Dries De Roeck

I would DiYSE for it!: a manifesto for do-it-yourself internet-of-things creation

This paper presents a manifesto directed at developers and designers of internet-of-things creation platforms. Currently, most existing creation platforms are tailored to specific types of end-users, mostly people with a substantial background in or affinity with technology. The thirteen items presented in the manifesto however, resulted from several user studies including non-technical users, and highlight aspects that should be taken into account in order to open up internet-of-things creation to a wider audience. To reach out and involve more people in internet-of-things creation, a relation is made to the social phenomenon of do-it-yourself, which provides valuable insights into how society can be encouraged to get involved in creation activities. Most importantly, the manifesto aims at providing a framework for do-it-yourself systems enabling non-technical users to create internet-of-things applications.

Semiotic analysis of multi-touch interface design: The MuTable case study

Although multi-touch applications and user interfaces have become increasingly common in the last few years, there is no agreed-upon multi-touch user interface language yet. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the design of multi-touch user interfaces, this paper presents semiotic analysis of multi-touch applications as an interesting approach to gain deeper understanding of the way users use and understand multi-touch interfaces. In a case study example, user tests of a multi-touch tabletop application platform called MuTable are analysed with the Communicability Evaluation Method to evaluate to what extent users understand the intended messages (e.g., cues about interaction and functionality) the MuTable platform communicates. The semiotic analysis of this case study shows that although multi-touch interfaces can facilitate user exploration, the lack of well-known standards in multi-touch interface design and in the use of gestures makes the user interface difficult to use and interpret. This conclusion points to the importance of the elusive balance between letting users explore multi-touch systems on their own on one hand, and guiding users, explaining how to use and interpret the user interface, on the other.

Comparing user interaction with low and high fidelity prototypes of tabletop surfaces

This paper describes a comparative study between the usage of low-fidelity and a high-fidelity prototyping for the creation of multi-user multi-touch interfaces. The multi-touch interface presented in this paper allows users to collaboratively search for existing multimedia content, create new compositions with this content, and finally integrate it in a layout for presenting it. The study we conducted consists of a series of parallel user tests using both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes to inform the design of the multi-touch interface. Based on a comparison of the two test sessions, we found that one should be cautious in generalising high-level user interactions from a low towards a high-fidelity prototype. However, the low-fidelity prototype approach presented proved to be very valuable to generate design ideas concerning both high and low-level user interactions on a multi-touch tabletop.

Multi-user multi-touch setups for collaborative learning in an educational setting

In educational settings, current digital technologies often work counter-productively because people using them with separation and isolation. This paper describes a set of multi-touch multimedia interaction applications that were especially designed to enhance collaboration between users. We present the underlying framework for creating such applications. Our applications were created for supporting typical collaborative tasks performed by secondary students. We present our findings on the usage of these applications by the users in the settings of a secondary school classroom.

The DiY Smart Experiences Project

In this chapter we discuss the wide range of challenges in user-generated Internet of Things applications, as being worked on among the large consortium of the DiY Smart Experiences (DiYSE) project (DiYSE, ITEA2 08005). The chapter starts with a discussion on the context of ‘DiY’ as a phenomenon to be leveraged, and eco-awareness as an example application area. The main body of the chapter is devoted to the technical outline of the DiYSE architecture, starting at the lower Internet of Things layers of sensors, actuators and middleware, over the role of semantics in device and service interoperability, up to requirements for the service framework and the application creation process. Furthermore, the chapter adds considerations concerning tangible interaction in the smart space, assumed in Di- YSE both for the context of experiencing as well as shaping the user experience. With the chapter, we thus take a holistic view, sampling the range from lowerlayer technical implications of enabling DiY creation in the Internet of Things, up to the human-level aspects of creative communities as well as tangible interaction.

Do-it-yourself creation of pervasive, tangible applications

As technology advances and becomes more pervasive, the DiY (Do-it-Yourself) paradigm that emerged on the furniture & home decoration market in the 70s is now experiencing a second birth in the digital realm. Continuing from the prosumer paradigm, where people are allowed not only to surf a network obtaining content and information, but also (co-)create such elements themselves, the user-centered participation is expected to further increase beyond the Web 2.0 as we know it. In line with the supporting ITEA2 DiY Smart Experiences (DiYSE) project, this studio aims to offer participants the opportunity to create, design and share pervasive applications within the smart space ecosystem provided by the DiYSE framework and its development methodology.