Johan Georges Prosper Criel

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.

Deconstructing casensa: The caemp context-aware empowering platform

In this paper, we deconstruct Casensa, a context-aware assisted living prototype created by Bell Labs, based on critical user participation criteria for context awareness. Casensa supports elderly with early dementia and their caregivers, providing a mechanism for more independent living. In the first part of the paper, we present refined and improved critical participation criteria based on lessons learned from user research. From this, we extract the generic design considerations that guided the design of the platform on which Casensa is actually built: the Context-Aware Empowering Platform (CAEMP). Understanding, configuring, and controlling a self-created intelligent environment form the central topics of the reworked criteria. Next, we discuss how these criteria are translated within Casensa by providing several means to let end users create their own rule-based smart behavior using their own (evolving) language and by allowing the exchange of smart behavior. In the final part of the paper, we demonstrate the technological impact on architecture and an implementation of applying the defined criteria.

Empowering elderly end-users for ambient programming: the tangible way

This paper presents a novel tangible interaction technique leveraging Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled Magnetic Cards to empower elderly end-users in programming their pervasive computing environment. Following a user-centric design approach through cultural probes, we have explored the design space of possible programming opportunities for elderly users. Accordingly we have identified interaction techniques and candidate artefacts that could offer this user group a seamless programming experience for augmenting their ambient environment with software driven personalized behavior. Three aspects of programming - behavior generation, modification and (de) activation are addressed using two tangible user interfaces - i) NFC cards for smart behavior creation and modification and ii) a digital memo board as a placeholder for (de) activation of intelligent behavior. A qualitative feasibility study suggests that the proposed approach is simple, comprehensive and has the potential to be easily incorporated in the everyday routines of the elderly end-users.

Towards abundant DiY service creativity

A profound impact of the Web2.0 lies in its power to transform skilled users into service providers, resulting in more complex value networks. As recently traditional “operated” network infrastructure is complemented with huge amounts of connected smart objects (the Internet-of-Things), the same mass creativity can be made applicable to smart, context-enabled services with real-world interactivity, collaboratively created by end users with varying degrees of programming skills. We report on a vision and solutions addressing easy, do-it-yourself service creation by the masses in an Internet-of-Things-enabled world, from which we discuss the (i) value networks, (ii) enabling technology framework, and (iii) domain-specific proof-of-concepts.

Combining lively sensed bubbles into sparkling applications

Sensor-driven applications typically analyze sensor data to check whether certain conditions are met and then execute actions accordingly. Creating such applications is often a work of precision as the developer must deal with diverse sensor sources (e.g. built-in hardware or networked sensors), fuzziness of sensor data (e.g. inferring movement from location coordinates), reuse of sensors in different contexts, etc. Moreover, inefficient use of sensor subscriptions can rapidly drain the battery of a mobile device. To better deal with these difficulties, we present the concept of sensor bubbles and sparks: pieces of meaningful sensor data that bubble up in an environment and trigger new application states. By adding OSGi-alike management features to bubbles and sparks, we show how they can be leveraged to build powerful sensor-driven applications.

Prototyping Smart Objects for the Mass

Several do-it-yourself projects and toolkits aim to empower people in bringing intelligence into their personal environments. This is particularly challenging because there is still a large gap between people who can imagine how technology could simplify their life and engineers who can actually make things behave smart. To unite both camps, we present a platform that enables ordinary people to become the inventor of their own smart objects, assisted by a community of field experts. Our software, called D-TALE, fosters the creativity of people by giving them a forum where they can express and prototype their innovative ideas. Moreover, D-TALE gives rise to a crowd-sourcing platform where non-technical users can request developers to provide an implementation for their project. Our approach is outlined in a preliminary case study.