Hello, I’m Chang-Min Kim from CIDR lab at KAIST.
Today, I will present our exploration on everyday objects as an IoT control interface.
As more and more IoT devices are being installed in our nearby environments
solutions for IoT coordination is in high need.
Currently, trigger-action based IoT coordination services such as IFTTT
are often used by end-users when creating the desired behavior of IoT devices.
These services allows us to experience certain level of IoT coordination.
However, challenges still exist.
First, there are few types of usable triggers to apply in coordination
and personalized contexts for desired IoT control are often not supported.
Second it is difficult for users to transcribe their needs into programming languages
or handle sensor modules and their values.
As a result, we observe a lot of obvious and mundane IoT usage
that consists of same triggers or simply a duplicates with minor change in details.
As a way to mitigate these challenges,
we were interested in utilizing everyday objects
as a new contextual trigger to control IoT devices.
We expected nearby everyday objects could be a generative and
pre-equipped material that can be used for IoT coordination.
Also, we believed everyday objects can be an
easy-to-use and natural interface means for IoT devices
that leads to a new type of harmoniously integrated smart environment.
With the assumptions,
we report the result of an explorative workshop study
and two types of design explorations
regarding the use of everyday objects as an IoT control interface.
The study was held in a form of grouped co-design workshop
followed by in-depth interviews.
16 active IoT device users were recruited
to ideate their own context-aware smart applications
that involve the use of everyday objects.
In result, we gathered total 97 cases of IoT coordination
involving the use of everyday objects.
Participants preferred the combination of object and IoT devices
that makes natural causations.
They explained such combinations make the IoT control
more intuitive and easy to remember.
Participants were also interested in augmenting new playful
features to their personal belongings and meaningful items
Also, participants expected that it would be beneficiary to use everyday objects
when creating shortcuts or flexible routines on IoT devices,
assisting forgettable IoT device controls,
and controlling IoT devices in a playful and affective ways.
We observed that most participants added manipulation phrases
when iterating and finalizing their IoT coordination scenarios.
Participants explained that detailed expression such as object usage behaviors
would help to avoid unintentional operation of IoT devices
and make the result more robust.
In general, everyday objects were comprehensible and
easily applicable coordination material for end-users.
It also held a broad range and new types of unique contexts.
We also noticed that faulty choice of objects
can easily cause malfunctions of IoT devices.
We believe that comparing between objects
or choosing the most optimized object
would be a critical issue in this coordination approach.
Next we share our scenario movie.
We chose the movie as a research artefact
to vividly communicate the speculated user experience of
the smart environment with everyday objects.
The scenes in the movies were developed from
11 representative cases selected from the workshop study.
The selection process considered the even distribution
of the workshop findings
so that the movie effectively reveals
the opportunities and challenges of our coordination approach.
The finalized video is called ‘a day in peter’s life’.
We share only the part of the video for now,
but we hope the people who are interested watch
the full clip from the supplementary material or in youtube.
Lastly, we share the design of an exemplary IoT coordination system
which is a proof-of-concept for our IoT coordination approach.
The system requirements and design rationales were
derived from the workshop findings
and reviews of related works and relevant technologies.
We considered that unobtrusive object sensing,
usage behaviour classification,
and user-friendly coordination method
to be critical for the IoT coordination system.
We implemented a watch-with-ring type wearable device.
The objects are tagged with RFID tags
and the device detects the held object and user behaviors
through the accelerometer and RFID reader.
Using the Wi-Fi module, the device sends the stream of data to the system.
The software part of the system utilizes the received data
to proactively create IoT coordination.
When the user repeats the sequential usage of
an everyday object and an IoT device,
the system automatically transcribes
and saves the pattern into an IoT coordination rule.
Afterwards, when the system detects a similarity
between the rules and a real-time user data from the hardware,
the system sends a signal to the IoT device and change its status.
The following video explains the software features
through the example of coordinating a pen with an IoT lamp.
Besides the pen and lamp coordination case,
more examples applications are illustrated in the pictorial.
The exemplary system helped us to identify
further considerations needed for applying to a real usage context.
To briefly share,
Different forms of wearable devices
should be investigated to expand the usable objects.
Methods for preventing unintentional control of IoT devices would be necessary.
In a long-term usage situation,
maintanance of the archived IoT coordination cases would be required.
Last, it would be necessary to investigate a system interface
that can integrate everyday objects and conventional triggers.
When using the exemplary hardware,
object usage data is automatically accumulated in the system.
We expect that such data can be further used for
a guiding feature by which the system recommends
IoT coordination or selects an optimized object among other alternatives.
Our exploration primarily focused on ideas for
a single person in a personal space.
Further considerations are needed for
the use of everyday objects by the people who live or work together.
The current RFID tags can harm the form factor and usability of the object.
An intensive tag design to diminish
the presence of the tags would be necessary.
Last, the majority of the cases from the workshop
did not deviate much from utilitarian applications
that are mostly focused on automation or efficiency.
In some cases, it was expected that users would
simply reach for a physical controller
instead of wearing the device for simple task.
It would be necessary to identify key values
that motivates users to engage in IoT coordination in this way.
This is the end of the presentation.
We welcome any questions and feedbacks on our work.
We hope the research prototypes and the study findings can be a reference
for inviting non-digital artifacts in the future IoT ecology.
Thank you.