Supporting Collaboration in the Deployment of Ubiquitous Computing Installations

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Supporting Collaboration in the Deployment of
Ubiquitous Computing Installations

• Stefan Rennick Egglestone 1, Andy Boucher 2,
  Chris Greenhalgh 1, Jan Humble 1, Andy Law 2,
  Sarah Pennington 2 and Tom Rodden 1

1 University of Nottingham 2 Goldsmiths College,
University of London
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Presentation overview

• Introduce the people in our collaboration
• Introduce the design context in which we work
• Describe our original motivation for using a
  toolkit
• A (very brief) introduction to the toolkit we
  have been using
• Describe one example of how we have used a
  toolkit to construct an installation
• Make observations about the role of the toolkit
  in this collaboration
• Lessons learned what our toolkit is useful for
  and what it is not

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People
Andy Boucher Goldsmiths College,
London Background in industrial design, and
currently researching the role of users in the
design process.
Andy Law Goldsmiths College, London Also a
background in industrial design, and has some
programming and electronics skills.
Jan Humble University of Nottingham (but based
in Barcelona) Involved in multiple areas of
computing research, including domestic computing,
e-Science and the semantic web.
Stefan Rennick Egglestone University of
Nottingham Background in commercial programming,
and more recently e-Science and domestic
computing projects.
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The design context domestic computing
Playful artefacts with multiple interpretations
Installations that raise awareness of the
domestic environment
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Original toolkit arguments (technical)

• Many technical challenges in putting together
  such artefacts/installations
• Communicating with devices
• Networking
• Logging usage data
• Significant expertise in the Equator project
  developed through previous work
• Organize previous work into a toolkit for use in
  future work
• Such a toolkit can then help speed up the
  iterative processes involved in design by
  supporting rapid installation assembly

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The reality

• Substantial efforts required to modify aspects of
  toolkit for a particular context
• So assembly is not as rapid as we had hoped!
• But ...
• 1. our toolkit has simplified the process of
  agreeing on specifications for systems
• 2. our toolkit has supported the transference of
  skills between developers
• 3. our toolkit has simplified the division of
  labour in our projects

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Our toolkit use

• Extended period of use of the Equator Component
  Toolkit (ECT) in constructing various
  artefacts/installations
• more than 2 years!
• Used in a collaborative process which has been
  led by designers
• who have primary responsibility for experience
  design / deployment / evaluation
• Support from developers familiar with the toolkit
• An ongoing collaboration

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ECT in two slides (1)
Configuring components
Locating components
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ECT in two slides (2)

• ECT supplied with a large set of pre-written
  components (80)
• Control devices
• Clients for electronic services (email, RSS, web)
• Components used to specify system behaviour
• Easy to add a new component to ECT
• Just write a JavaBean!
• Components can also be scripted
• BeanShell scripting language
• Processing scripting language (heavily used by
  art and design communities)

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The local barometer (mature ECT development)

• Aim to raise awareness of the social context
  surrounding a residence
• Measure wind-speed / direction
• Use this to select a set of postcodes
• Rip adverts from Loot website within a certain
  distance of these postcodes
• Display onto a set of situated displays
  positioned around the home

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Specifying components (1)

• Experimentation with different types of display
  devices and components Particles, Phidgets,
  Mobile Phones
• I have made a Processing component that shifts
  the co-ordinates of where the text is placed
  based on a time counter to give a scrolling
  effect (Andy B.)
• experimentation, making use of Processing
  integration and existing components
• I was wondering if you could make some
  modifications to the LCD component as we are
  trying to make it scroll text and are
  encountering a few problems (Andy B.)
• sensible division of labour based on knowledge of
  each others skills
• To make this clearer, I have attached three
  movie files (Andy B.)
• use of materials with which designers are
  familiar to help specify components

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Specifying components (2)

• I have already sent you some array based
  components in the form of unwrapped processing
  code. I'm unsure of how to write these as
  components because of the array syntax. (Andy
  L.)
• Designers confident enough to write scripts to
  demo functionality but not confident enough to
  use these scripts in final versions of
  installation
• Advert Buffer a new component that is being
  requested This is similar to the existing Array
  Player but with some changes. (Andy B.)
• Existing components are a useful resource when
  specifying new components
• Just though I should mention that I have added
  your template component to CVS, and it will
  appear in the next release of ECT that we do.
  (Stef)
• Designers have learnt how to develop simple
  components (other examples include logic gates
  etc)

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Specifying systems
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The role of the developer

• I've converted the postcode engine into a proper
  component ... It assumes that the center is
  fairly static and therefore most of the
  calculations are done when you set the center
  easting and northing. That way, it calculates the
  postcodes quite quickly when the speed and
  direction change (Alastair)
• Developers are often better at refining the
  details of component implementations
• There are a number of ways to make such a
  component a timer component with the stuff we
  already have (Jan)
• Developers can do end user programming because
  they understand at a deep level how the
  components work
• Please, can we make ECT bitmap driven. I've
  spent ages digging around to try and make ECT
  look nicer and I didn't get very far.
• Developers are the best people to make changes to
  the toolkit itself

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Transfering skills

• Scripting provides a simple route into component
  development for those who have not developed
  software before
• Simple component model allows designers to
  improve development skills
• Ive attached an improved template component to
  this email, and some logic gate components (Andy
  L.)
• Observations of how designers use toolkits has
  helped developers learn design skills

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Dividing labour

• Designers prototype components, developers make
  them reliable and resilient
• Designers suggest improvements to toolkit,
  developers implement them
• Developers demonstrate basics of device
  capabilities, designers work out what to do with
  them
• When performing real installations
• Developers focus on tricky technical details
• Designers piece together the rest of the system

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Lessons learned

• Very little visual programming employed by
  designers only a very few components
  (ArrayPlayer, Timer) regularly re-used
• Why?
• There is a limitation to the number of components
  that can sensibly be used in a graph
• Any solutions
• Graph paradigm only really suited to reactive
  installations
• Eg perform an action on receipt of a particular
  event
• Does this limitation affect the design process?

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More information

• Interaction design website
• http//www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/interaction/
• ECT website
• http//www.equator.ac.uk/technology/ect
• This UbiSys paper
• Nurturant technologies workshop
• The parent-child companion a context-aware
  home exploration
• Previous UbiSys paper (2004)
• A toolkit to support rapid construction of
  ubicomp environments