Reading Response

Moving on From Weiser’s Vision of Calm Computing: Engaging UbiComp Experiences

Rogers did point out some of the design issues in the current ubiquitous design, but I disagree with the conclusion that the issues are directional rather than technical. I think the ability to make decisions for human and the ability to enhance human’s capabilities are both important. With the increasing number of new devices and new ways of interactions such as social networking sties being introduced to everyday lives, people are required to make more and more decisions. And for some people, even a simple decision such as what to have for dinner is hard. Remember what happened to Windows Vista’s User Account Control (UAC)? When asking the users to make a decision whenever a potential threat is encountered not only just annoying the users, but also making users to ignore the decision and leaving the computer unprotected. Not all decisions are bad, human do enjoy the freedom of making decisions. People who never vote in a president election still enjoy having the right to vote. That’s why the power to override the computer’s decisions in ubiquitous computing is important.

Rogers did point out many great challenges that the ubiquitous computing is facing. How to make things work perfectly in a context? Maybe the answer is impossible, but that is not our goal anyway. Our job is to make the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Group Coordination and Negotiation through Spatial Proximity Regions around Mobile Devices on Augmented Tabletops.

The paper showed using the proximity regions around a mobile phone to define the interaction with another device. The interesting part is that they used visuals to help people to understand the region boundaries. Their user studies showed that people like the projected regions (PR) method the best. My interpretation is that people know what distances to set when interacting with other people under different circumstances. The correct distance between devices are not clear. In other words, people don’t know what is the correct distance to set when having an explicit goal such as sharing a photo. Having a clear marked boundary can reduce the level of uncertainties.