As Markus mentioned in a previous post we’re currently having a deeper look at the Internet of Things (enter your favorire buzzword here) phenomenon. Meanwhile we prefer using the term new ecology of things (shaped by the Media Design Program @ Art Center College of Design) when talking about this subject. Because ecology is not just about things; it describes a shared ecosystem – a shared space where both, humans and things meet and interact.
We used our latest Friday’s lab time to share our current insights and findings with the whole team. To get things rolling we introduced some special guests. We had a look at two interesting talks of Tim Berners Lee and Rafi Haladjian. Secondly we also had a look at some of our recent findings to get the conversation started. I’ll try to sum things up a bit and share some of my random thoughts that came to my mind during our disussion.
It’s happening right now
What was very important for all of the team members was the ethic side of this story (’All these objects saving all my data. Being connected with everything all the time. How will this affect my life? ‘). But I’d like to point out that this is not about specific kind of technology which is ‘good’ or ‘evil’. It’s currently more like a grass roots approach that is happening right now. So just like electricity is a commodity right now, smart objects will become a commodity in the future.
Design is important: Let’s create a human IoT
In my opinion one of the most important questions that needs to be tackled is ‘How can this technology be used to simplify? To improve? To enable new kind of rich interactions?’ And I have to say that I’m pretty thrilled about the possibilities.
As a designer you can use this technology to enable more human interactions. Getting people away from the screen and letting them interact with smart, connected, physical objects is a great opportunity that’s made possible by this ‘new ecology’.
Interaction Design will change
The field of interaction design will heavily be affected by these trends. Cause it’s not just about designing communication between a human and a single screen. It’s about designing interactions between humans and huge set of smart objects. And it’s about designing intelligent filters for the huge data sets that are being collected by them.
Great opportunities for our clients
We think the Internet of Things will enable great business opportunities for all of our clients and partners. So it’s not a big surprise that we’ll keep on tackling this subject and digging deeper into the world of interconnected things.
So let’s finish this post with two quotes of John Thackara that fit quite nice into this context and came to my mind during the discussion:
“We cherish the fact that people are innately curious, playful and creative. We therefore suspect that technology is not going to go away: it’s too much fun.”
“We will deliver value to people – not deliver people to systems. We will give priority to human agency, and will not treat humans as a ‘factor’ in some bigger picture.
Thanks for summing this up Matthias!
I quite like the term “ecology” in this respect, as it is really neither about the “internet” nor “things” themselves, but new forms of networked spaces, environments and interactions being generated through such connections.
Usman Hague, one of the founding members of Pachube (btw a very promising web platform and API for real-time networking of sensor data) is using the example of Prof. L. E. Mount’s The Climatic Physiology of the Pig to make this very point. For him, it is not necessarily the “hardware” like built structures, objects, or devices that matter, but rather the “soft” elements (temperature, sound or smell…) that might have influence on the usage of a certain space. To make use of, connect and control these soft aspects means designing an “ecology of environments”, not just networked objects.
Talking John Thackara: he also made some interesting points on this in a recent post on the Doors of Perception blog.
Thankx, Klaus for the inspiring links! Pachube is also on our watchlist. The article you mentioned is really a nice summary of the service and the strategy behind it.
Hey Matthias, if you are up for an interesting read check Adam Greenfield’s book “Everyware” for a nice introduction to the implications of ubiquitous computing.
Hi Mirko! Thankx for the tip. It’s actually on our wishlist. So now that we have a valuable third party opinion we can order it from amazon. :-)
Seems like you have already done a lot of research about this stuff in Weimar. Maybe we can organize some kind of knowledge exchange between Stuttgart and Weimar? :-) What do you say? You can contact me any time if you’re interested…
Greetings from Stuttgart.
P.S.: We’re currently diggin into technologies that might become important in this context. Exploring XMPP as a possibility to do real time conversations between humans and objects. I’ll try to post an update…
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