Lars Erik Holmquist

Smart-Its Friends: A Technique for Users to Easily Establish Connections between Smart Artefacts

Ubiquitous computing is associated with a vision of everything being connected to everything. However, for successful applications to emerge, it will not be the quantity but the quality and usefulness of connections that will matter. Our concern is how qualitative relations and more selective connections can be established between smart artefacts, and how users can retain control over artefact interconnection. We propose context proximity for selective artefact communication, using the context of artefacts for matchmaking. We further suggest to empower users with simple but effective means to impose the same context on a number of artefacts. To prove our point we have implemented Smart-Its Friends, small embedded devices that become connected when a user holds them together and shakes them.

UbiComp 2002: Ubiquitous Computing

Mobile and Context-Aware Systems.- Context-Aware Computing: A Test Case.- ComicDiary: Representing Individual Experiences in a Comics Style.- Mobile Reality: A PDA-Based Multimodal Framework Synchronizing a Hybrid Tracking Solution with 3D Graphics and Location-Sensitive Speech Interaction.- Rememberer: A Tool for Capturing Museum Visits.- User Studies and Design.- Issues in Personalizing Shared Ubiquitous Devices.- User Study Techniques in the Design and Evaluation of a Ubicomp Environment.- Change Blind Information Display for Ubiquitous Computing Environments.- Supporting Human Activities - Exploring Activity-Centered Computing.- Pereceptual Interfaces and Responsive Environments.- Perceptual Components for Context Aware Computing.- Face-Responsive Interfaces: From Direct Manipulation to Perceptive Presence.- Vision-Based Face Tracking System for Large Displays.- The FindIT Flashlight: Responsive Tagging Based on Optically Triggered Microprocessor Wakeup.- ForSe FIElds - Force Sensors for Interactive Environments.- Sharing and Accessing Information - Public and Private.- Approximate Information Flows: Socially-Based Modeling of Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing.- The Personal Server: Changing the Way We Think about Ubiquitous Computing.- QueryLens: Beyond ID-Based Information Access.- Pin&Play: Networking Objects through Pins.- Social Aspects of Using Large Public Interactive Displays for Collaboration.- A Privacy Awareness System for Ubiquitous Computing Environments.- Location, Location, Location.- A Hybrid Location Model with a Computable Location Identifier for Ubiquitous Computing.- A Novel Broadband Ultrasonic Location System.- Location of Mobile Devices Using Networked Surfaces.- SmartMoveX on a Graph - An Inexpensive Active Badge Tracker.- A Generic Location Event Simulator.- Sensors and Applications.- PlantCare: An Investigation in Practical Ubiquitous Systems.- Context Acquisition Based on Load Sensing.- Proactive Instructions for Furniture Assembly.- WearNET: A Distributed Multi-sensor System for Context Aware Wearables.- Using Low-Cost Sensing to Support Nutritional Awareness.

Performing a check-in: emerging practices, norms and 'conflicts' in location-sharing using foursquare

Location-sharing services have a long history in research, but have only recently become available for consumers. Most popular commercial location-sharing services differ from previous research efforts in important ways: they use manual check-ins to pair user location with semantically named venues rather than tracking; venues are visible to all users; location is shared with a potentially very large audience; and they employ incentives. By analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with foursquare users and 47 survey responses, we gained insight into emerging social practices surrounding location-sharing. We see a shift from privacy issues and data deluge, to more performative considerations in sharing ones location. We discuss performance aspects enabled by check-ins to public venues, and show emergent, but sometimes conflicting norms (not) to check-in.

Pin&Play: the surface as network medium

Integrating appliances in the home through a wired network often proves to be impractical: routing cables is usually difficult, changing the network structure afterward even more so, and portable devices can only be connected at fixed connection points. Wireless networks are not the answer either: batteries have to be regularly replaced or changed, and what they add to the devices size and weight might be disproportionate for smaller appliances. In Pin&Play, we explore a design space in between typical wired and wireless networks, investigating the use of surfaces to network objects that are attached to it. This article gives an overview of the network model, and describes functioning prototypes that were built as a proof of concept.

Transfer scenarios: grounding innovation with marginal practices

Transfer scenarios is a method developed to support the design of innovative interactive technology. Such a method should help the designer to come up with inventive ideas, and at the same time provide grounding in real human needs. In transfer scenarios, we use marginal practices to encourage a changed mindset throughout the design process. A marginal practice consists of individuals who share an activity that they find meaningful. We regard these individuals not as end-users, but as valuable input in the design process. We applied this method when designing novel applications for autonomous embodied agents, e.g. robots. Owners of unusual pets, such as snakes and spiders, were interviewed - not with the intention to design robot pets, but to determine underlying needs and interests of their practice. The results were then used to design a set of applications for more general users, including a dynamic living-room wall and a set of communicating hobby robots.

Business Models in the Mobile Ecosystem

The mobile ecosystem is constantly changing. The roles of each actor are uncertain and the question how each actor cooperates with each other is of interest of researchers both in academia and industry. In this paper we examine the mobile ecosystem from a business perspective. We used five mobile companies as case studies, which were investigated through interviews and questionnaire surveys. The companies covered different roles in the ecosystem, including network operator, device manufacturer, and application developer. With our empirical data as a starting point, we analyze the revenue streams of different actors in the ecosystem. The results will contribute to an understanding of the business models and dependencies that characterize actors in the current mobile ecosystem.

Integrating students' mobile technology in higher education

This paper suggests that integration of students own everyday technology in educational activities is a promising theme for development of mobile learning. As students bring technology, which they already use for their everyday communication, information management and networking, educators have the possibility to explore this networked distributed platform for pedagogical purposes. We report on a study where mobile phones and Wikis were involved in higher education. However, this paper does not suggest using Wikis or mobile phones in particular. It suggests looking into the mobile and ubiquitously available technologies that the students already have and are familiar with, and integrating these into the activities in higher education.

Gifts from friends and strangers : A study of mobile music sharing

Mobile technology has turned the traditionally collective activity of enjoying nmusic into an often private one. New technologies such as wireless ad hoc networks nhave the potential to re-connect listeners who are now separated by headphones. We nreport on a field study of Push!Music, a novel mobile music sharing system . Push!Music nallows both manual and automatic sharing of music between users through ad hoc nwireless networking, and also provides a social awareness of other users nearby. The nsystem was used by 13 subjects for three weeks. In post-study interviews, we identified nfour categories of results: social awareness, sharing music with friends, sharing music nwith strangers, and sharing automatically. Based on this, we present implications for ndesign that can be applied not only to mobile music sharing systems, but to mobile media nsharing in general: Allow division into active and passive use; enhance the awareness of nwho, where and when; support reciprocity; and finally, support identity and impression nmanagement.

Mobile exploration of geotagged photographs

Columbus is a mobile application that lets users explore their surroundings through geotagged photographs, presented to them at the location they were taken. By moving around the physical world, the user unlocks photographs and gets to see and experience them in unison with their location. During two consecutive field trials, we investigated how the application was used and experienced and how photographs and locations are explored together. We found that previous experience with the surroundings people was exploring affected how they experienced the localized content. We report on the system’s design and implementation, the trials as well as resulting insights that can be used by other developers of locative media applications.

Ubiquitous music

As I write this, I am a guest researcher at Nottingham University in the U.K., staying at a grungy teacher’s flat. In such circumstances, having access to your own music makes life a lot more agreeable, but of course I could not bring my CD collection with me. Fortunately, by buying some small speakers and hooking them up to my iPod, I can now listen to my records even though I am hundreds of miles from where the discs are physically located. For music, the physical storage medium is becoming increasingly irrelevant, being replaced by devices that access bits on a hard-drive or streamed over a network. A combination of growing disc capacities, compression algorithms, and increasing bandwidth means we can have an almost limitless supply of music just about everywhere. By replacing corporate muzak and conservative radio schedules with portable MP3 players, online music stores, file sharing, ringtone downloads, and celebrity playlists, we herald the age of ubiquitous music. But as music becomes ubiquitous, how do we exploit the capabilities the new technology makes possible? And what should be included in the interaction design—the buttons on the physical box, the GUI, or the entire experience? Interaction design used to be about graphical interfaces, but when technology gets more personalized, it becomes less possible to stick to the traditional divide between software development and product design. Whereas the physical interface to the workstation has become standardized in the last 20 years, the field is still wide open for computational devices off the desktop. These products will be much smaller and less expensive than PCs, allowing for a lot more customization in hardware design. Apple’s iPod is a good example of this trend, as it successfully combines physical and virtual form. Whereas most manufacturers buy the hardware components or entire players from Asia and customize them with local software, the iPod is designed for consistent interaction from the bottom up. Crucially, this integration is not limited to the device itself; it entails the entire experience. The design of the iPod extends into cyberspace, incorporating the iTunes software that lets you transfer songs, buy new music, and share files with others in the same network. This seamless extension of interaction design from physical buttons, over on-screen GUI, to the Internet and beyond is an indicator of things to come. The iPod is an example of how the shape of the physical gadget serves to mediate a media experience that involves communication, content, and creativity. Other companies are surely waiting in the wings to introduce products that serve to deliver a similar mix (and the smart money is not so much on Microsoft as on Japanese and Korean mobile-phone manufacturers). But this is just the first step. By outfitting a por table media player with an extra sensor here, a little bit of networking there, researchers are already creating a ubiquitous music experience that makes the iPod feel as quaint as a cassette Walkman. Profound music experiences are often collective, be it playing in a band or dancing at a party. Yet a lot of music is experienced in isolation—if we turned up with a noisy Boombox on the subway, the other passengers would not be happy. New technology can break this isolation. For instance, tunA from Medialab Europe lets you eavesdrop on what people in the vicinity are listening to. The system, which runs on Wi-Fi-enabled PDAs, is a shared-music experience where each user effectively becomes their own little radio station. Similarly, O N T H E E D G E