools for visualizing and managing such networks are primitive and continue to require networked systems expertise on the part of the home user. As a result, non-expert home users must manually manage non-obvious aspects of the network - e.g., MAC address filtering, network masks, and firewall rules, using these primitive tools. The Homework information plane architecture uses stream database concepts to generate derived events from streams of raw events. This supports a variety of visualization and monitoring techniques, and also enables construction of a closed-loop, policy-based management system. This paper describes the information plane architecture and its associated policy-based management infrastructure. Exemplar visualization and closed-loop management applications enabled by the resulting system (tuned to the skills of non-expert home users) are discussed.

Encouraging spectacle to create self-sustaining interactions at public displays

We present the first public trial of a novel mobile phone-public display application and discuss how key results from the trial can influence future designs of high visibility human-computer interactions. This paper describes how the design and deployment of the installation was engineered to utilise the single users interaction, both to attract participants and onlookers as well as to sustain a continuous flow of new participants. We present a series of significant ethnographic observations relating to the publics interaction with the installation during its use then discuss how these features contributed to the success of the installations original aims and how observations of unexpected behaviour offer insight into design strategies that can be employed to foster the role of participant as a crucial aspect of the overall spectacle.

Apportioning energy consumption in the workplace: a review of issues in using metering data to motivate staff to save energy

The UK government has set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions, and lowering energy demand within workplaces is important to help meet these. With the rollout of smart metres and the availability of more fine-grained energy monitoring equipment for the workplace, it is increasingly possible to disaggregate collective energy consumption and apportion this among building users. This article presents an interdisciplinary perspective on the rationale and feasibility of different approaches to apportionment to motivate staff to reduce energy consumption. Our review indicates greatest potential for energy saving when consumption is apportioned to small to medium-sized groups, rather than individuals or entire buildings, particularly when they represent existing communities to which staff members strongly identify. We highlight the complexity of technical, psychological, social and organisational factors that not only inspire, but also often confound, efforts to innovate in this area.

Supporting novel home network management interfaces with openflow and NOX

The Homework project has examined redesign of existing home network infrastructures to better support the needs and requirements of actual home users. Integrating results from several ethnographic studies, we have designed and built a home networking platform providing detailed per-flow measurement and management capabilities supporting several novel management interfaces. This demo specifically shows these new visualization and control interfaces (1), and describes the broader benefits of taking an integrated view of the networking infrastructure, realised through our routers augmented measurement and control APIs (2). Aspects of this work have been published: the Homework Database in Internet Management (IM) 2011 [3] and implications of the ethnographic results are to appear at the SIGCOMM W-MUST workshop 2011 [2]. Separate, more detailed expositions of the interface elements and system performance and implications are currently under submission at other venues. A partial code release is already available and we anticipate fuller public beta release by Q4 2011.

Future garden

The Eastern edge of Nottingham (UK) city centre is undergoing substantial restructuring, which will have a major impact on the people living in the area. Future Garden is an interactive story, delivered on a handheld PDA device, which explores the past, present and possible futures of Sneinton Market, one part of the area to be re-developed. This paper introduces Future Garden including its novel navigation interface based on video and self-reporting and some early results of the still ongoing evaluation.

Deepening Visitor Engagement with Museum Exhibits through Hand-crafted Visual Markers

Visual markers, in particular QR codes, have become widely adopted in museums to enable low cost interactive applications. However, visitors often do not engage with them. In this paper we explore the application of visual makers that can be designed to be meaningful and that can be created by visitors themselves. We study both the use of these markers as labels for portraits that link to audio recordings and as a mechanism for visitors to contribute their own reflections to the exhibition by drawing a marker and linking an audio comment. Our findings show visitors appreciated the use of the aesthetic markers and engaged with them at three levels -- physical placement, aesthetic content and digital content. We suggest that these different levels need to be considered in the design of future visiting systems, which make use of such markers, to ensure they are mutually supporting in shaping the experience.

The Role of Self-Reflection in Sustainability

Sustainability is a major call of all research and applied services. Mobile technology can offer innovative ways to address sustainability issues. Self-reflection -in interviews or surveys- is a well-applied data collection method within HCI and provides affordances to observe and transform human behavior by bringing new awareness. While sustainability and self-reflection have been researched and addressed widely within the HCI field, the potential links between them (and how one can influence the other via technology) has yet to be explored within MobileHCI settings. This workshop brings together a cross-domain group of individuals to explore and discuss the role of self-reflection in sustainability. We want to generate new insights regarding mobileHCI technologies, design and methods that have direct sustainable impact in the world.