So far, most of the research in domestic

By admin on October 31st, 2007

So far, most of the research in domestic technology has focused
on making the environment aware of the context: this requires
definition and description of parameters, assessment of their
relevance, interpretation of sensed data and design of relative
system reactions. In a certain sense, environment and users
have been loaded with sensors in order to make the system
knowledgeable about the context. It remains an open issue
though how to make users aware and knowledgeable of the
hybrid context in which they interact. And, furthermore, how to
make designers knowledgeable about the complexity of the
hybrid contexts of interaction for which they design.
Interior and product designers, as well as ergonomists, have
been working on the kitchen in terms of space and artefacts for
some time; the design of affordances for digital information
embedded in a real physical environment implies the
consideration of new aspects which differ from the desktop PC
environment. The users possibility to move around in the space
and to directly manipulate objects and information items needs
to be supported by interfaces that are properly scaled to users
metrics, locations in the space, reciprocal distance among users
and motor capabilities. Issues such as the height of the user, her
visual angle, the reachability of displayed objects to the hands,
the proportion between objects and hands sizes, environmental
factors such as sound, smoke, heat, assume an important role.
In order to face such issues, ergonomic considerations need to
be included in the interface design, thus suggesting the
emergence of a novel design approach. The traditional
usability guidelines for visual displays will most likely need to
be revised in order to address the novel aspects brought by
ubiquitous computing. In these scenarios I expect that the
design discipline will need to merge screen and product design
competences, in order to merge virtual and physical worlds.
Furthermore, the design of experiences that build on social
relationships and imply social contexts needs to find novel
approaches to prototype, test and assess such experiences. In
this sense the tight collaboration of design research with
behavioural sciences promises to provide novel methods for
experience simulation and assessment: such assessment should
focus on a short, as well as on a longer time perspective.