Byte-Sized Potential: Can Compassion & Citizenship Go Viral?
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Defining smart productsDefining smart products
Derek NicollDerek Nicoll
Why define ‘smart’, ‘intelligent’ or ‘information intensive’ products
Definitions serve as conceptual apparatus whereby we can develop a shared sensibility about a phenomena, event, or object
Lack of a shared definition means that different people, institutions, agencies etc. have different perceptions, expectations and anticipations regarding the same thing
Lack of shared definitions can lead to interesting avenues of innovation: example: video formats
But lack of shared definition can lead to incompatibilities, competition or even misconceptions
There is yet no fixed, universal definition of smart technology
Those products addressing a function, not intrinsically information oriented in nature, exhibiting dynamic, real time
interaction with users, and making use of considerable information processing or
manipulation. (Fleck, Molina and Nicoll, 1997)
Some key technologies :Sensors, transducers and associated signal processing methods
Self-learning adaptive systems and neural networks: Chips
Mechanotronics, e.g. robotics
Alternative input-output devices, e.g. bio-electric interfaces, tactile displays, gesture recognition
Efficient low volume manufacturing technologies
Key ApplicationsManufacturing
Military
Retail
Logistics
Homes and lifestyles
But why smart products?Perennial demand to make tasks easier, more time efficient, simpler, frictionless, cost-effective, comfortable - all human perceptions of use - we all want life to be less arduous, more delightful: continuing the tradition of domestic labour-saving devices
An attempt to account for obvious deficiencies in current provisions or human capabilities (i.e. handicaps, lack of expertise)
PR opportunities (smart products make good news print)
Changes in the consumer/market landscape, cultural trends, changing demographics etc.
Should smart products involve more than technological innovation?
Are technologists are running out of ‘more obvious’ targets? In an age of ‘user-focused design and ‘customer-led’ marketing smart products do appear unabashedly technology driven.
– the search for new applications for digital technology– desire to exploit advances in materials science
What distinguishes smart products? They are more than technological and design innovation The most distinguishing aspect of smart products is an
objective to seamlessly meet task and human requirements: They should not be ‘in your face’
To do this suggests a design sensitivity matching technical potentials to both explicit and implicit user needs and requirements
We are speaking here of a need then for designers to have at hand significantly richer knowledge of the contingencies of use and usage than has previously been demanded by design products
The human element of machine-human interaction?
The circumstances motivating and shaping particular instances of use
The users perception of ease of use (explicit) or assistance to perform a task (implicit) - usability
The circumstances motivating and shaping patterns of use i.e. usage
The perception, engendering and institution of usefulness
There are always three basic ways in which technologies are used and incorporated into the lives of their users . . .
As intended and anticipated by designers and marketers -
useIntentions and anticipation of use and value
Simple and mature technologies
Tin Opener
Purpose defined by producers. But even a tin opener could be used as a weapon
In ways which contradict these intentions and anticipations
use
Knowledge and anticipation of use and value
Radical and emergent technologies
Telephone
Purpose was defined largely by use and users
In a much more ‘negotiated’ fashion
use
Domestication
a need for greater
awareness of use and users by designers and
producers
Intentions and anticipation of use and value
Developers
User-consumers
The human element of machine-human interaction Technologies, if successful, if they ‘fit’, are
situated, naturalised, phenomena They not only contribute to the environments of
everyday life, but support, and through their design, define lifestyle and activity
But how do they become ‘domesticated’? Socio- cultural factors i.e
• Rules governing use
• Social acceptability of use
Cognitive- psychological factors i.e.• Needs motivating use
• Feelings about use
Problem - the time, space and place of contexts
Context of design: designers inevitably begin by designing for themselves - their conceptions of what is needed - constrained by what is available - what is known to them
Context of use: The interaction between people and their domestic contexts . . .has been neglected in both architectural and psychological circles. Yandell (1995)
So the need for contextual studies – independent evaluation of design, efficiency (of machine or human?) with respect to task
Herbert Simons ‘ant’ - complexity may reside in the environment - people often think of the environment to be something to be ‘acted upon’ rather than something to be ‘interacted with’
The problems of tacit knowledge - Polanyi (1966) demonstrates that we can know more than we can say: humans make excellent use of tacit knowledge. anaphora, ellipses, unstated shared understanding are all used in the service of our collaborative relationships with each other, and how we define things and tasks on a social level
Needs can only be revealed by analysing conflicts and opportunities of everyday life. Because most innovations have roots in existing technology, observing and analysing problems and possibilities of existing technology can provide insights not only for technical innovation, but use innovation
But the nature of smart products emphasise the need for developers to ‘get closer still’ to consumer-users as true for
next generation Tamagotchis as it is to anti-lock brakes and smart dust
Human and social factors and the time, space and place of contexts
During the early 90s HCI researchers began to show an interest in context, situation and environment. This led to the development of usability studies which took more notice of context – i.e. Contextual Inquiry (Holtzblatt and Jones; 1992), Contextual Usability (Nicoll, 1994)
Contexts – individual, cognitive, experiential, social, political, physical, cultural, educational etc.
Back to the technology - taxonomy of smart products
•Function
•Information
•Time
•Interaction
•Information processing
“Those products addressing a function, not intrinsically information oriented in nature, exhibiting dynamic, real time interaction with users, and making use of considerable information processing or manipulation.”
Function Smart products, as opposed to orthodox products - may work best
when their functionality is not consciously registered by the user - example: intelligent lifts. This may be a problem for evaluation.
A smart product can interface people with people, people with organisations, people with their environments, between people and tasks. As such they must be acknowledged as a social as well as individual and personal technology - example: smart housing for aged or disabled where human monitoring and observation is needed
In some cases smart products short circuit human activity, in others they augment and even extend activity - example: ‘intuitive’ automation self-diagnostic and repair systems or intelligent help systems
Information People and their lifestyles, objects and
their biographies, generate useful information for design and business
Behavioural sciences examine the past to describe and explain behaviour while designers and new users have a strong future orientation
Capturing patterns and styles of use can inform new product ideas, anticipating uses more accurately
Evolutionary function and features depend on a constant flow of data and information
Stock control, post-Fordist manufacture, customization all rely strongly on accurate information flows
Time Real time - response to
use and usage or/and to immediate and changing environmental conditions.
Dynamic and non-linear - real life use can through up some ‘spanners in the works’ for self-learning systems which would, like retail and manufacturing businesses prefer that use and consumption styles and patterns remained stable and predictable
Interaction & Information processing
Communication between technologies (scenarios and automation)
Communication mediated by technology - between the individual, outside agencies, services and other people (daily routines)
Communication between the technology and outside agencies (monitoring and surveillance)
Communication between the technologies and the individuals (personal habits and activities)
Smart products can be understood to communicate in a number of different ways . . .
So where are smart products - and come to that, where are we going?
Where are we going? “By his very success in inventing labor-saving
devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed . . . the notion that automation give any guarantee of human liberation is a piece of wishful
thinking.”Lewis Mumford - The Challenge of Renewal, 1951.
So where are smart products going?
Deturo-learning or learning II was originally suggested by Bateson (1972), with respect to evolution, and more recently by Argyris and Schön (1996) in their discussion of organisational learning
Technologies which learn and respond - that cocoon, enable,
contain - is this the new paradigm for design?
Complexity of processing independent of human intervention
Level of learning
Evolution of ‘smartness’
Smart products their ability to learn?
Learning 0
Learning 1
Learning II
Learning III
Smart products their ability to learn?Level oflearning
Stimulus relationsto outcome
Technologyequivalent
Pavlovian Outcome
Learning 0 Hard-wired – oneto one stimulus-response
Hand held tools Salivating while eating food Direct response
Learning I Analogy – amapping ofstimulus toBehavior
Pressing abutton
Linking the sound of a bell toan anticipation of the arrival offood
Leaned response – based ontrial and error
Learning II Generalization –i.e. for the masses– linking stimulusto behaviors
Neural nets andautomatedtechnologieswith someability to learnfrom use, or oftheirenviroment
Linking other relevant soundsto salivation – i.e. Refrigeratordoor opening or thedevelopment of develop a finerdiscrimination i.e. higherpitched rings, or finding thatother behaviours such as sittingand begging results in a higherchance of being fed,
Generalizing what is learned toother instances
Learning III Customization –linking stimulus/esto a variety ofcontingencies
Smarttechnology?
Different sets of resultsoperating within different setsof occasions - Whatbehaviours, in what situations,are most likely to result in megetting fed?)
As the learner moves toLearning III, he or she is able tocodify those sets of choices andto actively choose fromdifferent sets in differentsituations in order toconsistently achieve a desiredoutcome.
Complexity of processing independent of, BUT RELEVANT TO human intervention
Level of learning
Evolution of ‘smartness’
Smart products their ability to learn?
Learning 0
Learning 1
Learning II
Learning III
The functionality of smart products is sensitive to their use and to changing
environmental (or use) conditions. They customize automatically or they interface customization. They may be
discretely intelligent or rendered intelligent by performing as part of a communication system or network.
Conclusion - Defining smart products help us to:
Fully or truly understand the technology - its potentials and possibilities to organise, assist, surprise and delight
Understand potential use value against richer and deeper understandings of possible and actual use contexts
Develop sensibilities towards open, flexible and approaches to innovation sensitive to real world needs. When human-human collaboration becomes human-computer-human co-active collaboration, we must address explicitly issues of tacit knowledge and the human unconscious in relation to function
Most importantly; realise how human and socio-cultural trends - such as the rise of the ‘always-on’ society and the ‘24-hour world’ begin to cocoon people. They drive new needs independent of and dependent upon emerging technology
Thank you