Years ago, various UX gurus touted the coming of the ubiquitous computer– every device would have a computer built in and they would all talk to one another. Mark Weiser coined the term while at Xerox PARC in 1988 and Alan Kay of Apple called this the “Third Paradigm”. It began with mainframe computers (one compute -> many people), followed by the personal computer (one person -> one computer), bringing us to ubiquitous computing (one person -> many computers). Ubiquitous computing can be considered the opposite of virtual reality, rather than surrounding the person within a computer-generated environment, ubiquitous computing surrounds the individual with computers (in between, lies augmented reality). In other words, computers are made to live in our world and not the other way around. Donald Norman updated the term in 1999 and used the term invisible computer and information appliance to refer to the coming revolution of devices that that would have embedded computer chips and effortlessly communicate with one another.

To some degree that has happened, even if you disregard the multiple computers that most people own (desktop, laptop, netbook) even the simple electronic devices that surround us have considerable computing power. According to futurists, my toaster should be talking with my refrigerator to know what kind of bread I have and how I like it toasted or to notify my online grocer that I only had two slices left (some of the early predictions were pretty bizarre and stretched the definition of “usefulness”). But why did their prediction fail to materialize and we’re all living in remedial houses rather than the smarthouse we were promised? Even though my appliances are much smarter than the ones my parents had there is little chatter between my toaster, coffeemaker, or any other smart appliances in my household. Most of the things I own don’t really need to communicate with one another, nor do they have much to say to Net. In fact, most of devices don’t have much to say about anything. My refrigerator still doesn’t know when I’m almost out of orange juice, though, given Tropicana’s new packaging I wish it could tell me what kind I just bought and why it was not the one I wanted. Is ubiquitous computing just one more failed prediction like fifth generation computing (expert systems) or has ubiquitous computing shifting to something else?

Apple takes an interesting two-pronged approach to ubiquitous computing, instead of everything communicating with everything else, the iPhone says – “talk to me, and I’ll talk to those that need to know” and asks “no need for multiple devices, just give me a simple focused task and I can do that.” The latter approach is familiar to everyone who has ever downloaded an app from the iTunes Store, while the former is somewhat new and is made possible by the introduction of OS 3.0 and APIs that allow for easy communication with other devices. The application approach is akin to a universal Turing machine, and the API model is more like a universal interface. It’s not quite two-pronged, rather applications are developed that allow devices to integrate seamlessly with iPhone – I consider it a different enough model as to warrant it’s unique status. For example, Johnson & Johnson made a bit of splash at the Apple developer conference with their demo of LifeScan a tool that integrates a glucose monitor with the iPhone and provides a range of features from simple visualizations of historical data to food tracking to uploading data to your healthcare provider.

Whether or not one believes the hype surrounding LifeScan (is it vaporware or will it see production?), it’s easy to imagine a range of medical devices (or any category of devices) all communicating through the iPhone, all using the iPhone’s screen and its Samsung S5PC100 processor – one person, one user interface with many devices.

I’m not sure if Apple is going to be the one that finally surrounds us with computers or smart devices, but I think their model puts us in more control than the previous one of smart appliances “deciding” for us – when to order OJ, how to toast my bread, etc. My toaster can simply communicate with my iPhone, and I can set how the bread is toasted (silly ideas never really die, they just move around the ether). I think the future is looking less like Terminator Salvation and maybe more like Star Trek [Note: It is very hard to find good science fiction movies or shows that paint a bright picture].

–kipp

The set up

In October 2007, GE Energy signed a memorandum to deploy advanced energy delivery and metering technologies that will give residential and industrial consumers greater control over their energy usage and costs.  November 2007, Google announces investment in energy technologies marking the tipping point of a new era on our energy experience.  Just this month, Google revealed the iceberg tip of their Smart Meter consumer solution, harnessing the power of their analytic tool set, Google has settled in the keystone position of the smart meter user experience.

Earlier this month, Limina had the privilege to compete against leading technology consulting firms for a contract to research, design, deploy and test a consumer facing portal that would empower consumers to make the smart consumption decisions and, in the future, play a key role in consumption based home automation.

Much of how this future scenario is already in the works as demonstrated by LucidDesignGroup’s Building Dashboard product for schools, companies and homes.  With this dashboard you will, not only monitor and your building’s usage, but chart it against your usage history and, if you have on-site renewable power generation such as wind and solar, you can make smart decisions on when to sell back to the grid to maximize your return.

This display panel was featured in a Michelle Kaughman home on an Episode of NextWorld on the Science Channel, where she discussed live scenarios for home and energy automation with the dashboard as the centerpiece.

The Challenge:

1) Getting the energy providers, homes and consumers ready: In October 2008 the Government in the UK announced a mandate to have every household outfitted with gas and electricity smart meters by the year 2020.  On March 19 2009, www.whitehouse.gov posted the recovery act with an $11billion dollar investment in a smart-grid.  While there are no mandates, one can predict action is imminent.

2) Ubiquity: Google is about as ubiquitous of a technology service provider as you can get, their interest and investment in this space is a key indicator that this challenge will be met.  LucidDesignGroup’s Dashboard has thought forward to live case for interfacing with consumers in an easy to use way making the information and more importantly calls to action accessible and elegant.

Limina is always looking forward to turnkey technological and experience innovations in any industry, but has a special interest in contributing to the global efforts to reduce energy waste and build awareness in renewable resources.

-Jon Fukuda

Submit your RFP’s to services at limina-ao dot com

On a recent road trip through the south east – a three week escape from the frigid weather engulfing western Massachusetts – I once again, fell in love with my GPS (Garmin Nuvi 740). We hadn’t spent much time together in the past few months, airlines and taxis guided me to me my destination, but now we were spending quality time together. I was looking forward to getting reacquainted. It was love at first unpacking – Nuvi was near perfect out of the box, my only adjustments besides the usual updates, was to change her accent from the bland American English to the Australian Karen [Note: An informal survey shows that about 80% of the men I’ve spoken with set the voice to Karen, while none of the women do].

On this trip I decided to play with the different map perspectives and change from the default 3D (first person viewpoint), and try North Up and Track Up. I prefer the 3D view, while my travel partner, relief driver, and Nuvi rival, prefers an overhead traditional map view when navigating. When I switched to that mode I found it very disorienting and difficult to follow – at one point, “North up” made me think I was heading down the highway in the opposite direction.

Though I spend a lot of time designing better ways to visualize complex information, this experience got me thinking about a few things. First, how does active and passive viewing of the same data set with the similar goals (e.g. getting from point a to point b) effects collaborative work. Second, how can we move from “looking at the data” to “being in the data” and whether that is a useful shift.

The first person viewpoint – not quite a heads-up display since it’s not see-through and requires my gaze to shift away from the windshield – is close to a one:one mapping with the real-world view. This view doesn’t require me to perform any mental transformation of the representation that would compete with my task of driving. I need just-in-time information that is in-synch with my immediate task. My passenger, on the other hand, has a long range view of where we are going and any stops we might like to take along the way and an overhead view provides information at the right level of detail for the task. Though our long-term goals are the same (don’t get lost), our short-term goals require a different representation. My pre-trip back-up (in case Nuvi fails) is via Google maps or Google Earth and I never view the map with a “tilt” perspective. Clearly the map displayed on Nuvi or Google Earth is considerably less of an abstraction than visual analytics tools like Spotfire or Palintir, but maps are an integral part of most visual analytical tools and must support different geometric representations – though they rarely do.

As the lines blur between the interface and the visualization, utilizing different map perspectives can offer better ways to understand the data, which takes us to the second question of how “being-in-the-data” can lead to new insights and the topic of my next post.

- Kipp Lynch