Supporting Collaboration in the Deployment of Ubiquitous Computing Installations

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. The design context – domestic computing Playful artefacts with multiple interpretations Installations that raise awareness of the domestic environment

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. ECT in two slides (1) Configuring components Locating components

9. 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)

10. 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

11. 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 other’s 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

12. 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)

13. Specifying systems

14. 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

15. 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 • “I’ve 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

16. 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

17. 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?

18. 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”