4. Research areas

There are four areas that most of UbiComp research falls into:

1. Public and Work environments13

2. Home environments (i.e. displays on refridgerator)

3 Mobile environments (ie. portable phones)

4. Personal information (PDA's)

Two areas of study that overlap the above four are: 1. CSCW environments (collaboration over a network) (seeQuicktime movie) and 2. Calm technology (increasing peripheral reach) 14 These two topics specifically relate to the subgoals of UbiComp: location and periphery. Calm technology is reflected in several examples, specifically the Dangling String (see Appendix),

where a hanging string is affected by bits of information travelling across it. This string makes bits and information visual through motion, sound and touch. The way to become attune to more information is to attend to it less: to let it happen and become accostumed to it. And as we learn to design calm technology, we will hopefully enrich not only our space of artifacts, but also our opportunities for being with other people and communication.

Four examples of Calm Technology artifacts:

1. Dangling String
2. Space in architecture: Inner office windows- considering windows as an open, inviting environment to emulate in the transfer of information15
3. Internet Multicast- MBone- allowing several people to work on the same project at the same time
4. Active badge16 system provides a means of locating people within a building simply by determining the location of their Active Badge. It transmits a infrared signal every 10 seconds, that is read by networked sensors within the building.