Hi.
My name is Tommy Nilsson and I’ll be presenting this paper on behalf of our team which also
includes Joel Fischer, Andy Crabtree, Murray Goulden and Jocelyn Spence from the University
of Nottingham, as well as Enrico Costanza from the University College London.
At the most basic level what our paper sets out to do is to explore some of the potential
futures that have been envisioned for ubiquitous computing.
Ubiquitous computing - or simply UbiComp - is currently undergoing a rapid proliferation
the value of the smart home sector alone is set to exceed 150 billion US dollars by the end of 2024.
In the light of this trend, it seems inevitable that UbiComp technology will have a profound
impact on everyday life.
As designers, it is therefore productive for us to consider where all this might lead us,
and what our design goals and priorities ought to look like as we move into the future.
The father of ubiquitous computing - Mark Weiser - has himself famously envisioned a
future with our everyday environments being augmented by a wide spectrum of computational resources
UbiComp technology would simply provide us with assistance wherever and whenever we needed it.
All this would be taken care of by computer systems running calmly in the background without
requiring much human control and oversight.
Yet, all this focus on efficiency and convenience might also come at a cost.
A growing number of researchers argues that a strong reliance on proactive computing systems
might be incompatible with key human values.
Although having computing systems do some of our work on our behalf can indeed sound nice,
if taken too far this practice might also end up taking away much of our freedom
to engage in tasks proactively and independently, to be creative, to explore and discover as
well as to socialize and collaborate with other people.
In short, in spite of having good intentions, the realization of Weiser’s UbiComp vision
could leave us with an overall passive and solitary lifestyle.
Facing this prospect, scholars have been increasingly suggesting that perhaps we should aim for a different vision
One that would prioritize proactive people over proactive machines.
For example, Yvonne Rogers argued that designers should strive to develop solutions that would
augment the human intellect and enable people to perform ever greater feats, extending their
ability to learn, make decisions, reason, create, solve complex problems and generate
innovative ideas.
This then seems to leave us with a dilemma.
On the one hand we have the vision of calm computing with its focus on proactive machines.
And on the other hand we have the notion of engaging computing focusing on proactive people.
In our own search for an answer, we produced two distinct animated video scenarios.
The first one envisioned a convenient and efficient lifestyle achieved through calm
ubiquitous computing systems operating on behalf of their users.
The other one depicted a system that actively engaged its users to promote a more active
and social lifestyle.
For example, the reordering, delivery and even cooking of food in the calm computing
scenario was handled automatically in the background.
As a result the user barely had to do any work at all.
On the other hand, in the case of the engaging computing scenario, the user was encouraged
to cooperate with the local community, such as by prioritizing locally produced food and
donating food items that were going out of date.
These scenarios then served as the focal point for our engagement with prospective users.
Specifically, we carried out 6 focus group sessions featuring a total number of 28 people
from the general public representing all walks of life.
Each focus group session lasted for about two hours.
The screening of each scenario was followed by a short discussion in order to give our
participants a chance to reflect on what they saw.
So what did we find?
A defining aspect of the workshop study was the manner in which participants initially
voiced a preference for the engaging vision of future UbiComp technology, only to gradually
gravitate towards a significantly more nuanced view as soon as they started to relate the
depicted ideas to their own everyday life.
This underlying reasoning revealed a rich spectrum of relevant human values.
Following a thematic analysis, we categorized these values into 3 broad and partially overlapping
themes in the form of Convenience, Trust and Choice.
The prospect of having systems take care of our work on our behalf, such as by automatically
handling food deliveries and restocking the fridge, was something that the majority of
our participants felt a bit skeptical about.
The general perception was that without having any work to do, our lives would eventually
become bland, monotonous and boring.
There can, in other words, be such a thing as too much convenience.
As the focus group discussions evolved, however, it became increasingly clear that systems
pursuing greater user convenience are in themselves not a problem.
Rather, it is what we do with this convenience that matters.
By doing work on our behalf, such systems would effectively free up our time for activities
that we value, such as allowing us to spend more time with the family.
In a sense our participants were thus suggesting that calm computing systems designed with
user convenience in mind could in fact end up encouraging a more active and social lifestyle.
Many of the ideas proposed by our engaging computing scenario were initially viewed positively,
only to end up problematized as the discussions progressed.
The notion of reducing food waste by collaborating and exchanging food within the local community
is a good example.
Most of our participants agreed that their willingness to accept a food sharing mechanism
would largely depend on whether and how well they knew the person they were getting the
food from.
For example, when confronted with the idea of having to deal with strangers, participants
voiced their concerns regarding the manner in which the food had been stored and taken
care of.
It seems evident then, that a UbiComp system designed to stimulate a prosocial lifestyle
could instead end up causing mistrust and tensions.
Our participant’s responses suggested that having some choice is welcomed for fostering
agency, but on the other hand, having too much choice is rejected as inhibitive.
Choice, then, can be seen as a burden, but at the same time, if taken away, this becomes
threatening to selfhood, to one's role as an autonomous, proactive person.
Once again it became apparent that when motivating their stances, our participants were increasingly
bypassing the original dichotomy between calm and engaging computing, and instead invoked
their own personal values.
So what does all this mean?
A common denominator of the focus group discussions was the notion that calm computing can indeed
coexist with an engaging lifestyle.
It appears then that values traditionally associated with calm computing, such as convenience
and efficiency, do not necessarily constitute a polar opposite to those of a proactive and social life.
By the same token, proactive technologies and proactive people do not by nature constitute
mutually exclusive design goals.
Thus, the visions of Weiser and Rogers do not appear to be inherently irreconcilable
after all.
Rather, our findings suggest that the two can coexist, and perhaps even develop synergistic
relationships, each with its own set of potential trade-offs emerging through their interplay
with a rich set of practical human values.
More fundamentally then, what our findings show is that it is not the vision behind a
particular design solution that dictates the manner in which it ends up being used, nor
the impact it will have on the everyday life.
Once deployed, entirely new patterns of use will emerge through the process of bottom-up
appropriation that the designer could scarcely have predicted in the first place.
There can in other words be a vast gap between the intentions behind a design on the one hand
and the actual user practice on the other.
Instead of adopting grand overarching visions, such as that of Weiser’s calm computing,
we would thus argue that designers should start out by asking themselves questions pertaining
to the locally organized values.
In order to find an answer to questions such as these, it is crucial that users are involved
from the very envisioning stage of a design process.
In this work we aspired to take a step into this direction by conveying multiple contrasting
visions of future technology, rather than just one, and thus allow prospective users
a greater sense of freedom to bring up the values that matter to them.