1. Introduction
Ubiquitous computing (herein referred to as UbiComp, is a potential new paradigm in the making. With technological advances in communication and networking expediating development, developers and visionaries are attempting to create a world that would augment the current world we live in. Mark Weiser, the "father" of UbiComp, mentions in his papers referenced that the most profound technologies are those that disappear, actually falling in to the framework of ways in which we currently communicate and operate. An example of this having already occurred in society is the use of writing. We are surrounded by advertisements, writing on books, signs, and products, and rarely, do you ever sit down and become overwhelmed with the amount of writing in our society. A parallel discussion here involves the focus of calm technology, creating visible technology to make it invisible, which will be discussed in Section 4 Research.
Hedging on the goal of invisibility, is the hope for allowing the "interface" to be viewable any time and anywhere the user needs it. This brings up issues of location, scale, networking, all of which will be addressed in Section 3 Technical Issues.
The subgoals of UbiComp, beyond invisibility, are several and will be addressed throughout the essay:
- locate the user -use location of computer to address needs of user
- expand the periphery- informing the user yet not overburdening -calls for a redefinition of Norman's affordances (not simply physical)
- maintain focus on relevant application- augment current tasks
- context-aware (example- emotion of user by evaluating facial expressions)3
When designing for ubiquity, Elizabeth Mynatt of Xerox PARC, has compiled a brief synopsis of 3 leveraging tasks to focus on. These are covered in Evaluating and Design.. In evaluating ubiquity (Section 6), invisibility is a key goal, and the evaluation must use techniques that refrain from discussing the technology, but rather analyze the cogition of the user. The original UbiComp shift came from PARC of psychology and anthropology studies relating to how people operate and communicate with technology and computers around them4. Social implications are not to be left out of this technological whirlwind and there are responsible developers taking on issues that will be briefly touched up on the final section, Future.