Readings on Ubiquitous Computing

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Most of the course is based on a selection of readings from the list below. We read them ahead of a class, added a discussion point or two on the blog, then discussed them in class (sometimes with a student presentation that summarized the main points). We did not get through all of the case studies. Indeed, most of the course was spent on the foundational material. Still the case studies are good resources for students who wish to choose and perhaps present a topic within Ubicomp.

On a more general level, many of the readings on this list - particular the parts before the case studies - could also double as a foundational PhD reading list to Ubicomp.

The Ubicomp vision, by Mark Weiser

Mark Weiser is considered the 'father' of ubiquitous computing. These and the other papers by him represents his vision and early thinking. Unfortunately, an early death curtailed him from seeing the massive influence he had on the CS world.

  1. Weiser, M.
    The computer for the 21st Century. Scientific American. 94-110, September. (1991)
  2. Weiser, M.
    Some computer science issues in Ubiquitous Computing. Communications of the ACM 36(7) July. (1993)
  3. Weiser, M. and Brown, J.
    Designing calm technology, Powergrid Journal, v1.01, July, 1996.
  4. Rogers, Y.
    Moving on from Weiser's vision of of calm computing: engaging UbiComp experiences.] In: P. Dourish and A. Friday (Eds.) Ubicomp 2006 Proceedings, LNCS 4206, pp. 404-421, Springer-Verlag. (2006)

Case Studies: the Digital Desk, The Reactive Environment, Ubiquitous Media

These early systems illustrated some of the potential directions of Ubicomp. The are important not only for the systems they demonstrate, but for the philosophy behind them.

  1. Wellner, P. 1993.
    Interacting with paper on the DigitalDesk. Commun. ACM 36, 7 (Jul. 1993), 87-96.
  2. Wellner, P. Digital Desk (Video).
  3. Cooperstock, J., Fels, S., Buxton, W. & Smith, K.C.
    Reactive environments: Throwing away your keyboard and mouse, Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery (CACM), 40(9), 65-73. (1997)
  4. Buxton, W. (1997).
    Living in Augmented Reality: Ubiquitous Media and Reactive Environments. In K. Finn, A. Sellen & S. Wilber (Eds.). Video Mediated Communication. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 363-384. An earlier version of this chapter also appears in Proceedings of Imagina '95, 215-229.

Tangible Computing, by Hiroshi Ishii

While there are point examples of tangible computing before Ishii, Ishii articulated some of its key properties, developed (with his students) many wonderful (and beautiful) examples, and inspired a generation of researchers to work in this area. His tangible media group web site is worth an extensive visit, if only to see the many videos on it.

  1. Ishii, H. and Ullmer, B. (1997)
    Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces Between People, Bits and Atoms. Proc ACM CHI'97 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 234-241.
  2. Brave, S., Ishii, H. and Dahley, A.
    Tangible interfaces for remote collaboration and communication. Proc. ACM CSCW’98 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, p169-178. (1998)

Embodied Interaction by Paul Dourish

Dourish's book lays the philosphical foundation to embodied interaction, which in turns explains the relevance of Ubicomp to everyday social practices.

  1. Dourish, P. (2001)
    Where the Action Is. The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. MIT Press, Cambridge MMA.

Culture, by du Gay et. al.

Until recently, most HCI development was around task-oriented products. Yet task-centricity does not suffice for domestic, tangible and ubiquitous computing. Instead, one has to consider the broad meanings products have within culture. These readings introduce the notion of culture, and how cultural artifacts are developed.

  1. du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H. and Negus, K. (1997)
    Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Sage Publications (in association with the Open University).

Emotional Design, by Don Norman

Norman considers aesthetics in design and how they invoke emotion. While he is not the first to do this (indeed, Industrial Design does this as a matter of practice), he imports emotional design into the HCI field. This is especially important in ubicomp / tangible objects created for a home setting. Norman introduces three important levels of design: visceral, behavioural, and reflective, and so far HCI has attended to only the behavioural area. You should buy this book - its an essential part of any HCI library.

  1. Norman, D. (2004)
    Emotional Design: Why we love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books.

Probing Ubicomp Situations (hosted by Stephen Viller)

One of the main challenges for developing ubicomp technologies for domestic settings is how to go about understanding the design context. Probes have evolved as a design-led approach to inspiring (cf. informing) design in domestic settings in particular.

  1. Axup, J., Viller, S., MacColl, I. and Cooper, R.
    Lo-Fi Matchmaking: A Study of Social Pairing for Backpackers. Proc. Ubicomp'06, LNCS 4206, 2006. Springer-Verlag.
  2. Gaver, W., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999).
    Cultural probes. interactions, 6(1), 21-29.
  3. Gaver, W., Boucher, A., Pennington, S., & Walker, B. (2004).
    Cultural probes and the value of uncertainty. interactions, 11(5), 53-56.
  4. Hutchinson, H., Mackay, W., Westerlund, B., Bederson, B. B., Druin, A., Plaisant, C., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Conversy, S., Evans, H., Hansen, H., Roussel, N., Eiderbäck, B., Lindquist, S., & Sundblad, Y. (2003).
    Technology probes: Inspiring design for and with families. In Proceedings of CHI'03 (pp. 17 - 24). Ft. Lauderdale, FL: ACM Press.

Other resources concerning probes

  1. Domestic Probes Goldsmiths College, London (current affiliation of Bill Gaver). Further explanation of the probes concept and how they were developed in the Equator project in the UK. Includes discussion of probe returns and how they are used.
  2. The Interliving project is where Technology Probes originated. Further detail on this work is available in the project deliverables on the publications page.
  3. Workshop on Appropriate Methods for Design in Complex and Sensitive Settings Held at OzCHI 2005. An interesting mix of papers exploring variations of methods to suit different challenging settings, e.g. domestic, care, medical, etc.
  4. The Theory and Practice of Fieldwork for Systems Development Tutorial given at numerous CSCW and CHI conferences since 1992. An excellent resource on ethnographic fieldwork.

Case Study: Home Calendars

  1. Neustaedter, C., Brush, A.J. and Greenberg, S. (2006) “The Calendar is Crucial”: Coordination and Awareness through the Family Calendar. Jointly as: Report 2006-839-32, Dept Computer Science, University of Calgary, AB, Canada; and as MSR-TR-2006-107, Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA. July.
    • read pgs 1-23, skip sections 6 and 7, and read pgs. 35-43
  2. Neustaedter, C., and Brush, A.J., (2006) “LINC-ing” the Family: The Participatory Design of an Inkable Family Calendar, In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2006), April 24-27, Montreal, Quebec.
    • Discusses the design of a digital family calendar for the home.
  3. Crabtree, A. and Hemmings, T.
    Informing the Development of Calendar Systems for Domestic Use. Proc. ECSCW '03, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 119-138,(2003),
    • Optional reading: discusses the use of calendaring systems in the home based on the results of ethnographic studies.
  4. Plaisant, C., Bederson, B., Clamage, A., Hutchinson, H., and Druin, A., (2003)
    Shared Family Calendars: Promoting Symmetry and Accessibility. Report HCIL-2003-38 , CS-TR-4680, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland.
    • Optional reading: describes the background, design, and deployment of a shared inter-family calendar (grandparents to children/grandchildren).

Basics of Domestic Culture

These papers frame how we think about domestic routines and the design of technologies to support them.

  1. Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., Hemmings, T., and Benford, S.,
    Finding a Place for UbiComp in the Home. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2003), Springer-Verlag, pp. 208-226. (2003)
    • Presents results from an ethnographic study and describes appropriate places for ubiquitous computing in the home: ecological habitats, activity centres, and coordinate displays.
  2. Edwards, W.K., Grinter, R.,
    At Home with Ubiquitous Computing: Seven Challenges, In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2001), Springer-Verlag, pp. 256-272. (2001)
    • Presents seven general challenges to having ubiquitous technology accepted and used in the home.
  3. Elliot, K., Neustaedter, C., and Greenberg, S., (2005), Time, Ownership and Awareness: The Value of Contextual Locations in the Home, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2005).
    • Describes how people use locations in their home to provide information with valuable meta-data about time, ownership, and awareness.
  4. Neustaedter, C., Elliot, K., and Greenberg, S., (2006) Interpersonal Awareness in the Domestic Realm. Proc. OZCHI, (Sydney, Australia, Nov 20-24), 2006
    • People have different awareness needs of family and friends that depends on their relationships. Also argues that a one-design-fits-all is not the way to go due to these diverse needs.
  5. Taylor, A., and Swan, L., (2005)
    Artful Systems in the Home, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2005), ACM Press, pp. 641-650.
    • Describes how organizing systems for the home should be designed to allow people to create meaning and use.

Case Study of Home Messenging

  1. Hindus, D, Mainwaring, S.D., Leduc, N., Hagström, A.E., and Bayley, O.,
    Casablanca: Designing Social Communication Devices for the Home. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2001), ACM Press, pp. 325-332. (2001)
    • Describes several applications based on home studies: RoomLink (an audio media space), MessageBoard, Intentional Presence Lamp, and ScanBoard.
  2. Kim, S., Kim, M., Park, S., Jin, Y. and Choi, W.,
    Gate Reminder: A Design Case of a Smart Reminder. Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2004), ACM Press, pp. 81-90 (2004)
    • Describes a system for providing reminders at the entrance way of the home as people enter and exit.
  3. O'Hara, K., Harper, R., Unger, A., Wilkes, J., Sharpe, B., and Jansen, M. 2005.
    TxtBoard: from text-to-person to text-to-home. In CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Portland, OR, USA, April 02 - 07, 2005). CHI '05. ACM Press, New York, NY, 1705-1708.
    • Presents a way to send messages form mobile phones to the home. This system is a forerunner to HomeNote (to appear in CSCW 2006)
  4. Markopoulos, P., Romero, N., van Baren, J., IJsselsteijn, W., de Ruyter, B., and Farshchian, B. (2004) Keeping in touch with the family: home and away with the ASTRA awareness system. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2004, ACM Press, pp. 1351-1354.
    • Describes a system of sharing messages and pictures with people at home through a "to-tell" list using mobile phones. More details in a journal article (to appear in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing).
  5. Elliot, K., Neustaedter, C., and Greenberg, S., (2006) Sticky Spots and Flower Pots: Two Case Studies in Location-Based Home Technology Design. Report 2006-830-23, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary,'' Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4. April.
    • Shows how to create location-based designs for the home through two case studies.

Case Study: Home Lists

  1. Taylor, A., and Swan, L., (2004)
    List Making in the Home, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004), ACM Press, pp. 542-545.
    • Shows how lists are used in the home and the role paper serves.

Case Study: Home Email

  1. Harper, R., Evergeti, V., Hamill, L. and Strain, J., (2001),
    Paper-mail in the Home of the 21st Century: An Analysis of the future of paper-mail and implications for the design of electronic alternatives, In the Proceedings of the Okios Conference on Digital Technology in Home Environments.
    • Describes how paper-mail is used in the home and why email cannot yet fully replace it.

Case Study of Extended Families

  1. Mynatt, E., Rowan, J., Jacobs, A., Craighill, S., (2001)
    Digital Family Portraits: Supporting Peace of Mind for Extended Family Members. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2001), CHI Letters 3(1), ACM Press, pp. 333-340.
    • Presents a digital portrait system to help extended family members stay connected over time.
  2. Evjemo, B., Svendsen, G. B., Rinde, E., & Johnsen, J. K. (2004).
    Supporting the distributed family: The need for a conversational context. NordCHI 2004
    • The authors held focus groups - sharing the day’s events with grandma, and having weather, traffic, etc. being displayed in the kitchen - except they talk about displaying the stuff at grandma’s house in their home for awareness of grandma’s environment.

Case Study: Digital Photos in the Home

  1. van den Hoven, E. and Eggen, B.
    The Design of a Recollection Supporting Device: A Study into Triggering Personal Recollections HCI International, June, part II, 1034-1038, 2003
    • Study of how objects work as memory triggers..
  2. Rodden, K. and Wood, K. R. 2003.
    How do people manage their digital photographs? In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, April 05 - 10, 2003). CHI '03. ACM Press, New York, NY, 409-416
    • Studies user experience with Shoebox, a system for managing digital photographs.
  3. Kim, J. and Zimmerman, J.
    Cherish: Smart Digital Photo Frames for Sharing Social Narratives at Home. Adjunct Proceedings ACM CHI . Work In Progress. 2006 DOI
    • They have a nice diagram of analog vs. digital photos / distance vs. collocated photo sharing and they talk about interviews they did looking at how families interacted with and shared photos inside the home. They also mention things like it would be nice to automatically recognize people in photos and how those people are related to each other, and based on that have the frame decide which photo to display.
  4. Frohlich, D., Kuchinsky, A., Pering, C., Don, A., and Ariss, S. 2002.
    Requirements for photoware. CSCW '02. ACM Press, New York, NY, 166-175.
    • Studies how several families use conventional and digital photos and illustrates several areas and design suggestions for photoware..
  5. Battarbee, K. 2003.
    Defining co-experience. In Proceedings of the 2003 international Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and interfaces (Pittsburgh, PA, USA, June 23 - 26, 2003). DPPI '03. ACM Press, New York, NY, 109-113.
    • May not fit in this secton. Verify....
  6. Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., and Mariani, J.
    Collaborating around Collections: Informing the Continued Development of Photoware, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004), ACM Press. 2004.

Tangible user interfaces - Examples

Ambient Displays

  1. Dahley, A., Wisneski, C. and Ishii, H.
    Water Lamp and Pinwheels: Ambient Projection of Digital Information into Architectural Space. Summary of CHI '98, 269-270.(1998)
  2. Ishii, H. Wisneski, C., Brave, S., Dahley, A., Gorbet, M., Ullmer, B. and Yarin, P.
    ambientRoom: Integerating Ambient Media with Architectural Space (video). ACM Conference Summary of Chi'98 (1998)

RFID tag innovations

  1. Ullmer, B., Ishii, H. and Glas, D.(1999)
    mediaBlocks: Physical Containers, Transports, and Controls for Online Media. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics.

Case Study: Mixed-Reality Games

Mixed-reality games blur the boundary between reality and fiction. Participants compete in games in the real world using mobile devices that provide them with clues and interaction with other teammates. For an example, see Uncle Roy All Around You

  1. Benford, S., Crabtree, A., Reeves, S., Flintham, M., Drozd, A., Sheridan, J., and Dix, A, (2006)
    The Frame of the Game: Blurring the Boundary between Fiction and Reality in Mobile Experiences, Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, ACM Press, pp. 427 – 436.

Other miscellaneous papers of interest

  1. Rogers, Y.
    Moving on from Weiser’s Vision of Calm Computing: Engaging UbiComp Experiences, Proc. Ubicomp'06, LNCS 4206, pp. 404 – 421, 2006. Springer-Verlag.

Pen-Based Interfaces (Min Xin's Papers for his Topic Seminar )

  1. Thomas P. Moran, Patrick Chiu, William van Melle, Gordon Kurtenbach
    Implicit Structures for Pen-Based Systems Within a Freeform Interaction Paradigm, Proc. ACM CHI, 1995.
  2. Gross, M.D. and E. Do.
    Implicit Ambiguous Intentions: A paper-like interface for creative design, Proc. ACM UIST, 1996.

Case study: Human-Robot Interaction (Cheng's Papers for his Topic Seminar )

  1. Norman, D. (2004)
    Emotional Design: Why we love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books.
  2. Service Robots in the Domestic Environment: A Study of the Roomba Vacuum in the Home. Proc Human Robot Interaction (HRI) 2006.
  3. Videos on Human-Robot Interaction