Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the Year 2020

BEING HUMAN HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION IN THE YEAR 2020 BEING HUMAN HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION IN THE YEAR 2020 Edited by Richard Harper, Tom Rodden, Yvonne Rogers and Abigail Sellen Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020 Editors: Richard Harper, Tom Rodden, Yvonne Rogers and Abigail Sellen ISBN: 978-0-9554761-1-2 Publisher: Microsoft Research Ltd 7 J J Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0FB, England The information, findings and opinions contained in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Microsoft Research Ltd or Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Research Ltd and Microsoft Corporation do not guarantee the accuracy of any information presented herein. Personal non-commercial use of this publication is permitted. For permission to re-print or republish any portion of this publication for commercial purposes, please contact as above. © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. The question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identify their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is. Norman Cousins – The Poet and the Computer, 1966 Contents About This Report 8 General Introduction 10 1 Our Changing World 12 1.1 Changing Computers 14 GUIs to Gestures 16 VDUs to Smart Fabrics 18 Handsets to the World in our Hands 19 Simple Robots to Autonomous Machines That Learn 20 Hard Disks to Digital Footprints 21 Shrink-Wrapped to Mash-Ups 23 Answer-Phones to Always-On 24 1.2 Changing Lives 25 Learning Differently 25 New Ways of Family Living 26 New Ways of Growing Older 28 1.3 Changing Societies 29 Summary 31 2 Transformations in Interaction 32 2.1 Human Values in the Face of Change 34 2.2 The End of Interface Stability 36 The shifting boundary between computers and humans 36 The shifting boundary between computers and the everyday world 38 Living in a computational ecosystem 39 2.3 The Growth of Techno-Dependency 40 Living in an increasingly technology-reliant world 40 Living with increasingly clever computers 42 2.4 The Growth of Hyper-Connectivity 43 Living in a more socially connected world 43 Being part of a digital crowd 45 2.5 The End of the Ephemeral 46 Managing expanding digital footprints 46 Living in an increasingly monitored world 47 2.6 The Growth of Creative Engagement 48 Augmenting human reasoning 48 New forms of creative engagement 50 Summary 51 3 HCI: Looking Forward 52 3.1 The Way Forward 54 From User Experience to Human Values 55 3.2 Extending the Research and Design Cycle 58 Stage 1: Understand 59 Stage 2: Study 60 Stage 3: Design 61 Stage 4: Build 62 Stage 5: Evaluate 63 3.3 Three Case Studies 64 Case Study 1: Trading versus trafficking content 64 Case study 2: Tracking versus surveillance in families 69 Case study 3: The ‘value’ of augmenting human memory 72 3.4 New concepts, frameworks and theories 76 Summary 77 4 Recommendations 78 Appendix: What is Human-Computer Interaction? 84 Bibliography 87 HCI 2020 Forum Participants 90 Glossary 96 Picture Credits 98 About this Report In March 2007, Microsoft Research organised the ‘HCI 2020’ what was possible when HCI first developed. As a result, meeting at the El Bulli Hacienda Hotel near Seville, Spain. The many members of the HCI community have begun to voice event’s title expressed its key question: what will Human- concerns that HCI needs a new agenda if it is to continue to Computer Interaction (HCI) be like in the year 2020? That be relevant for the 21st century. question is important because HCI, significant as it was in the late 20th century, has a pivotal part to play in the 21st, If there was one thing that the participants in this forum when computers will become so pervasive that how humans had in common, it was a recognition that any new direction interact with them will be a crucial issue for society. for HCI would need to place human values at its core. The great accomplishment of HCI has been, to date, that it allows HCI 2020 produced many ideas, both thrilling and troubling. investigations of matters beyond what one might call the This report is not a conventional publication of an academic mechanics of the interface, such things as the design of the conference but seeks to convey the passion of those ideas, graphical user interface, and of keyboards and of mice. Its both for the general reader and the HCI practitioner. For success now allows researchers to focus on how computers the general reader, this is important because knowledge of can support human-to-human concerns, rather than simply what the future might be may empower, while ignorance human-machine interaction. HCI has helped to produce a harm. For the HCI practitioner, its purpose is to map out the world in which interacting with computers is easier and richer. terrain and suggest new approaches while keeping an eye The real HCI issues now include what might be our aspirations, on the main prize: the embodiment of human values at the our desires for self-understanding and expression, and our heart of computing. willingness to use imagination to create a different future. This two-day forum brought together academics from The questions that result are far-reaching and profound. the fields of computing, design, management science, HCI can no longer be solely the scientific investigation of sociology and psychology to debate, contribute to, what role technology might have – it will need to be part of and help formulate the agenda for Human-Computer the empirical, philosophical and moral investigation of why Interaction in the next decade and beyond. Participants technology has a role. It will entail asking new questions also came from the commercial world, including about how we ought to interact with technology in this representatives from software companies, hardware new world and it will even entail asking what the use of manufacturers, and content providers. computing implies about our conceptions of society. Even philosophical questions will be important. For example, The forum was convened because the field of HCI has our concepts of how the mind works will affect the way we moved on and matured in many significant ways since its design technologies to support memory, intelligence and emergence in the early 1980s. Over the years, a number much more besides. All of this implies that other disciplines of influential books and articles have helped to shape its from the Arts and Humanities will become more relevant as goals and perspectives. As HCI has developed, many of the the remit of HCI becomes broader. questions posed by its past research agendas have been answered, while others have become less important with The goal of the forum was therefore to uncover and the passing of time. Computing itself has moved on from articulate new paradigms, goals and perspectives for HCI. By bringing together some of the world’s leading thinkers Stephen Emmott for advice and guidance; Bill Buxton on this topic, the hope was that their discussions, debates who inspired the title of this report; book designer Nick and scholarly commentaries would help define how HCI can Duffield; designer Richard Banks for helping with images; deliver this ‘human face’ of computing. editor Peter Bradley; and our careful printer, Piggott Black Bear. Finally, a special thanks to the director of Microsoft This report is the result of that forum. It is not a record of Research Cambridge, Andrew Herbert, who gave the green the papers presented or discussions held, but a distillation, light for this event and made it possible. an attempt to capture the spirit of what concerned and excited the participants, looking ahead to 2020. It describes Richard Harper how the world around us has changed and continues Professor of Socio-Digital Systems and Senior Researcher, to change, and how the design of computers is helping Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK to create a new socio-digital landscape. It explains how the field of HCI can contribute to making this landscape Tom Rodden one that reflects the values we hold as well as provide Professor of Computing, Nottingham University, UK opportunities for the expression of diversity in those values. Being human is not simply a label; it is about a set of Yvonne Rogers aspirations. Recognising those aspirations and striving to Professor in Human-Computer Interaction, Open University, UK realise them can make the world we live in one to celebrate rather than fear. Abigail Sellen Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK Needless to say, this report cannot encompass all the issues that this ambition implies, just as it cannot relay all Conveners of the HCI 2020 Forum, 2007 the topics raised by the participants at the forum. While we have endeavoured to represent, as much as possible, the views of the contributors, its main purpose is to entice the reader, whoever that might be, to think more seriously Contacting Us about the role of computing in our everyday lives. If it can We welcome feedback on this report. All comments should further highlight the importance of a new kind of HCI in be addressed to: making 2020 the kind of future we want it to be, so much the better. Richard Harper or Abigail Sellen Microsoft Research Last but not least, we would like to thank: all the 7 J J Thomson Avenue participants in HCI 2020, and the organisations and Cambridge, CB3 0FB, UK institutions that supported them; Sarah Cater who organised the event; Vicki Ward and Rachel Howard [email protected] for public relations and marketing; Angela Still for [email protected] local support; Denise Stanley who facilitated the event; General Introduction The world we live in has become suffused with computer technologies. They have created change and continue to create change. It is not only on our desktops and in our hands that this is manifest; it is in virtually all aspects of our lives, in our communities, and in the wider society of which we are a part. What will our world be like in 2020? Digital technologies will continue to proliferate, enabling ever more ways of changing how we live. But will such developments improve the quality of life, empower us, and make us feel safer, happier and more connected? Or will living with technology make it more tiresome, frustrating, angstridden, and security-driven? What will it mean to be human when everything we do is supported or augmented by technology? What role can researchers, designers and computer scientists have in helping to shape the future? The aim of this report is to reflect upon the changes afoot and outline a new paradigm for understanding our relationship with technology. A more extensive set of lenses, tools and methods is needed that puts human values centre stage. And here, both positive and negative aspects need to be considered: on the one hand, people use technology to pursue healthier and more enjoyable lifestyles, expand their creative skills with digital tools, and instantly gain access to information never before available. On the other, governments become more reliant on computers to control society, criminals become more cunning via digital means, and people worry more about what information is stored about them. The report is divided into four parts. In Part 1, we look back over the past 20 years or so, charting some of the major changes in computing, living and society and suggest where we are going. In Part 2, we outline how these changes are transforming the nature of our interaction with computers, and specify key questions that need to be addressed in the next 15 years as a result. Part 3 is concerned with Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as a field of research and as a community of practitioners and designers. This part proposes an agenda for how the field can move forward by focusing on human values. Part 4, Recommendations, outlines specific suggestions for HCI in terms of how the field needs to change. For those who are new to the field of HCI, there is an Appendix giving an overview of the field, a brief sense of its history, and a description of some of its main achievements. 1 Our Changing World Major changes have occurred within the computer revolution; changes which encompass all aspects of its role. These are not just quantitative in nature, such as exponential increases in processing power and storage capacity, but are more fundamental, pointing not only to the function of computer technology, but its emerging diversity both in terms of its form and place in the world. Computers are now embedded within a huge range of materials and artefacts, and take on roles in almost all aspects of life. People and lifestyles are altering. These changes are sometimes spurred on by technology, but other times work in parallel or provoke technological innovation. There is a global scale of change which is taking place hand in hand with new technologies. This gives rise to tensions between individuals and governments, and between globalisation and cultural diversity. In this Part, we comment on change at all levels, and provide pointers to where we are going in future. 12 The world of the future: utopia  or dystopia? It is within our power to decide. 13 1.1 Changing Computers There have been various computer-driven revolutions in the Computers affect how we undertake the most prosaic of past: the widespread introduction of the personal computer activities – from buying food to paying our bills – and they (PC) was one, the invention of the graphical browser was do so in ways we might not have imagined when the first another, and the Internet yet another. There have also been personal computers arrived on our desks. They have also computer eras where one type of computer has dominated, created wholly new experiences, for example, allowing us having straightforward implications for whether the to inhabit virtual worlds with people from many different computers were shared or personal, and for whether they parts of the globe. In between these extremes, from the were specialised commodities or not (see diagram below). But prosaic to the wholly new, computers have taken over the ways computers have altered our lives, all aspects of our from older technologies in ways that looked merely like lives, is more comprehensive than, at first blush, recollections substitution at first but which have ended up creating of these technological revolutions or eras might suggest. radical change. Four Computing Eras  1 14 1960s: Mainframe Era One computer per many users. 2 1980s: Personal Computer Era One computer per user. Photography, for example, has retained its familiarity despite when we take photos and share them, then, are not at all the moving from being chemically-based to being digital. At the same now as they were even five years ago. point of creation, people still ‘point and shoot’ in much the same way as they used to. It is not just in terms of user experiences, such as shopping, games, and picture-taking that the world has changed. However, what one can do with images when they are digital is Computers have altered our sense of the world at large, quite different. Whereas, before, we may have only printed one letting us see images of far-away places, instantaneously and or two rolls of film, displaying the photos on the mantelpiece ubiquitously. The world, now, seems so much smaller than it or in an album, digital images are now reproduced many times was even a decade ago. In this section we begin to look at over, and are often broadcast around the world on websites. many different aspects of how computing technologies have The activities we undertake and the goals we have in mind changed and their impact on our lives. 4 3 2000s: Mobility Era Several computers per user. 2020 and beyond: Ubiquity Era Thousands of computers per user. 15 GUIs to Gestures The GUI has dominated the way we interact with computers for over twenty years. In many ways it is quite forgiving: typos Most of us learned how to use a computer by interacting with The Reactable: a multitouch interface for playing music. Performers can simultaneously interact with it by moving and rotating physical objects on its surface. Reactable was developed by Sergi Jordà and colleagues at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Icelandic songstress Björk used one on her 2007 tour.  16 slip into every sentence but we do not worry because we have a personal computer, using a keyboard and mouse to point, automatic spell checkers, changing our ‘hte’s to ‘the’s without click and select icons and options from menus. We began us even noticing. Likewise, we frequently select the wrong with creating documents by using word processors, doing window or menu option but know we can quickly ‘undo’ such calculations using spreadsheets and making fancy slide shows slips of the fingers. But in other ways it is less than perfect. using presentation applications. Input to the computer was Many of us suffer from backache and some of us RSI as we fairly intuitive, drawing on the metaphor of a virtual desktop, relentlessly pound the keys and squeeze the mouse for hours that allowed us to do all these tasks through the ‘graphical user on end. Remarkably, most of us put up with these problems. interface’ or GUI (for this and other terms used throughout, see Researchers have known for years that pointing, clicking and the Glossary), allowing us to interact with graphical objects on dragging are not ideal forms of interaction for many tasks. Try the screen rather than relying solely on typed commands. drawing a flower or signing your name using a mouse. In the last few years, new input techniques have been  We will need a caption developed that are richer and less prone to the many shortcomings of keyboard and mouse interaction. For example, there are tablet computers that use stylus-based interaction on a screen, and even paper-based systems that digitally capture markings made on specialised paper using a camera embedded in a pen. These developments support interaction through sketching and handwriting. Speech-recognition systems too support a different kind of ‘natural’ interaction, allowing people to issue commands and dictate through voice. Meanwhile, multi-touch surfaces enable interaction with the hands and the fingertips on touch-sensitive surfaces, allowing us to manipulate objects digitally as if they were physical. From GUIs to multi-touch, speech to gesturing, the ways we interact with computers are diversifying as never before. Two-handed and multi-fingered input is providing a more a growing trend. Eye movements have been used for many  The HotHand device: natural and flexible means of interaction beyond the single years as a way of supporting the disabled in interacting with a ring worn by electric point of contact offered by either the mouse or stylus. The computers, but now we are also seeing the advent of ‘brain- guitar players that uses shift to multiple points of input also supports novel forms computer interfaces’. Such systems allow, for example, people motion sensors and a of interaction where people can share a single interface with severe physical disabilities to use their brain waves to wireless transmitter to by gathering around it and interacting together (see the interact with their environment. Real-time brainwave activity create different kinds of ‘Reactable‘, left). is beginning to be used to control digital movies, turn on sound effects by various music, and switch the lights on and off. These interfaces can hand gestures. Tangible interfaces have also been developed, where even control robot arms, allowing paralysed individuals to everyday physical objects are embedded with computation, manipulate objects. being able to sense and react to the ways they are picked up, manipulated, and moved in space. This approach has Input can also be a by-product of our activities in the world at already found its way into a broad range of toys and game large. For example, our location can be sensed through GPS systems such as the Nintendo Wii. Camera and pressure and our movements can be captured using CCTV cameras, input has also been developed that enables the movement providing inputs to a range of interactive technologies. of our whole body to control the computer, such as pressure Low-cost Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags can also pads in Dance Revolution and the use of video tracking in be tracked and provide new forms of information that can Sony’s Eye Toy games. be fed into supply chains. These examples reflect how by 2020, embedded forms of computing will be increasingly The ability to sense our interaction without direct physical commonplace, determining what actions to take based on engagement with computer systems or input devices is also where we are, how we move and what we are doing. 17 VDUs to Smart Fabrics enabling, for example, the paper in books or newspapers to be The fixed video display units (VDUs) of the 1980s are being Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), are also being made at an superseded by a whole host of flexible display technologies extremely small size, allowing for very small displays. digitised. Electronic components and devices, such as Micro- and ‘smart’ fabrics. Displays are being built in all sizes, from the Animated Textiles developed by Studio subTela at the Hexagram Institute, Montreal, Canada. These two jackets ‘synch up’ when the wearers hold tiny to the gigantic, and soon will become part of the fabric New displays can be as much about ‘input’ as they are about of our clothes and our buildings. By 2020, these advances are ‘output’. For example, they can be reactive to touch, can likely to have revolutionised the form that computers will take. detect whole body movements and can be programmed to For example, organic matter is being experimented with to sense aspects of crowd behaviour and the environment. The create electronic components such as light emitting diodes. diversity of interaction types now possible through displays will Recent advances in Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) significantly affect how content is shown, how often and by and plastic electronics are enabling displays to be made whom. In particular, the ways advertising, public information, much more cheaply, with higher resolution and lower power sports, concerts and other cultural events are presented and consumption, some without requiring a backlight to function. interacted with will take on innovative forms. We will have a OLEDs are an emissive electroluminescent layer made from a video copy on our mobile phone of the goal we just saw on the film of organic compounds, enabling a matrix of pixels to emit pitch in front of us, for example. Likewise, how we read, whom light of different colours. Plastic electronics also use organic we read with and when we read will change considerably when materials to create very thin semi-conductive transistors that paper is re-imageable, and when screens can be folded, rolled can be embedded in all sorts of materials, from paper to cloth, up and even stretched. Clothing manufacturers have started experimenting with how to embed computer systems using BlueTooth technology. Highend running shoes have sensors in them that talk to portable music players and other mobile devices providing information about how far the wearer has run, and at what speed, helping to update a training log. RFID tags are also becoming miniaturised hands, and the message and ever cheaper. Medical monitoring devices that can be scrolls from the back of worn on the body are also beginning to appear that provide one person to the other.  dynamic readouts, reporting and alerting us to the status of various bodily functions (eg glucose level, cholesterol level). As newer technologies emerge that allow biological materials (nerves and tissues) to link with silicon circuitry, our relationship with computers will become even more intimate. Silicon and biological material will be knitted in new ways, enabling new forms of direct inputs and outputs implantable in our bodies. This shift will have profound effects on where we might see 18 computers and what our relationship will be with them. Handsets to the World in our Hands  Talk to the hand… From the first mobile A widespread and dramatic development in the everyday phone ‘brick’ to the use of computers is the global explosion of mobile devices. latest Apple iPhone: as From virtually nothing twenty or twenty-five years ago, the size reduces, the mobile phones are rapidly becoming the most ubiquitous potential expands. form of computing. From Shanghai to Swansea, Budikote to Birmingham, almost a third of the world’s population carries a mobile phone. Add this staggering number to the music players and cameras pushed in people’s pockets and it’s not hard to see that a very significant part of the digital future will fit into the palm of our hands. wireless connections are in the surrounding ether, and reveal Many of the current generation of mobile devices, however, a host of otherwise invisible services and applications. Some provide a frustrating ‘genie-in-a-bottle’ experience – they devices can also monitor our medical condition, too, such have incredible power trapped in a constraining case with a as blood pressure and heart rate. Mobile devices offer up a small screen and tricky-to-use input devices. Clever software new window on the world, and provide us with a growing visualisation techniques – such as automatic zooming – have collection of tools for our working lives, social lives, and helped to expand the interface. More recently, Apple’s personal entertainment. iPhone has shown how a multi-touch surface can turn mobile interaction into a much more pleasurable experience. Many new forms of mobile interaction are on the horizon. Sensors of many types – from GPS location receivers and Mobile devices will allow us to connect with others in new accelerometers to RFID tag scanners – and some actuators ways, as well as to access information in the environment. For – like vibrotactile displays – are also being embedded into example, we will increasingly be able to use mobile devices to mobile devices to allow new forms of interaction. For example, interact with objects in the real world, acting more as if they the iPhone’s various sensors detect when a person is putting are extensions of our own hands, by pointing and gesturing their device next to their face, automatically switching it into a with them. While travelling, we can gesture with our mobile listening and speaking mode. device at a historic building and be offered up an audio or visual history of its architecture. Taking a picture of a product Of course, mobile devices are capable of much more than in the supermarket can send us back information about where communication. Many such devices aim to deliver the desktop the product came from, its associated air miles, and ecological experience in the hand. We can now access our files, surf the credentials. Likewise, buying a piece of music by pointing at a Web and run many of the same applications as on our PCs. band’s poster and then sending it as a gift to a friend’s music More than this, the world of mobile phones is now merging player can be as natural as a ‘cut and paste’ operation on a with mobile music and video players. Increasingly, they also let desktop computer. As we move toward 2020, mobile devices us monitor the world around us. Through BlueTooth and WiFi will increasingly offer flexibility in interaction and new kinds of networks, we can see who else is in the area, discover what connections to both our local and remote world. 19 Simple Robots to Autonomous Machines That Learn as picking up objects and cooking meals. The Roomba Robots have been with for us for some time, most notably around owners’ homes cleaning as it goes. The BEAR Emotional kitty: a robot hardware platform called vacuum cleaner has also become a commercial success; it can be left alone to automatically navigate its way iCAT uses a set of logical as characters in science fiction movies, but also as part (‘battlefield extraction and retrieval’) is another kind of rules to convey emotional of assembly lines, as remote investigators of hazardous robot developed by the military, designed to find, pick up situations (eg nuclear power stations, bomb disposal sites), and rescue people in harm’s way. Pet robots, in the guise states as it makes decisions, and as search and rescue helpers in disasters (eg fires) or of human companions, are also being commercialised, human-robot interaction. far away places (eg Mars). More recently, domestic robots having first become a big hit in Japan. The robots provide It looks confused if it’s in have begun appearing in our homes as autonomous a companion to talk to or cuddle, as if they were pets or trouble, smiles if it gets helpers. For example, robots are being developed to dolls. The appeal of these kinds of robots is thought to be help the elderly and disabled with certain activities, such partially due to their therapeutic qualities, being able to with the goal of improving something right…  reduce stress and loneliness among the elderly and infirm. While the vision of widespread co-habitation with robots is beyond the 2020 horizon, recent advances in machinelearning techniques are being experimented with to model and support human behaviour in other ways. Knowing what a person is thinking or wanting will enable robots to be programmed to respond and adapt to their needs accordingly. In the past, most machine-learning applications operated ‘off–line’, where a set of training data would be collected and used to fit a statistical model. Nowadays, new techniques are being used to solve realtime inference problems in which multiple streams of data are processed from diverse sources. Statistical analyses are then used to make inferences about the state of the world. For example, when new information is received, probabilities can be updated using Bayes’ theorem. This allows machines to learn by reducing the uncertainty of particular variables based on new information being fed into it. Email management is a mundane example of how machinelearning is starting to be used. The system decides whether or not to notify a person of an incoming message, depending on the nature and content (and therefore the urgency) of it, and also on the extent to which the person is willing to Hard Disks to Digital Footprints tolerate a disturbance at that particular moment, which itself depends on the task in which the person is engaged. A powerful metaphor that came into prominence in 2007 Contextual information can also be used to make a was the carbon footprint. Suddenly everyone started talking decision about how relevant the email is, from that person’s about reducing carbon emissions, from schoolchildren to world calendar, from audio and video sensors which monitor the leaders, concerned with how we are destroying our planet person’s focus of attention, and from log files of past user and what actions can be taken to reduce these footprints. In behaviour. Of course, this is for more advanced needs; a similar vein, people are beginning to talk about their ever machine-learning is also used to filter out the much more growing digital footprints. Part of the reason for this is that the commonplace and vexing volumes of spam that increasingly limits of digital storage are no longer a pressing issue. It is all assault our mailboxes. around us, costing next to nothing, from ten-a-penny memory  The Rovio robotic sticks and cards to vast digital Internet data banks that are webcam is wirelessly As with previous generations of intelligent systems, freely available for individuals to store their photos, videos, connected to the Internet. however, the success of machine-learning will depend on emails and documents. It roams around the home how accurate the machine’s algorithms are at inferring a providing an audio and person’s intentions and their actions at a given moment. Furthermore, huge amounts of information are being recorded video link to keep an eye While people are very much creatures of habit, they can also and stored daily about people’s behaviour, as they walk through on family or pets when be highly unpredictable and complex in their needs and the streets, drive their cars and use the Web. While much of you’re out. desires. For a machine-learning approach to truly succeed, this may be erased after a period of time, some is stored more it may well require that both users and computers make permanently, about which people may be naively unaware. their intentions visible to each other: machines indicating In 2020, it is likely that our digital footprints will be gigantic, to users what they think users want, and users indicating distributed everywhere, and in all manner of places and forms. to the machines what they want in turn. Users also like to know how a machine is making its decisions, so ways The decreasing cost and increasing capacity of digital storage of communicating how the mechanisms work may be as also goes hand-in-hand with new and cheap methods for important as the outcome. capturing, creating and viewing digital media. The effect on our behaviour has been quite dramatic: people are taking All of this proposes that humans and ‘intelligent’ machines thousands of pictures rather than hundreds each year. They no often need to be able to negotiate, question and answer longer keep them in shoeboxes or stick them in albums but back – unlike current vehicle navigation systems (‘satnav‘), keep them as ever growing digital collections, often online. whose instructions telling people where to go are The use of Web services for photo-sharing is transforming why sometimes blindly followed by hapless drivers who never we take photos by reinventing what we do with them. The question them. If people are prepared to stupidly obey production and sharing of digital content has also substantially instructions given out by simple computers, this should changed. ‘Podcasting’ one’s home movies on websites like make us even more concerned about the relationship YouTube is becoming a popular pastime, with many people between people and ever more complex computers as we spending more time watching other people’s videos than move toward 2020. viewing broadcast content. 21 Data are also being collected on our behalf or about us for no phones and even embedded into clothing. All of these are apparent reason other than because the technology enables capable of producing and storing large volumes of location it – our digital shadows, if you like. Personal video recorders data about our comings and goings without any conscious (PVRs) record TV programmes chosen by the viewer but effort on behalf of their owners. also automatically store them based on the viewer’s viewing profile or other criteria. Similarly, new devices are beginning to Data are also being deliberately recorded about us by appear, such as SenseCam (see ‘A Digital Life’, below), that can governments, banks and other institutions using technologies automatically capture all kinds of traces of everyday life, in the such as CCTV, ATMs and phone logging. In the UK, CCTV often form of images, video, conversations and sounds. The same generates recorded ‘feeds’ of conversations and actions, as well is true for GPS devices which now appear in cars, in mobile as logging exactly where these conversations and actions took place. Some workplaces have meeting rooms that capture the A digital life: Gordon Bell, a principal researcher content of and activities around discussions held within them. Many public debates are recorded for posterity by editorialising at Microsoft, aims to CCTV: in the UK, the Houses of Parliament are captured on amass an archive of behalf of the nation by the BBC, for example. Most people’s his life by capturing a financial transactions are logged too, each time a credit card digital record of all of is used. International phone calls from the US are routinely his interactions with tapped and analysed for suspicious ‘terrorist’ topics (with people and machines. To advanced word-recognition software allowing interrogators to help, he wears a device locate possible conversational threads which are then focused around his neck called on more attentively). ‘SenseCam’, developed at Microsoft’s research lab in A strong case in favour of all this logging is its usefulness in Cambridge, UK. SenseCam combating crime and terrorism. CCTV feeds are being used to is a wearable camera discover the aberrant, such as unusual or suspicious behaviours containing sensors that in public settings, and recognition software is beginning to be result in a picture being used for post hoc identification of possible suspects. taken whenever there are changes in light, movement and ambient temperature. The result is a digital ‘slideshow’ of many of the events in everyday life.  As this example suggests, simply storing more data without any real purpose is counter to our current culture of preserving for a reason. There has to be a reason for recording, whether it be for posterity or detection. The trade-offs between storing and viewing, or between searching and browsing, will become increasingly important as we move towards 2020. A key concern for the next decades is how we will manage and harness the enormous digital footprints and shadows that are 22 being created by and for everyone. Shrink-Wrapped to Mash-Ups ‘New data sources are available to us all It used to be that only the most highly skilled software the time. We are all fast becoming content developers could write applications, and only professional content producers could provide us with digital data or content that we could use. In the early days of the PC, we all bought our software in shrink-wrapped boxes, spending more money every few years for a new updated version producers, publishers and developers as much as we are consumers’ of our operating system, word processor, or spreadsheet application. Likewise, we cut and pasted images for our mashed together creates a new Web service that allows Powerpoint presentations from ‘clip art’, and played around people to search for real estate online; BabyNameMap maps with new fonts and features from the software packages we the most popular baby names on top of Google maps; Book had bought off-the-shelf. Burro notices when you’re shopping online at Amazon and looks at other online stores to compare prices. Those days are disappearing fast. The boom in data that we all produce, or ‘user-generated content’ (UGC), is one of This of course is not just about merging content, but is about the huge shifts that has changed all of this. Many of us are creating new kinds of applications, interfaces and experiences being more creative than ever before with the digital content for users. It is also about the decentralisation of software we have to hand, whether it be the photos we produce and development, where non-experts can now participate. The share, the blogs we write, or the videos we post on YouTube. Web is the source of digital materials we can build our At the same time, the Internet is making all this content and experiences around and of the toolkits we can use to build the tools to deal with it available to everyone. Even better, them with. New data sources are available to us all the time, when we tag our photos and videos with useful information, new software is updated, released and accessed at the click other people can make use of it in all sorts of ways. Not only of a mouse. We are all fast becoming content producers, can we search for it, but we can cut and paste other people’s publishers and developers as much as we are consumers. content, create links to it, and customise it too. As we approach 2020, we are entering an era where we But this isn’t all. Add to this all the content that is now are much more hands-on with our digital materials, where available on the Web from the professionals (music, films, the world of software is no longer under strict control of photos, and text), and all kinds of data streams can be developers and engineers, and where we can create a more ‘mashed’ together. Many ‘mash-ups’, as they’re known, are customised, personalised digital world for ourselves. This do-it-yourself applications that merge one kind of data with will undoubtedly change our notions of ownership as we another. For example, our Facebook page may merge the enter the era of ‘home-brewed’ applications and services. In photos we post, our personal blog, and also contain links to the world of 2020, these changes may make us all more in RSS news feeds. More professional mash-ups can combine control of our digital destiny, yet at the same time, the rules, data from Amazon, eBay, or Google maps to create entirely regulations and accountability that govern how we live in this new applications. For example, Google maps and CraigsList digital world may be much harder to pin down. 23 Answer-Phones to Always-On A downside of being always available and constantly in touch is that it can become addictive. Having access to The need to express ourselves and communicate with email and the Web is becoming more commonplace on all others is fundamental to what it means to be human. phones, and this may increase the spread of the ‘disease’ of Communication technologies are now letting us stay communications addiction. But as with any other addiction, in touch and talk in more diverse ways than ever. The there are ways of dealing with the habit. People increasingly emergence of new genres of communication in the last few do not feel obliged to answer email on the same day, citing years has not only increased the pace of communication email overload or by being more explicit about being out but the amount of it, too. For example, messaging, texting of touch. There are also numerous self-help books on what and ‘twittering’ are on the rise, where groups of friends, it means and how to achieve ‘turning off’. Filtering using families and colleagues keep in touch, engaging in a form social metadata is another possibility for people to use of social grooming, like birds or apes, letting each other to manage their communication and availability better. know on a constant basis what they are doing or have just With this approach, ‘who’ and ‘what’ are used as indices to  Twitter Blocks: Twitter done. This is a far cry from the early days of discovering determine whether a message should ‘get through’ or be is a mini-blogging tool one could use the answer-phone to monitor calls before left waiting. for people to send small deciding whether to talk to the person at the other end. text-based nuggets of Another important set of issues concerns privacy and selfThe consequences of this shift in how, when and where identity. Through their mobile devices, people will not only family and co-workers to let we communicate are manifold. One is a dramatic increase be always in touch with one another but may be willing them know what they’re up information to friends, in the speed of communication which is in turn bound up to share their mobile digital traces: the locations they to throughout the course with the greater expectations of the speed of response. pass through, their activities, the profiles of other people of the day. ‘Twitter Blocks’ When email replaced paper in business mail, the speed they pass on the way and the content they consume and of response to a communication memo or request produce. This also suggests that increasingly people will was expected to be quicker. Now if you own a mobile have to worry about personal information getting into the device that lets you read your email anywhere, there is wrong hands. It also raises issues about how we protect the an expectation you will be responding at all hours of more vulnerable in our society, such as children. provides a way of visualising networks of Twitter friends and the messages they send to each other. the day, even when on vacation or in the early hours of 24 the morning. The ‘texting’ culture among teenagers is It seems no matter where we go or what we do, ‘the even more pressurised; not answering within an hour network is always there’, making us available to the world of receiving a text message is considered very uncool. to make ever more demands. As we move toward 2020, the Another example of the quickening of communication number of communication channels is likely to continue to is the ability of people to simultaneously deploy IM diversify and we could be making ourselves always available (instant messaging) with multiple people. This affords a in even more ways than we are today. These trends could previously impossible level of interaction – though whether make the old ways of talking, sharing and meeting with continuous partial attention is effective is open to dispute others obsolete, or they could give us more choice and offer – where dialogues with many different remote people can richer possibilities in how we connect with others and who be maintained all at once. we connect with. 1.2 Changing Lives By 2020 more people than ever will be using computing A diverse range of technologies has been developed devices of one form or other, be they a retiree in Japan, a for educational purposes, from multi-media learning schoolchild in Italy or a farmer in Africa. At the same time, tools to mobile measuring and sensing tools. Interactive each generation will have its own set of demands. ‘Silver whiteboards and WiFi are also becoming more surfers’ will want much more from technology than Web commonplace in schools. As the cost of PCs dramatically browsing, while the iPod and iPhone generation will be drops and cheap mobile phones become more like replaced by multiple other new generation Xs. Technology computers it is likely that the vision of one computer for will continue to have an important impact at all stages every child world-wide will be more of a reality by 2020. of life. The way we grow up, live together and grow old However, while our schools may be flooded with cheap The Ambient Periscope in is inextricably entwined with computers, whether we like computers, what really counts is how children and their action: a student observing it or not. For each of these stages of life we look at one teachers use them in a learning context. As resources pre-recorded videoclips particular topic in terms of technological developments: and tools like Wikipedia, Google, Word and PowerPoint about the habitat while what it means to learn, to be a family, and to be healthy become second nature, this is likely to change the way exploring the physical and active in old age. children create, solve problems, express themselves and woodland. This was part of understand the world. Likewise, the new generation of a larger project called the Learning Differently teachers, who have been brought up with computers Ambient Wood by Yvonne themselves, will increasingly be able to customise and Rogers and colleagues at The nature of learning is changing significantly as more incorporate these resources into their lessons. Sussex University.  and more technologies are assimilated into children’s lives. For example, how learning happens (eg taking part in a discussion with people from all over the world on Second Life) and when it happens (eg listening to a podcast about pollution while on the school bus home) are diversifying. There are ever more opportunities by which children can access, create and share content with others. Likewise, the nature of teaching is changing, both in terms of how teaching is undertaken and in how its benefits are measured. For example, the way teachers and professors engage with their students during class (eg using interactive whiteboards and tablet PCs to make comments) and after class (eg use of online assessment tools to provide feedback and reports) is very different from the ‘chalk and talk’ model of the past. What will learning be like in 2020? Will the exercise book and the report card of today even be recognisable? Here, we touch first upon advances made in technology-enhanced learning and, second on new forms of assessment and feedback. comprehensive and process-focused measure of students’ Ubi-learning in the competence and learning. Having access to a student’s Ambient Wood (University of Sussex): digital traces may also aid teachers in diagnosing learning a boy using a digitally difficulties that may have previously been overlooked. This understandably creates new tensions in terms of the augmented probe overall balance of time a teacher must give to assessing tool that shows real- students versus teaching them. time measurements of light and moisture As the trend towards developing more sophisticated on an accompanying mobile device.  technologies to record and assess a pupil’s output continues, the way computers are used to support learning and teaching in 2020 may be quite different from today. The impact will not just be in terms of how The new shareable technologies described earlier would technology changes the nature of learning and teaching seem ideal candidates for supporting innovative forms of but in other ways, too. It may change, for example, the collaboration in the classroom, enabling children to learn ways in which parents can become connected to the how to participate in new ways around digital content education process. It may affect the ways in which school they are creating. Ubiquitous computing devices are also invades home and home invades school for children in starting to enter the classroom and the schoolbag. New a culture that is increasingly permeated by connected low-cost sensing technologies are part of chemistry and computer technology. physics teaching. Even the very youngest children can benefit from computers when they are embedded in 26 objects that encourage hands-on interactive play. New Ways of Family Living How teachers assess their students is changing, too. Happy Families is a British card game invented in the 1850s that Online tools are being developed to make it easier is still played today. The goal is to collect as many complete sets to capture more about students’ work in digital form. of a four-member family, such as Mr Pint, Mrs Pint, Master Pint, Whereas, in the past, teachers commonly based their and Miss Pint. Over a century on, this family grouping seems assessment of a learner’s progress on the quality of their rather quaint. What it means to be part of a family today, let term paper or science project, today the teacher can see alone a happy family, is quite different. Besides the stereotypical the intermediate steps, the rough drafts, or even the family of 2.4 children, there are many other varieties, including sequence of keystrokes that led to the final product. The one-parent families and children living together from different capacity of computers to provide ever more finely-grained marriages. Most family groupings have a desire to stay in touch detailed traces of student behaviour continues to be a with each other and to look after one another. At the same time, major pull in education. A well-rehearsed claim is that there are ever-increasing demands on a family member’s life, teachers can and indeed ought to view digital traces not from needing to work or study all day to having to maintain a as merely a tool for spelling and syntax, but as a more network of perhaps a hundred online friends. New technologies are proliferating that enable people to live both their own busy social and working life while enabling them to take an active part in their family life. For example, in the 1980s, AT&T in the United States popularised the slogan ‘reach out and touch someone’, promoting the use of landline phones as a way of American family members staying in touch with each other. AT&T had noted how the distances that separated family members were getting ever greater. Twenty years on, there is little doubt that the desire to be in touch is as great as ever, though there are many other communication technologies besides the landline phone to support it. The huge uptake of broadband, and the mushrooming of Internet cafes all over the world has enabled many families to stay in touch more frequently than ever before. ‘Skyping’ has become a popular pastime; even when on holiday family members can talk to one another via a computer-based video connection. Being in touch is one thing, sharing within families is another. How family occasions occur is also changing. Whereas photos  Audiovox’s Digital Sharing can be very prosaic, such as sharing photos with family and videos of weddings were sent to distant relatives who Message Center is after returning from vacation. In today’s world, digital snapshots could not be there, it is now possible for them to be part of the designed to be attached can be posted on the Web and family members alerted. Being in occasion via video links. The same is true of birthday parties, to the refrigerator, letting touch through showing and sharing can bring dispersed family bar mitzvahs and other rites of passage. Even funerals can now families scribble digital members together. However, it can also highlight exclusions and be carried out online, and digital shrines can be constructed to notes and leave audio enmities that before may not have shown themselves. allow relatives to honour the dead, transcending boundaries and video messages for of both space and time. Digital materials also have important each other. Family life is also about looking after one’s own. Parents often implications for what happens after death. Emptying out the wish to know where their children are and are comforted by boxes after an aunt’s death may no longer be simply a matter knowing they are safe and sound. They also want to know that of dividing up the jewelry, books and ornaments. By 2020 a grandma is looking after herself living alone in her flat. A number person’s belongings will include a vast array of digital materials. of computer applications have been developed to enable family This raises all sorts of questions about how one sorts through members to keep an eye on one another, from the Family such collections, and whether the relevant social and technology Locator feature on the Disney cell phone (which allows parents safeguards are in place to allow us access to a loved one’s email to display the location of a child’s handset on a map) to devices and other digital belongings once they have passed away. In the that can be installed on cars to track their location and speed next decade or two, we will witness many changes in family life such as ‘Track My Car’ from AerComTec. But as such technology brought about by technology, but also sparking new forms of becomes pervasive, parents’ concern for the whereabouts of their digital tools. Such changes will of course have a larger impact on loved ones may easily be perceived as a form of surveillance. societal and ethical issues that is difficult to predict. 27 New Ways of Growing Older But it is also the case that middle-aged people, who are now in their 50s and 60s, are likely to still feel young and By 2020 there will be far more elderly people as a proportion of fit in their 70s and 80s, owing to their healthier lifestyles. the total population. Computer technologies are being developed Applications are being designed for their leisure, such as to support them in old age, from health-monitoring devices to social networking and gaming sites. This trend can already memory aids. Unlike previous generations, those growing old will be observed in the percentage of active users over 45 be familiar with using computers and mobile phones. Hence, the (11.52% in 2007) in Second Life, and in the emergence of need to design computer applications for old people who have virtual bowling leagues using Nintendo’s Wii system. not used email or the Web will no longer be a major concern. But staying healthy is becoming central to many people as they learn As people get older they will also want to remain active more about their bodies. People of all ages are regularly checking in ways previous generations did not. They will want to their body functions, such as cholesterol levels and heart rate. continue to be part of the workplace, to drive and to More monitoring devices will come into the market that will allow travel the world. There are currently restrictions in several people to monitor themselves in new ways, and this in turn will countries that prevent them from doing this. For example, alter the balance between what they understand about their own many car rental companies in Europe do not allow anyone health and the information offered to them by medical experts. over 70 to drive their cars (for insurance purposes). But Online support communities will increase where people can this is likely to change as people remain mentally alert upload their personal health data or send photos of what they and more computer-aided devices are placed in cars to have eaten and a log of their activities to online doctors who can make driving easier and safer. As a case in point, automatic give them up-to-date and personalised assessments. Such digital parking aids are starting to become available to help records of bodily and psychological health may also become people who find it hard to see behind them. resources for new ways of sharing and documenting the medical travails of older life, allowing for more customised and reassuring Part of the reason for this change has to do with the fact health care. that the retiree of 2020 will have spent a lifetime growing up with computer systems, having used them in their jobs, Sony’s EyeToy being entertained themselves through the Web and experienced played by grandpa. many of the ‘IT revolutions’ first hand. They will also expect A camera on the TV and be capable of using new technologies as they come on projects his image on the market. They will want to use them to stay connected to the playing screen, to society, work colleagues, friends and children. They will allowing him to want them to support their health and well-being. And as interact with the game they get older still, friends and family may want computers using arm movements to keep an eye on their aging family members. Technology and gestures.  in 2020 will alter not only the day-to-day experience of being old, but it will change how we regard ourselves, how we regard aging, and how we see the place of the elderly 28 in society. 1.3 Changing Societies Governments are using computers and, in particular, the  A man in Cape Town, Web, in more ways than ever. They do so both to inform South Africa, selling mobile their citizens (eg sickness benefits, visa requirements) and phones. In 2007, 77% of to gather information about them (eg returning online tax Africans had a mobile forms, voting online at an election). Cameras take pictures phone, while only 11% had of car number plates to automatically bill owners for computer access. anything from road taxes and tolls to congestion charges. Speed cameras flash as you whiz past them, signalling that a speeding ticket will be landing on your doormat in a few days. Identity cards and passports have increasing amounts of digital information embedded in them that can be read at passport controls. Opinions about what information governments need and ought to have, and what citizens ought reasonably to provide are changing. In many ways, technology is making the relationship between government and the individual more complex, not least because it is often difficult to know how much information is being gathered, how it is being used, and who has control of it. This holds true at a world-wide level: in some ways the change their governments. The use of mobile phones to world is more uniformly governed and this is being mobilise demonstrations at G8 meetings is a recent case. As achieved through computing; in other ways it is not and famous is the ‘coup de text’ that toppled President Estrada this is sometimes because of computing. For example, one of the Philippines in 2001. What happens on the world agency governs the issuance of addresses for the World wide stage is now affecting what happens locally. Global Wide Web. As it happens, this is a US-based institution. communications mean that the fate of individuals subject This means that wherever one is, whatever one wants to to one form of governance can have an effect, in real time, do, the name one uses is governed by an institution that elsewhere, on individuals subject to very different political governs us all. By contrast, how individual sites on the Web circumstances. One consequence of this is that internal get indexed is partly a matter of concern to the creator of and foreign affairs are subjected more to the media glare. a site, since the choice of indexing terms is up to them. But Football games and demonstrations, terrorist acts and it is partly also to do with a technical property of the search peaceful elections, all these and more are viewed through engine that is used to locate that site. The bottom line is the lens of the TV newsreel, the blog, and YouTube. that global connectivity is no real indication that one set of rules will govern us all. All of these changes are not just true for the ‘developed’ or Western world. The availability of cheap computers Just as governments are using new technologies to change and mobile phones has lowered the entry point for these how they do business, so too are the public using them to devices onto the market, enabling poorer nations to 29 ‘By 2020, there will be very few people left or in a single location. Computers increasingly span the on the planet who do not have access to a This broadening may bring us together, but it may also mobile phone’ globe and are being used by many differing cultures. highlight our differences. For example, many of the people who have been acquiring mobiles in Africa are not computer-literate. Some are also unfamiliar with the concept of information hierarchies, making it hard for participate too. In Africa, the cellular market grew by them to understand hierarchical menus. Concepts that are around 60% between 2004 and 2007. While only 11% of familiar to their culture and the local ways of doing things the population had access to desktop computers in 2007, may instead become more common-place as we move 77% have mobile phones. Furthermore, analysts have toward 2020. predicted that over 220 million people in India will be playing games on their mobiles by 2009. By 2020, there As computing takes hold across the globe, new will be very few people left on the planet who do not have technologies will show different emergent patterns of access to a mobile phone. use in other cultures, and will be appropriated in new ways by them. Technologies will not only be a sign of a The next thing in the digital economy? Visa Micro Tag does away with the need to swipe a credit card or give your card to the cashier. Just wave the tag in front of a secure reader and the payment is made.  One obvious consequence of this is that the mobile will changing world, but will accelerate those changes. How we become an increasingly important platform for computer understand these different cultural values and accept them applications for economically growing countries. This as we move towards 2020 will be an issue for debate and highlights the fact that technologies such as mobile reflection, and will offer up many new opportunities for phones are no longer used by a single group of people research and design. Summary Computers have played a massive role in changing the way we live over the last couple of decades. They are no longer possessions of the privileged but are rapidly becoming inexpensive, everyday commodities. They have evolved from being isolated machines to globally interconnected devices. Not only has access to computers vastly increased, but the ways we interact with them and materials used for computer devices have changed too. All of this means that computers can now be interwoven with almost every aspect of our lives. As we move towards 2020, so the extent of these changes will increase. By 2020, it may not be possible to realise all of our goals, ambitions and aspirations without using a computer or computing in one way or another. This binding of computing to our daily activities will in turn affect our values, goals and aspirations. 31 2 Transformations in Interaction Part 1 described the many kinds of changes that have happened in our relationship with computers. This Part reflects on these, summarising five major transformations that are dramatically affecting how we interact with computing technology as we move towards 2020. These range from how we understand and design interaction, to the nature of their impact on society. For each one, we highlight the opportunities and issues these transformations raise, specifying some of the important concerns that future research and development will need to address. Many of the challenges will be different from before, as will the questions we should be asking. We need to look at the world differently, and start to construct a new research agenda. 32 ART+COM’s artistic installation called Duality, located at the exit  of a metro station in Tokyo. Passers-by provoke virtual ripple effects with their footsteps, as if walking across a pond. 33 2.1 Human Values in the Face of Change The changes we have described in Part 1 – in computers, Second, changes in how we live with and use technology individual lives and society – can be viewed as examples of have resulted in us becoming ever more dependent upon five major transformations which are irrevocably altering the computing. It’s not simply that we use computing to, say, relationship we have with computers. create our work documents or our tax returns; computing now underpins almost every aspect of our lives, from The first has to do with how the proliferation and embedding shopping to travel, from work to medicine. At the same of technology has reshaped the way digital devices are time, computers are becoming more sophisticated and presented to us, the interface. Computing no longer has a autonomous, increasing our reliance on them. Thus, a further single interface, but rather many different ones. Some are transformation has to do with what one might call the created by computers encroaching ever more on our own growth of techno-dependency. personal space, even being embedded within us. Others are 34 produced by computers moving away and disappearing into Third, the increasing importance of communication the richness and complexity of the world around us. In other technologies in our private and public lives has tied us together words, this transformation is the end of interface stability, in new ways. At issue here is more than the fact that we find it almost making old notions of the ‘interface’ obsolete. What easier and quicker to, say, email one another rather than write an interface might be, where it is, what it allows a user to do, a handwritten letter; today (and even more so in the future) even whether there is one at all are, now, all questions for a we will spend more time, and devote more effort, to being in future-looking HCI. touch with each other. In addition to keeping us closer to those we care about, digital connectivity also has the power to mobilise crowds and respond to events in global ways. This ‘The characteristics that make us human will transformation is the growth of hyper-connectivity. continue to be manifest in our relationship Fourth, our desire to be in touch is equalled by our desire to with technology’ capture more information about our lives and our doings. With increasing technological capacity to capture and store more data and the related reduction in the cost of such things that matter to them in their daily lives – the things storage, what it means to record, why we record and what we they value. do with the collected materials is changing. This is happening at a personal level, and also at the level of government, By human values, we mean the ideas we all hold about what is institutions and agencies. We call this transformation the end desirable in different situations, societies and cultural contexts. of the ephemeral. They guide our actions, judgements and decisions, and are fundamental to what makes us human. There are many that we Finally, the proliferation and appropriation of new kinds can all agree on, such as taking care of loved ones, being active of digital tools by people from all walks of life signals the and healthy, and developing and maintaining friendships. Others growth of creative engagement through technology. This may be more contentious, such as the desire to control one’s is not confined to artists or media professionals, but all kinds surroundings and relationships, the quest for spiritual salvation of people, whatever their trade or stage in life. Important and the pursuit of sexual gratification. Whether or not we hold a developments are occurring in the world of science – and particular set of values to be true for ourselves, they are concerns thus how computer-based tools are augmenting human that are nonetheless more broadly important to us, and that we, reasoning. This transformation is affecting all of us, enabling as humans, orient to. Whether technology helps us in attaining us to work, play and express ourselves in new ways. what we desire in our lives or not, there is no doubt it affects the ways in which we pursue our goals and aspirations, and the ways Each of these five transformations impacts on the way in which we see ourselves and others. we view interaction and design, and raises far-reaching questions for us all. In the face of all this change, though, We propose that ‘being human’ in our relationship with some important things will remain the same. Above all, the technology means that we need to bring to the fore and better characteristics that make us essentially human will continue understand human values and make them central to how we to be manifest in our relationship with technology. People understand and design for a changing world. But these human will still wish to be part of families, to stay connected with values need to be understood against the backdrop of the friends, to educate their children, to care for each other major transformations we describe. The rest of this section will when they are unwell, and to grow old safely and in comfort. discuss each of these in more detail. For each transformation, Technology, digital or otherwise, is the enabler for all of we look at how it impacts on the way we view interaction and these things rather than the focus. Shifts in computing are design. We also examine the kinds of human values that are therefore not at the forefront of people’s concerns. What important to consider, and raise some of the broader issues these does concern them is how technologies can support the transformations will provoke. 35 2.2 The End of Interface Stability When we consider the digital world we inhabit, the sheer proliferation of ways in which we encounter digital technology is astounding. The last few decades have seen not only an Electronic sensing jewelry (a concept from Philips Design) is based on stretchable, flexible electronic substrates that integrate energy supply, sensors, actuators, and display. By changing colour or even shape according to your mood, it explores how wearable technology can be playful, sensual, moodaffected, bio-activity stimulated.  36 The shifting boundary between computers and humans enormous growth in the number of devices but also an almost Our relationship with computers has altered dramatically. explosive diversification in the nature of these devices as Where the interface or point of contact with computers they have entered every aspect of our lives. We face a future now resides (the boundary between us and machines) where we will need to live with an ever growing and always and the extent to which it is visible to us is now no changing set of interconnected digital devices. Some of these longer as clear as when we interacted at the desktop will be close to us and even embedded within us, while others or the terminal. One trajectory is inward, moving the will be invisibly built into our surrounding environment. How boundary closer to us and making our interaction with these technologies are manifest in the world and the extent to digital systems more intimate in nature. For example, which they and their interactive capabilities are noticeable to we now carry in our pockets and our handbags multiple us will be equally diverse. We need to understand and design points of contact to a computational infrastructure, such for interaction in a world where the notion of an interface is as a mobile phone, iPod or BlackBerry. With the shift to no longer easily defined, stable or fixed. Here, we consider medical monitoring and embedded bio-sensing devices how this flux will affect the boundary between computational this is likely to get closer still. Indeed, it may be difficult devices: between computers and people, and between to define the boundary at all when devices are embedded computers and the physical world. within us. The transformation in interface boundaries relative to  The last five years have our own bodies raises many new questions about how we seen an explosion in the might interact with new technologies. As the boundary number of digital hearing moves closer to us, so the focus of the interaction and aids on the market. They how it will affect their own personal experience needs to are a good example of be better understood by the individual. As these devices wearable computing and of become part of us, it raises issues about what defines an the trend toward intimate, individual, and whether embedded devices are part of embedded technology. that definition. The issues are more complicated than this, however. Personal, intimate devices can be networked and therefore can interact with other people and other devices within the wider environment. So we need to consider the spectrum of use, ranging from private and personal interaction at one end to public and aggregated interaction at the other. We can now receive unwanted BlueToothed files on our mobile phones. It is not long manage and control that boundary? These are all issues before personal devices might be detected by billboards, that we will increasingly have to deal with in future. shopfronts, pavements and walls as we walk along them, delivering customised information or messages to us. At Questions for interaction and design any one moment this means we may be simultaneously • How will we know what computational resources are interacting with multiple boundaries, some under our control and some not. This will cause shifts in what we available within us and how these will interact with resources around us? perceive as personal space, and what is shared. • What interaction techniques are appropriate if embedded How do human values affect the interface boundaries? • Will more intimate devices mean old concepts of ‘the devices have no explicit or recognisable interface? For example, the desire for vitality and independence as interface’ become obsolete and irrelevant in the future? we grow older might motivate us to place medical devices close to or even within our bodies. But how does this Questions of broader impact affect other human values, such as the need to define our • Will the embedding of bio-sensing devices be acceptable own identity? If computers are embedded within us, are they then part of that identity? And what about sharing that data with others? If others have access to our most only for cases of extreme frailty or illness or for other purposes too? • Should the bodily functions of people be allowed to be intimate data, do we then feel a loss of the independence monitored without their awareness or permission? we might seek? Likewise, if the boundary between us and • How should we access and control information from embedded devices is invisible, how important is it that we intimate, embodied devices? 37 The shifting boundary between computers and the everyday world artefacts we use in our world are associated with a medley of personal, social and cultural values. They will shape our understanding of new technologies within it. Consider the Just as the interface between people and computers technologies we might place in a church, a museum, a is radically altering, so, too, is the boundary between railway station or a stadium. Which kinds of displays and computational technology and the objects and surfaces interactive technologies and how they are placed in them in the everyday world. In future, a computer is more likely will differ considerably. to be embedded in furniture, rooms, cars, doors, clothing, and packaging than in a recognisable ‘box’. There are two As new forms of ‘natural’ and ‘indirect’ interaction develop, trajectories at play here. One is moving devices into everyday the consequences of their use in the public sphere raise of technology is the artefacts and objects, augmenting them with new sensing, significant issues for society. For one, it is not clear how History Tablecloth, by the communication and computational capabilities. The other social interaction will be managed in such settings and how is moving the devices into the surrounding landscape, these, in turn, will impinge upon society’s values. Shared augmenting it with interactive capabilities that respond to values need to be considered in terms of how spaces changes and activities within them. might be designed to reflect a community of users. The  Another playful piece Interaction Research Studio (Goldsmiths College, University of London). deployment of large-scale sensing systems, such as traffic It is designed to cover a kitchen or dining-room The interaction between digital technologies and the physical monitoring and RFID tags in supply chains, have already table. When objects are objects they are embedded in will change existing forms of highlighted the need for debate on the appropriate and left on the table, the cloth interaction. This link will become less clear in a world where socially acceptable use of digital technologies that sense our actions through our interactions with the physical world. starts to glow beneath we relate to technologies via physical artefacts that may look them, creating a halo that and feel like everyday, familiar objects, but which have some expands very slowly. When kind of digital impact. We will need new conceptual models Questions for interaction and design and metaphors of how best to support and control these new • How should new interaction techniques be merged with items are removed, the glow fades quickly. forms of more ‘natural’ but paradoxically less obvious forms of interaction. For example, what will replace the canonical ‘undo’, ‘cut and paste’, ‘save’ and ‘copy’ actions of the desktop in the world of physical-digital artefacts? Research is needed pre-existing skills dealing with everyday objects? • If everything we see, touch or walk past is interactive, how will we know and how can we control that interaction? • How useful are conventional definitions of ‘use’ and ‘users’? to determine what will be the most natural, efficient and socially accepted means of controlling such interactions. Questions of broader impact • How acceptable will indirect interaction be to society? The new relationships between digital devices and the world For example, will it be acceptable to provide invisible will bring to the fore a host of human values that hitherto interactive services in public toilets, on the beach, or in the have not been considered in relation to technology – many of which are manifest in the nature of the world we inhabit. For example, familiar physical artefacts and objects that provide us with reassurance and comfort are something that 38 we all understand. The physical world we inhabit and the wilderness? • Will people need to always be provided with an indication they have initiated an interaction? • Should people be allowed to opt in or out of a more connected interactive world? Living in a computational ecosystem become larger and more inter-connected with others? How does one start to understand where the problems lie? Who Computers will not only pervade our everyday world, but is responsible? One approach is to develop visualisations they will increasingly work together either in intended or and other representations that can make the workings of the unintended ways, often independently of human involvement. ecosystems more visible and understandable to those who Sometimes this will be for our benefit, but at other times to our have become part of them. detriment. When devices are interconnected, it may be more difficult for people to understand how they work. Moreover, The emergence of increasingly complex computational technologies are likely to give rise to emergent properties ecosystems will also have significant impact on our views of that are not only unpredictable but difficult to diagnose. society and technology. The ability to rapidly disseminate Evolving computational ecosystems shaped by the merging information globally and to make complex inferences from of human and computing entities will result, likewise, in ever aggregated data collection will be an increasing cause of more complex scenarios of use. We have international banking concern among civil liberty groups. New forms of legislation will systems that allow us to use our credit cards anywhere. But be needed, together with a range of new sense-making tools there are automatic security systems which can inhibit this that will enable policy-makers to understand the unfolding use, for instance. Furthermore, they are likely to produce complexity that is emerging. unexpected effects that are aggregated across multiple places of contact and a dynamic changing infrastructure. Questions for interaction and design • How do we enable people to understand the complexity of Although people may value surprise and unpredictability in some walks of life (such as in art or in games), in others, it is unwelcome. There are many systems we depend on to help us get from one place to another, to get our work done, and to keep us safe. Will increasing levels of complexity undermine new ecosystems of technologies and the consequences of interacting with them? • What happens when things stop working or break down in these new ecosystems? • How should information be passed between interconnected our sense of safety and security in the world? Will our lack devices and how will increasingly pressing concerns, such as of understanding make us less confident about living in security and privacy, be managed? an increasingly digital world? As part of understanding the complexity, we need to be able to find ways of presenting it to Questions of broader impact people in a form they can make sense of and act upon. • How will we understand the complexity of our interactions sufficiently to control them and prohibit The unconstrained and potentially unbounded nature of the new computational ecosystems makes it ever more difficult to reason about the consequences of interaction. So, how will people cope, especially when things do not appear to work actions that are considered unacceptable to society? • How can we legislate for local interactions having potentially global effects? • Who will be responsible and accountable for preventing in the way intended? It is difficult enough when we can’t breakdowns, fixing problems and protecting society diagnose why our home broadband network has stopped from the unplanned and undesirable consequences of working. What happens when our computational networks complex ecosystems? 39 2.3 The Growth of Techno-Dependency I-Garment is developing As new technologies become more interwoven into our old-fashioned typewriter to create documents. We are so used everyday activities, we will become more dependent on the to working with computers to undertake everyday tasks that new capabilities they provide, often to the point where we we tend only to think about them when they break down or will find it hard to imagine how things could be done any are unavailable. Similarly, we are so dependent on complex other way. It is now an ordinary event to visit an automatic computers in most aspects of our lives that we barely give bank machine. Most of us would find it both unusual and them a second thought. For example, we routinely fly on inconvenient to have to visit a bank and interact with a human planes that are entirely dependent on the sophistication of the teller in order to withdraw money. Likewise, most of us would underlying computer systems rather than the inherent skills feel both affronted and frustrated if our personal computers of the pilot. Our dependency on computer technologies will were taken away and we were suddenly forced to use an become increasingly the norm over the next decade. garments – to be worn Living in an increasingly technology-reliant world by fire-fighters and the Each generation acquires a new set of technologies in addition like – that monitor and to the older ones they have become dependent on. Many full-bodied smart transmit the location and of today’s children have grown up with the Internet at their vital signals of its wearer fingertips, instant availability through mobile phones, access (such as body temperature and heartbeat).  to vast archives of their personal music and photographs, and video and TV on demand. They also take for granted older technologies such as calculators, word processors, and email. But what happens when the Internet or a mobile network provider goes offline for a period of time? When the national electricity grid goes down, people bring candles out and read books. When networks go down, people become suddenly aware of their dependence, or even addiction, to email and the Web. Technological dependence raises a number of fundamental questions for how we design and understand computers. An important set of issues has to do with the skill-sets that change over generations, and also those that will increasingly disappear. Designers of technology need to take into account what their target users already know and what they will expect. At the same time, other key skills that previous generations have taken for granted may become obsolete. With the uptake of calculators, educationalists became increasingly worried that 40 children’s mental arithmetic skills were disappearing. In 2020, what other kinds of basic skills might go? We are already hearing arguments that the new world of digital media augurs badly for children’s attention span and their ability to read and concentrate. Technological dependence interacts with other fundamental human values. For example, it is also the case that the more we depend on technologies to carry out or ‘The more we depend on technologies to carry out or mediate our everyday activities, the more we will need to trust them to do so’ mediate our everyday activities the more we will need to trust them to do so. How does such blanket trust develop? and PCs have tended to emphasise individual actions despite Will people in the future be able to adapt to situations the fact that in some parts of the world computer systems where access and use of technologies cannot be taken are used by communities. Villages in India provide the most for granted? Is this increasing reliance on technology a obvious example of this, but similar communal interaction healthy state of affairs for society? How does this weigh with computers doubtless occurs elsewhere too. In short, up with our natural curiosity to understand the facilities solutions to the digital divide will need to include novel we use in order to trust them? One potential downside to approaches to design as well as cost. all of this is a loss of independence and self-reliance, and a lack of depth and breadth of understanding about how Questions for interaction and design the world works. If we are not careful, undermining these • Will there be ever-increasing expectations for better and values may make the world of 2020 a much less rewarding world to live in. faster technologies and what does this mean for the new technologies we design? • What will be the taken-for-granted technologies in 2020 Finally, technological reliance is different the world over, and there are understandable concerns about the global digital divide. If access to computing technology will and how might this alter the skill-sets and understandings of future generations? • How do we design technologies to help people cope in mean much more than owning a PC and having Internet an increasingly technology-dependent world when the access, what will be the key technologies that some parts infrastructures break down, devices malfunction or get lost? of the world will require? Part of the answer here is not simply economic. The bulk of the world’s people now use Questions of broader impact mobile phones as their primary computer, with all sorts of • If numeric skills can be supplemented by the ubiquitous implications for its functionality and design. A mobile is presence of calculators, what other skills will become not and never will be a PC-in-the-hand; they are essentially potentially obsolete? Should society be concerned about different things, irrespective of the processing power they contain. A mobile offers an emphasis on communication, portability and even wearability in ways that a PC never can, while a PC can afford ease of document creation. Besides this, the metaphors used to design both mobiles this? • Is technology to be blamed for accidents and disasters or are designers and developers held responsible? • As society grows ever dependent on technology and the interaction underpinning this, who is accountable? 41 Living with increasingly clever computers over our own environment is a key human value. Will clever computer systems undermine or enhance this? As computer systems become more sophisticated, they have also become more independent. More are beginning Part of this sense of control is related to how we account for to make choices and decisions on our behalf. For example, our activities. We treat being responsible for what we do as a popular recommender systems give guidance on what measure of sophistication and knowledge; this is why children we might like to do or buy. As computers become more and adolescents are not subject to criminal proceedings in autonomous they also have become increasingly present in the same way as adults. Such systems of accountability are our world. ‘Clever’ computers can now clean our floors, help not confined to matters of criminality of course but also us find our way, and are even beginning to become our pets suffuse our professional and personal actions. This, in turn, and companions. These developments raise fundamental drives many broader societal relations and understandings. questions about how we should live with them, what our As computing takes on more roles in our activities and as relationships should be, together with larger social and our environment becomes constructed and controlled by ethical issues of responsibility and accountability. computers that we might not even be aware of, these systems of etiquette, accountability and responsibility will be affected. What might be an appropriate kind of relationship? How will we know that this is happening? Who will judge Rather than instructing or issuing commands, it may mean what the consequences might be? designing interactions to be more like human-human conversations. But will people be happy talking to their Questions for interaction and design robots as if they were pets or even people? This question • What will be an appropriate style of interaction with has been around for many years but will become more pressing as clever computers become more of a reality. clever computers? • What kinds of tasks will be appropriate for computers, and when should humans be in charge? And, what will be the kinds of tasks we feel happy to let clever computers do? For example, will we trust driverless • How can clever computers be designed to be trustworthy, reliable and acting in the interests of their owners? transportation in the future to move our children to and from school? Likewise, will we trust computers to undertake Questions of broader impact medical intervention? Computers already play a major • To what extent will society allow clever computers role in safety-critical systems such as air traffic control and nuclear power plants, but do we feel it is acceptable that they also begin to take on more social roles in society? In Japan, some are now proposing that robots be developed as companions for the elderly. If this is acceptable, how should we design them so that we do not completely abdicate responsibility? We need to decide. We also need to consider the consequences of a world inhabited by independent 42 computers that we have less control over. A sense of control the trust we currently give to trained and qualified professionals? • Is it proper to assign what used to be human roles to computers? For example, is it acceptable to allow robots to be companions for the elderly or infirm? • Who will we hold accountable when things go wrong with autonomous systems? • What are the implications for society of having clever computers reasoning and acting on our behalf? 2.4 The Growth of Hyper-Connectivity The ability to communicate through multiple interactive many of whom we may only ever meet through digital devices will continue to grow and diversify as we approach channels. This is changing the way we build and maintain 2020. We are already starting to see a transformation from our relationships at work, home and play. The boundaries the 90s communication technologies that resulted in most between the office and home, and between work and people being always-on to more extreme forms of hyper- play are dissolving. It is perfectly normal now for people connectivity in the 00s through increasingly more diverse to be emailing their work colleagues in the early hours sets of communication channels and media. But what are while playing a game of online poker with people they the implications of such an explosive and rapid growth in have never met. Traditional, socially accepted conventions connectivity to individuals and society at large? And what will and etiquette governing how we communicate, when we it be like in 2020? communicate, whom we communicate with and what else we are doing are rapidly disappearing. New ones are Living in a more socially connected world replacing them but it seems that anything goes now. For We now connect at greater distances and over longer time- their professors with excuses for late assignments using frames with our friends and family than ever before. We informal text slang. Professors, however, may feel differently. example, students feel it is perfectly acceptable to email reach each other more of the time wherever we are, and We need to examine how the rules of conversation at work, are available for contact any place, any time. We are also school, among friends and family are being transformed by making new friends and building new forms of relationships, the proliferation of communication technologies. 43 Mobile phones can help The shift towards hyper-connectivity provokes fundamental to isolate us in a crowd. questions about the core elements of our society. Alternatively, they can Previously stable and fixed divisions have now become mobilise the masses, for more permeable. If we carry a mobile email device, the division between work and home starts to blur. When we better or worse.  are members of online communities that span the globe, the notion of neighbourhood becomes different. We are in a time where conventions and norms are being radically reshaped, and where we are defining how we manage our interactions in both physical and social spaces. These will have major consequences both for our well-being and the well-being of those we care about. Parents are rightly worried about how their children connect to others through the Internet – a unique problem of the 21st century. It is becoming more of a challenge to do the right thing, and Hyper-connectivity also raises a number of fundamental issues provide safety nets that in the past might have seemed for understanding and designing interaction. The need to attend more straightforward. to multiple demands will increase with spiralling overheads. Currently, we are used to managing demands by changing Questions for interaction and design physical location (we are either at work or not) or managing our • How can technology help us manage our availability to time (we spend time with our families at the weekend). However, hyper-connectivity undermines both these resources. As a result we will need to discover new ways of managing multiple points of interaction that vary in terms of purpose, scope and scale. others, and what information should be made available? • What new codes of etiquette will come into play? How much should new technologies and services be designed to take these into account? • How can new communication technologies be designed to The human values of community and connection will be tested: let people know that the people they meet digitally really they are both supported and undermined by the new waves are who they say they are? of communication technologies. The need to be connected to others and avoid isolation drives not only the development Questions of broader impact of more kinds of communication devices, but motivates • What are the appropriate social structures and practices and shapes our use of them. However, set against this is the basic human need to have time for independence and quiet reflection. There is therefore an inherent tension in the extent and level of connection we find acceptable. The danger is that we will end up in a state of extreme connectivity that will invade 44 needed to help us live in a connected world and how do they relate to our current practices? • What impact will large-scale social networks have upon us, our families and friends, and society at large? • How should we properly police a connected society for the human need to disconnect and spend time on our own, or the benefit of all without the technologies of connection with close friends and family. becoming misused? Being part of a digital crowd ‘The digital crowd is likely to play a more Digital technologies are not only everpresent, but they allow influential role in shaping the human remote events to have an immediate impact upon us. In today’s world, we anticipate receiving notification of world events immediately. We now routinely see images captured on mobile values of the future’ phones spread across the world in minutes. We are also starting to see our actions and activities having global influence in more influential role in shaping the human values as opinions terms of our abilities to motivate and mobilise the population are voiced and information shared via digital means. Will this to respond to particular events. We are becoming part of the undermine our current set of human values or enhance them?. digital crowd, where our local actions can have widespread and potentially global interactive effect. However, we understand Another concern is the extent to which the voice of the little of how this transformation is taking place and how we digital crowd reflects a real reaction or overreaction. Consider, might design new technologies to facilitate and keep it in check. for example, the number of times that existing Internet technologies are viewed as promoting ‘extreme’ views. It We have seen the power of digital technology for many years is a concern that is already becoming pressing for many in terms of how it allows the sharing and sometimes flaring governments. For example, in the UK, the Ministry of Defence up of opinion. Newsgroups and email have long played a has prohibited military personnel from access or contribution to role in dissemination of public opinion. We are now seeing blogs while on active service duty. more compelling examples of ‘smart mobs’, where people are able to self-organise on a massive scale through technology. Questions for interaction and design This impromptu, ad hoc use of technology can be used for • What are the patterns of interaction that emerge as local organising protests, taking mass action, and galvanising public opinion behind a cause. But likewise it can be used to stalk celebrities, spread misinformation, and provoke civil unrest. As we approach 2020, there may be many ways in which the action sparks interaction and reaction on a mass scale? • How can we deal with potential negative effects of instant and widespread dissemination of information or misinformation? • How do we design tools and infrastructures to allow digital infrastructure, nature of the tools, and interaction will need to crowds to form without overloading the infrastructure and change to accommodate and help manage this transformation. allowing phenomena to be managed appropriately? The values of community and shared identity lie at the core of Questions of broader impact a sense of the digital crowd. Our desires to be accepted and • How can technologies be used to effectively assemble and part of a common value system motivate the ways in which mobilise groups of people to tackle global problems? we are already seeing technology being used. However, it is • How should the global impact of interaction be handled and worth noting that the difference between ‘crowd’ and ‘mob’ what impact will increased connectivity with remote world may be small; understanding how one or the other is manifest events have? is important to the stability of society. For example, will we face distributed online protest? The digital crowd is likely to play a • What is the role of government and legislation in shaping the acceptable behaviour of digital crowds? 45 2.5 The End of the Ephemeral Another major transformation that is taking place is our captured on a mobile phone and then uploaded to a photo- expanding digital footprint. More and more ephemeral sharing site may haunt someone for the rest of their lives in a aspects of our lives, which used only to be stored in human way it never did before. Will it be possible for people to delete memory, are being recorded as digital ‘memories’. We now digital memories captured by others? Now that there are digital live in a world where our interactions and activities are often tools that can record everything we say or do, how will this affect on the record. CCTV cameras record our movements in public our own abilities and ways of remembering? spaces, while barcodes or RFID tags on products record our shopping transactions. Our online activities through Web Digital footprints obviously raise new challenges for how we interaction, blogs and social software are also increasingly design technologies. But they also need to be understood as open to both explicit and implicit archiving. Furthermore, a social phenomenon. Memories help us honour the past and many of these digital records are being indexed in one form shape our sense of identity. How we might share our memories or another, allowing them to be readily retrieved at a later with family, friends and the wider world lies at the heart of how date. What does this mean for individuals and society? we wish to be seen by others and how we share our experiences. Today, we still can exercise some control over what personal data Managing expanding digital footprints we reveal to others, and the different ways in which we might Expanding digital footprints have already started to challenge we are likely to have less control over our digital records. This the prevailing views of privacy and ethics. New laws are needed fact, coupled with the persistence of our personal data in many to ensure people have the protection rights they desire over their domains may well have more far-reaching societal impact than own and other’s personal data. There is also a need to investigate we even begin to imagine. present it to friends, family and work colleagues. But in the future new forms of authentication, security and personal identification and to explore what this means at the level of interaction. This Questions for interaction and design will become ever more pressing as we move toward 2020. • What tools and technologies are needed to effectively manage The growth and management of our digital footprints highlight • How can the privacy and security of digital footprints be vast quantities of personal data? significant differences between human and computational views ensured to prevent misuse but at the same time allow them to of interaction. Recollecting and forgetting is bound up with the be shared with others when needed? initial encoding of human experience. This is quite different from the more rigid and mechanistic way in which digital information • How do people find out about their digital footprint and what tools should be provided? is typically recorded. Memories tend to fade over time and change through interpretation. Digital records are more static, Questions of broader impact tending to persist in a stable form. Many systems are built on the • How should society manage the storage and access of human assumption that the more data we capture the better. In contrast, humans place great value on being selective in what they remember. It is important that we sometimes forget and that we can rely on the tendency of others to forget our past actions 46 and activities too. But digital records are merciless: a silly prank data ethically and responsibly? • Will people have the right to have information removed from their digital footprints? • What are the legal implications of a growing digital footprint that maintains a record of our present and past? Living in an increasingly monitored world The way in which we value security is primarily around increased monitoring, such as the desire to safeguard In addition to the personal data we generate and collect, our streets and public places. At a more personal level, governments, institutions and agencies will have more information captured through digital devices about access to both real time and archived data reflecting the people’s activities (such as their location) can provide activities of large groups of people. CCTV cameras already comfort to others. It can, for example, reassure us of the capture and monitor behaviour in public places for crime- well-being of our loved ones, such as children or elderly prevention and traffic-management purposes. The flow relatives. However, the asymmetry of access to personal and speed of traffic on our road systems are monitored for information runs the risk of undermining those being many different purposes. Our activities on the Internet can monitored, making them feel they are being spied on. be used to target advertising. Likewise, schools, hospitals The issue of surveillance through digital technology will and other public or private institutions can monitor, continue to have exposure and be debated across many capture, and analyse the behaviour of their client or sections of our society. How we engage with and shape customer base. We are entering an era where the activities public debate in this contentious area will determine the  CCTV cameras and actions of the public at large are increasingly being general acceptance and use of this technology and our increasingly monitor captured, processed and used as a basis for judgement by own views of the society we inhabit in 2020 – and be a behaviour in public places, others, often without their knowledge or consent. fruitful area for HCI researchers. leading many to fear A concern is the level of awareness people have when Questions for interaction and design being monitored by technology and whether it affects • How can monitoring technologies be designed to give for the growth of ‘the them. Should they be informed of the information that is being captured about them, who has access to it and how it is being used? To what extent do we need to design technology that allows people both control and feedback about what kinds of data are being monitored? The current asymmetric nature of the interaction surveillance society’. feedback and control to those being observed, where it is considered desirable? • Should people be able to opt out of being monitored and how do we design technology to do this? • How can the capture of information and the need for privacy be balanced through design? between those being observed and those doing the observing highlights concerns about the use and abuse Questions of broader impact of monitoring technology. If we are uncertain about • What ethical guidelines are needed for managing when and where information is being captured about us, monitored information and how are these reviewed and to whom it is available and for what purpose, then we implemented? are likely to feel our privacy is infringed and may even feel threatened by the ability of others to misuse this information. For example, digital technologies and the ability to edit closed circuit TV footage and photos leave • Whose responsibility is it to ensure that systems for monitoring are designed to balance the rights of individuals with those of society? • How do we ensure the monitoring of activities changes us all open to being misrepresented, and to libellous the behaviour of social groups and public behaviour for actions by others. the better? 47 2.6 The Growth of Creative Engagement The new generation of technologies, including ubiquitous play, and whether they support research, hobbies, or home computing and Web 2.0, is enabling more creative uses of lives, technologies will enable us to take the initiative, be computing than ever before. Many of these are advancing our constructive, be creative and, ultimately, be in control of our knowledge as a society. For example, various mixed-reality interactions with the world. As we move toward 2020, we and sensor-rich physical environments have been developed will have more flexibility in the tools we use and the content to enable people to engage with both the physical and digital produced by them. And increasingly, we will use tools and world in new ways. The most playful example of this is the content produced by all manner of people, from friends and Nintendo Wii. This is impacting on many aspects of learning, family, to scientists and professionals. from science and medicine, to the way we teach our children through collaborative learning and experimental games. More extensive inquiries and decisions have been enabled, through Augmenting human reasoning the ‘mash-up’ of Web 2.0 tools, allowing for more discoveries Computers are increasingly being used to visualise and and far-reaching analyses, such as determining the effects of reason about complex problems and information in new deforestation in different continents. ways, leading to new forms of research. Computer scientists are working with biologists, chemists, physicists and earth In Vodafone’s vision of the future, young musicians will be able to create music with friends in remote places, all following or creating a musical score together. A wraparound screen shows video images of friends and displays the digital score.  48 More broadly, computers are now used for all kinds of creative scientists to develop computational tools that can help tackle engagement, and by all kinds of people. Whether for work or some of the most important scientific questions facing the world today, such as climate change and global pandemics. computing resources and vast quantities of data, these issues In its support of the doing of science, a challenge for the will become more significant. development of computational tools and technologies is to ensure that they are able to augment human reasoning and The ability to provide increasingly sophisticated tools to problem-solving skills in a way that empowers scientists’ and augment our human capabilities speaks strongly to the others’ ability to understand, model and solve problems. human values associated with our desire for productivity and industriousness in our lives, and our aspirations for We need to build tools that enable computing scientists and greater knowledge. We will need to fathom out how best other scientists to share and communicate their expertise to represent and present information. This involves working across disciplines. Building tools that can be used effectively out how to make data from all kinds of different sources across inter-disciplinary boundaries will require much intelligible, usable and useful. These may come from research more integration of the computing and other sciences labs, but equally may come from an ever-growing stream of than is currently the case. Not only that, but scientists in data from the increasing array of sensors placed throughout all disciplines are skilled professionals. Designing tools the world. It also entails figuring out how to integrate and which are effective will depend on understanding the replay, in meaningful and powerful ways, the masses of nature of their expertise. This raises all kinds of questions: digital recordings that are being gathered and archived, such are automated number-crunching tools that index, search that professionals and researchers can perform new forms of and sort the way forward? Do we need other kinds of tools computation and problem-solving, leading to novel insights. that model and highlight patterns, trends and anomalies in complex data and structures? To what extent do computer- Questions for interaction and design based tools need to reveal and be explicit about their • Is further automation the way forward for augmenting underlying assumptions and constraints? And as tools become more complex and work on ever greater datasets, it may be difficult to know when they malfunction, or when they are misapplied. human thinking and problem-solving? • How can the interaction and design of new computational tools be structured so they do not impede creative engagement? • What new toolkits can be developed to enable scientists, Another concern is how such tools represent complexity and others to create tools for themselves to solve their and make it tractable, whether it be modelling the earth’s own problems and explore new avenues? support systems or the human immune system. If a computer simulates a complex system, does it simply create Questions of broader impact a new one that needs further analysis and understanding? • What will such tools mean for the nature of expertise in How can the ensuing knowledge be communicated and acted upon to solve problems in the world? For example, how can the results of computational analyses from many millions of data points be represented in meaningful future? • Will scientists become too dependent on tools? If so, what does this mean for the nature of invention and discovery? • Will computer-based tools eventually become so complex ways? As we take on more complex problems, use more they can no longer be understood by the people who sophisticated models, and rely on increasingly powerful developed them? 49 New forms of creative engagement values. Many of us are driven to invent, appropriate and experiment. Powerful, flexible tools, whether they Novel technologies, including interlinked tools, digital  Microsoft’s ‘Surface’ is an interactive tabletop are everyday tools or sophisticated, state-of-the-art representations and physical artefacts, will offer the technology, allow us to express ourselves, pursue new means to facilitate creative authoring, designing, learning, ambitions and achieve new goals. For example, the ability thinking and playing. They will allow different groups of to create and access new media through digital tools will people to participate in all kinds of new and engaging allow us to augment our skills as artists and musicians, activities: from very young children to the elderly; or support us in our personal hobbies, whether this be from the amateur to the expert; and for many kinds of researching our family history, cooking, or trainspotting. ability or disability. These toolkits will also offer up new But there are potential downsides and uncertainties as opportunities in every aspect of life, and every part of we move into the future. In a world where the design the world. For example, educators and consultants are and development of new technologies become more now able to use off-the-shelf toolkits to assemble and decentralised, where new kinds of content and do-it- appropriate digital technologies to enhance learning yourself applications become widespread and accessible to for a range of settings, such as schools, waiting rooms, all, where will the control and the accountability be? Who playgrounds, national parks, and museums. But even will be responsible for making sure there is good design, interaction with digital better, everyday users can now increasingly create their and that the resulting technologies empower rather than objects such as photos, own content, grab content and applications off the undermine people? In a world where smarter and more music files, games and Internet, and assemble their own digital resources just the flexible tools make us all experts, this raises the question of way they want to. who will think about the larger societal and ethical impacts allowing two-handed maps. These kinds of of what gets built. interactive surfaces encourage collaborative, creative engagement. How will we conceive of and design creative technologies? If we are now in the business of building tools rather than Questions for interaction and design applications, and of providing digital resources rather than • What is the role of interaction design when people exert creating digital products, how does this change the nature of design? If people can assemble digital pieces to produce their own creations, this radically alters what it means to design an interface or a finished product. It may also more control over their digital resources and tools? • What will the toolkits of 2020 be like if they are to encourage new and creative uses? • Can tools be developed that encourage good design? mean changing design goals. Instead of designing usable products, it may mean we ought to worry more about Questions of broader impact designing flexible, versatile components. In addition, the • Who is accountable when amateurs build badly designed role of good design changes when most of the designing is by the user. These are some of the new questions for interaction and design that are raised when users become their own producers, programmers and publishers. software? • Who is responsible for having the ‘bigger vision’ of what technologies can do and should do? • How will new forms of creative engagement change the role and ultimately the fate of the software developer, the 50 Self-expression and the need for creativity are core human designer and the usability engineer? Summary There are five main ways in which our interactions with computers will be transformed as we approach 2020. How we define and think about our relationships with computers is radically changing. How we use them and rely on them is also being transformed. At the same time, we are becoming hyperconnected and our actions, conversations and interactions are being increasingly etched into our digital landscapes. There is more scope than ever before to solve hard problems and allow new forms of engagement and creativity. We have begun to raise the issues and concerns that these transformations provoke. There are many new kinds of questions we have not had to be concerned with before. Some will be within the remit of Human-Computer Interaction to address and others will not. 51 3 HCI: Looking Forward Technology is changing, people are changing, and society is changing. All this is happening at a rapid and rather alarming rate. What can the HCI community do to intervene and help? How can it build on what it has achieved? In this Part we map out some fundamental changes that we suggest need to occur within the field. Specifically, we suggest that HCI needs to extend its methods and approaches so as to focus more clearly on human values. This will require a more sensitive view about the role, function and consequences of design, just as it will force HCI to be more inventive. HCI will need to form new partnerships with other disciplines, too, and for this to happen HCI practitioners will need to be sympathetic to the tools and techniques of other trades. Finally, HCI will need to re-examine and reflect on its basic terms and concepts. Outdated notions of the ‘user’, the ‘computer’ and ‘interaction’ are hardly sufficient to encompass all that HCI will need to attend to. 52 The Kiss Communicator is a concept prototype that allows you to blow a ‘kiss’ to your  beloved even when in another part of the world. Squeezing and blowing on the device wirelessly sends a sequence of lights to its corresponding Communicator. 53 3.1 The Way Forward Since its inception in the 1980s, HCI has been primarily have begun to broaden their horizons, there is much work concerned with designing more usable computer systems, to be done. To begin, HCI needs to understand and analyse be it the computer desktop, the VCR, the Web, or the mobile the wider set of issues that are now at play, most notably phone. It takes bad designs and shows how to improve them. human values, including the moral and ethical aspects And, it tries to apply its methods to design good systems of designing technologies for new domains. The kinds of from the start. But HCI needs to change what it does if it is to interactions we are designing for are beginning to have far- keep up with and influence the transformations in our midst. reaching consequences for people beyond the immediate actions they are engaged in. For example, designing a By 2020, society’s relationship with technology will be quite mobile communication device that makes visible to others different from what it has meant to be ‘users’ of computers. in the vicinity a person’s interests and dislikes may also Computers will quite literally be everywhere, from inside our enable anyone else in the street and beyond to permanently bodies to roaming Mars. They will also look and feel quite track, record and ‘see’ what that person is doing on their different from the PCs, laptops or handheld computers of the device. What we make visible and what we keep hidden at 90s. There will be many opportunities to use them in diverse an interface, how that is accessed and how it is represented and novel ways not possible now, allowing us to express to others, will be affected by and affect, in turn, the social ourselves, be creative, and to nurture, protect, and care for one behaviours, norms, and practices that are considered ethical another in new ways. However, technological advances can and acceptable. equally support the darker side of what it means to be human. People may use them to find ever more sophisticated and subtle So, how can the wider range of societal and moral concerns ways to control us, deceive us or spy on our every movement be addressed in interaction design? Moreover, is it possible and transaction. Even if computers are not used with nefarious to design a responsible army robot or an ethical data- intentions, we could equally find ourselves in a world where we capturing wallpaper? To broaden the remit of HCI, we are bombarded with information, told what to do by our cars, propose a three-pronged approach that builds on its offices and homes, forced to grapple with ever more complex accomplishments. First, we suggest extending the way that technologies in our home and working lives, and monitored, user-centred research and design is conducted by including measured and recorded without our knowing. another stage of conceptual analysis that explicitly addresses these higher-level concerns, including the questions raised Do we simply let technological advances dictate what in Parts 2.2-2.6. A second way forward is to develop new it will mean to be human in the age of ubiquitous partnerships with other disciplines that traditionally have not computing or can HCI as an interdisciplinary community been part of HCI, but that are equipped to address societal, of researchers, practitioners and designers become more moral and ethical concerns. Third, we suggest redefining the proactive in helping to shape society’s new relationships basic building blocks of HCI, ie concepts of the ‘human’, the with computer technologies? ‘computer’ and ‘interaction’. A lingua franca, comprising new metaphors, concepts and principles, will enable the diverse 54 A quite different mindset is needed for thinking about how to parties to understand each other better, to talk about the design for, how to control and how to interact with emerging emergent transformations, and to explore how to steer them ecosystems of technologies. While many researchers in HCI in ‘human’ directions. Central to the new agenda is recognising what it means From User Experience to Human Values to be human in a digital future. We suggest foremost that human values, in all their diversity, be better understood and As we have stressed throughout, computers, now more than charted in relation to how they are supported, augmented ever, do much more than compute. When someone takes or constrained by technological developments. In many a digital photo and stores it on a PC, when they browse ways, we are arguing for a strengthening of what has always through their photo collections or post an image on a been important to HCI: a focus on human-centred design, website for friends to see, they do not think of the computers keeping firmly in sight what users – people – need and want that enabled them to do these things as undertaking from technology. But beyond this, HCI needs to extend computation. They think of the computers as letting them its approach to encompass how human desires, interests make, move and store ‘stuff’. And if it is not about making and aspirations can be realised and supported through and managing stuff, it might be about other things. It technology. These have to be defined not just at the level of might be about playing games; it might be about creating the individual, but also at the social, cultural and ethical level. personal noticeboards through websites; or it might be about 55 communicating with each other. In short, technologies do not for us to forget. They can help us be connected to others, but necessarily ‘solve problems’ for users in the way they used to, by the same token, it may be important that they allow us say, 20-30 years ago, but increasingly are able to fulfil many sometimes to be isolated. Likewise, computers can support other kinds of interests, desires or ambitions. our industriousness, but at other times, we may want to In recognition of the way computer use is changing, a specifically to support certain values, such as enabling people number of researchers and practitioners have begun studying to express themselves, to demonstrate their affection to the nature of the ‘user experience’ and how it unfolds over others, to nurture and to reassure family members. They can time. This has largely involved defining its subjective qualities, also be designed inadvertently to violate human values such such as what interacting with a device, like an MP3 player as trust, privacy and a sense of fairness. ‘switch off’ and be restful. Technologies can be designed or a pet robot, feels like to use. Concepts such as pleasure, aesthetics, fun and flow, on the one hand, and boredom, Taking into account the scope of human values, therefore, is annoyance and intrusiveness, on the other, have been used quite a different undertaking than seeking to attain the design to describe the multifaceted nature of such ‘felt’ experiences. goals of efficiency, effectiveness and utility. Design trade-offs In addition, HCI specialists have modelled how we respond need to be considered not just in terms of time and errors, to technology from a visceral or emotional level through to a but in terms of the weighing up of the various moral, personal conscious, reflective one. They have also described the whole and social impacts on the various parties who will be affected life-cycle of our response to technology, from when it first by the proposed technology. For example, the design goal grabs our attention and entices us, through to our ongoing of a ‘well being’ monitoring technology for diabetic children relationship with that technology. These alternative ways of might be to provide reassurance for parents that their child’s conceptualising users’ experience have opened many doors blood sugar level is stable during school time when they are and new possibilities for design and research, especially for not around to assist. However, it is not only the parents that the way we understand individuals and individual experience. have to be considered but also the sensitivities of the child, the school nurse, the teachers and the other children. All are In contrast, human values extend these notions about the involved, to varying degrees. Hence, personal data should individual to conceptions about what is desirable within a be represented and interacted with in a way that is not only culture or a society. Values such as privacy, health, ownership, usable but also socially acceptable. But it is not just the nature fair play and security are increasingly incorporated in the of the information and how it should be presented; how the design of ubiquitous technologies. Members of society device is to be worn by the child needs careful consideration. have their own views on which values they desire and Ethical concerns arise as to whether the device should be treasure. Most often these values are not made explicit, but designed so that the child is or is not able to remove it. And nonetheless they drive our behaviour both as individuals and so on. The monitoring of others, the capture of, access to as a society. and management of people’s personal information, however benign in its intentions, need to be understood within a social But making judgements about new computer technologies 56 and moral context. It is no longer enough that we think about and how they will affect us is not straightforward. Computers designing for users; we need also to think about how we may help us recollect the past; equally, it might be important design for families, communities and different social groups. The values that we discover and decide to design for will vary from context to context. For example, the notion of privacy is very different in a family than it is in a workgroup. Knowing where your children are, and that they are safe and secure is part of the ‘job’ of being a parent. In a sense, it is part and parcel of home life. However, having access to the ‘The bottom line is that computer technologies are not neutral – they are laden with human, cultural and social values’ location and activities of your employees at work is a very different thing and may be viewed much more negatively. friendships through digital technologies? How trustworthy What is right and what is wrong is defined differently in are friendships made and maintained through websites? Is different contexts. a teen with many online friends in fact more isolated than someone who has two close friends living next door? If we How human values play out in relation to computing design ever more tools for communicating and staying in innovation will also become more critical as researchers touch how will this affect the way we live? come up with ever more ingenious and potentially intrusive ways of sensing, monitoring, collecting and sharing digital The new technologies allow new forms of control or information. Importantly, we need to consider both the decentralisation, encouraging some forms of social positive and negative aspects of the possibilities afforded interaction at the expense of others, and promoting by new technologies and software. For example, a recent certain values while dismissing alternatives. For instance, innovation is turning mobile phones into swarming the iPod can be seen as a device for urban indifference, surveillance systems, through the development of software the mobile phone as promoting addiction to social that uses BlueTooth to automatically collect and share contact, and the Web as subverting traditional forms of information between phones and then collectively analyse governmental and media authority. Neural networks, the events that they record. On the positive side, such a recognition algorithms and data-mining all have cultural technique may provide a good way of spotting wildlife in implications that need to be understood in the wider the savannah but, equally, it could be employed for more context beyond their technical capabilities. sinister activities, such as packs of school children using it to persecute and bully each other in more insidious ways. The bottom line is that computer technologies are not neutral – they are laden with human, cultural and social It is important, too, to consider how the uptake of values. These can be anticipated and designed for, or can technologies is transforming our value systems. In our emerge and evolve through use and abuse. In a multicultural increasingly connected world, our notions of what it means world, too, we have to acknowledge that there will often be to live on one’s own, to be part of a family, to be a teenager, conflicting value systems, where design in one part of the and to grow old are all changing as a result of how we use world becomes something quite different in another, and social networking tools, home entertainment systems, health where the meaning and value of a technology are manifest monitoring systems, mobile communication technologies, in diverse ways. Future research needs to address a broader, and so on. An average teenager now has over sixty friends. richer concept of what it means to be human in the flux of But what does it mean to create, maintain and lose the transformations taking place. 57 3.2 Extending the Research and Design Cycle User-centred design and research typically follows an iterative whose expertise lies in using such conceptual analytic cycle, comprising four fundamental processes in which we methods, will be of considerable benefit. Involving a study, design, build and evaluate technology (see figure on broader spectrum of designers (including architects and page 59). Different terms may be used, but fundamentally the clothing designers) will also allow for different perspectives four stages involve the same kinds of activities. on human values to materialise. We propose that a new agenda for HCI should extend Currently, the goal of a typical HCI research project is to this design model, by adding one further stage, which design or re-design a particular computing technology (be it entails conceptual analysis (see figure on page 59). We product, service, application, or system) in order to improve label this stage ‘understand’. While understanding a upon or enhance a given experience (eg shopping online) problem has traditionally been part of the study phase, or to create a quite different experience than before (for we are proposing that it be elevated to become a more example, constructing a novel ambient display for families). explicit process, where the various human values at play are thought through and the trade-offs examined in a In both situations, initial research is conducted by learning systematic way. Philosophical debate, thought experiments more about people’s current experiences (such as using and scenarios can form the basis of this process. Engaging particular kinds of Web browsers to find out about houses in dialogues with professionals from other disciplines, for sale; sending text messages to one’s children to check up on where they are if they are not where they said they would be at a given time). Ethnographic studies, logging of user interaction and surveys are commonly deployed. Based on the findings gathered, we begin to think about why, what, and how to design something better. To aid the process, usability and user experience goals are identified and conceptual models developed. Prototypes are built, evaluated, and iterated, demonstrating whether the user goals have been met or whether the new user experience is judged to be enjoyable, pleasurable or valuable by the target group. The extended approach to HCI research and design is intended to enable human values to be folded into the mix at all of the various stages. While we refer to these various components as Stage 1 to Stage 5, we do not mean to imply they have a fixed starting point and must be followed in a strict sequence. The cycle, as is normally the case in HCI, can be entered into at any point, and usually iterates in the course of any research or design project. Stage 1: Understand  The conventional Study user-centred, four-stage The initial – and new – stage we suggest is to focus on design/research model thought and conceptual analysis drawing on other disciplines, which might include those as diverse as philosophy, psychology, art, literary theory, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology or design. It will also Design design for and to research. This will require reflective Evaluate human values and to pinpoint those that we wish to mean talking to stakeholders, including users as well as those involved in developing or designing the technology in question (if this is the goal) to ascertain what kinds of enduring value they believe their users will get from their technology; and what kinds of users and what domains Build are of interest. We might be interested in developing new digital tabletop applications, for example. This phase of work would involve clarifying what kinds of human values might be made possible through such interactions. Is it  Extended user-centred, Understand about supporting social connectivity and togetherness? five-stage design/research model. The new stage photographs and other materials to preserve and honour entails conceptual analysis or reflect on their personal past? Or perhaps is it about or ‘understanding’ dy supporting collaborative tasks in domestic situations? S tu family history? Is it about allowing people to reminisce Evalu ate Is it about play and creativity? Is it about archiving Ultimately, this new stage of the cycle therefore results in making choices. It will also involve specifying what and in what kinds of domains of activity, environments or of value systems we are interested in. These investigations in turn will either point to some fundamental research ui B cultures. In other words, it will involve choosing the kinds ld n kinds of people are the focus of this particular project, sig De which needs to be carried out in Stage 2, or will provide guidance toward relevant research which has already been carried out. 59 Stage 2: Study All of these are different higher-level values which are reflected in the specific behaviour of individuals, but This stage of research consists of developing a deeper are manifest, too, in the hopes and ideals of people, the understanding of what factors are at play in how the values way the environment is designed (technologically or of interest are manifest in the everyday world. While Stage 1 otherwise), the social situation, and the cultural ideals of provides a framework to guide design and research, this stage a place. This kind of analysis then does not just take into involves fleshing out the details of how individuals and social account people’s interactions with computer technology, groups pursue and achieve those particular aspirations. but looks at their interactions with the everyday world more broadly: in the environment, with everyday objects, What is different about this kind of analysis compared with with other people, as well with the hi-tech elements the canonical HCI approach is that, while a typical HCI project of their world. This is a more complex analysis, again might only look at an individual’s interaction or set of tasks involving input from disciplines outside of HCI, focusing on or practices around a particular technology, the extended the forces that drive people to engage with technologies, Study stage can be much broader. It begins by considering and the ways in which those technologies are embedded the details of particular tasks or practices, but then asks how in the world. those mechanics of interaction help people achieve longlasting value through and beyond the interaction. Research This stage usually entails conducting a user study of one might look at current shopping practices, for example, and sort or another. Often, this means ethnography, looking focus on how they enforce social connections to other people, at particular kinds of people in particular contexts. Based or help people acquire new objects to bolster their identity, on this, further user studies can be conducted to examine or how the shopping experience provides distraction and the ways in which specific kinds of behaviours interplay disengagement from the world of work. with specific values in a more controlled situation in the laboratory. For example, if the goal is to produce online shopping experiences that support trust between a shopper and an on-line process, this can be investigated in a focused study. It may also be the case, for a particular set of human values, that there is already a well-established body of work. The conceptual analysis from Stage 1 will help point to existing relevant work in this case, which may well include literature in other fields. Hence, Stage 2 provides a grounded understanding of how the human values of interest are played out through interaction, taking into account social factors, environmental factors and so on. Essentially it provides a rich mix of perspectives and insights within which we can begin to imagine and sketch out different technological possibilities. Stage 3: Design The design phase needs to consider the culture and place in which the new technology will be situated, especially if they are The third stage is primarily a design or creative phase and such different social and physical ecosystems as schools, stations, involves reflecting on what the design goals should be. It churches, or civic squares. What will it mean to the different could be that we want to engender, support, or amplify inhabitants? How might the technology be appropriated the human values in question. However, it could be that alongside other existing technologies and artefacts? the design goal is to deepen our understanding of a set of values, a group of people, or a domain. In this case, The emerging ecosystems of technologies will have far-reaching we might want to design to provoke ambiguity in how a design implications for existing infrastructures, the people that technology is used or interpreted, or even contradict the inhabit those spaces, and the value systems already in place. For values we are interested in. These are techniques which example, designing a smart phone needs to take into account have their roots more firmly in the world of art and design not just the individual user experience of playing music, sending but which can be used to advance the research. Or it may photos and receiving texts, but also how BlueTooth and other be that we want to design for people to be designers; to networking and sensing infrastructures will allow new forms provoke and inspire them into creative action. As such, of tracking, monitoring and public engagement. The potential our design goal may be harder to define, and the ultimate for new hardware, software, and underlying infrastructures can result of our own design work more difficult to foresee as equally inspire design. Sustainability of design is also an area we shift the point where the creativity really occurs in the with ramifications for human values we prioritise. It is all very development of a technological system. well offering people new experiences, but at what cost? Stage 4: Build Fortunately, there are various tools and technologies now that allow researchers to undertake many kinds of building This phase can involve anything from low-tech methods tasks quickly and easily. such as paper prototypes and sketches, to more hi-tech and robust systems ready for long-term field testing. Physical toolkits (eg ‘phidgets’ – see left), can be used Whereas, before, much of the building within HCI has been to rapidly assemble complex amalgams of software and essentially software-based, entailing the development of, hardware using Lego-like building blocks consisting of say, an interface for a desktop or a mobile device, as we various sensors and controllers. move forward to 2020, what we build may be more hybrid.  Phidgets or ‘physical It may require both development of the software interface Each element performs one or two tasks and can be plus novel amalgams of hardware. For instance, cameras easily programmed to interconnect with other elements may be used as an input mode, rather than a keyboard. and other computers. Thus, experiences as diverse as It might, as another example, involve the creation of interaction between a wearable device communicating to a everyday objects such as furniture, or parts of the built situated device – a wearable camera might send its images environment such as special walls or floors. It might even to be displayed on a nearby screen – or a novel set of involve no interface at all in the traditional sense. For handheld devices that allow gesture-based mode of input blocks to help developers example, micro-payment devices simply require proximity and output, can be built without the need for expensive construct physical user and no interaction – touching, clicking or pointing – at all. machine-tooling or advanced programming. interfaces. These arose Some interactions are distributed across different parts of from a research project led a physical-digital ecosystem consisting of various devices There are other tools and technologies on the market and interconnecting sub-systems. Others have no interface which offer similar opportunities for lightweight in the sense that they are embedded within the everyday prototyping. Of course this does not mean that the world and are not recognisable as computers. This does building stage in any particular programme of research will not mean that HCI research avoids building such systems. always be easy and quick; clearly it will depend upon the To the contrary, if these systems pertain to human values goal. Besides, HCI researchers will continue to use older of some sort, then HCI must endeavour to explore and techniques for building too, such as virtual simulations research them whatever their form. and even Wizard of Oz techniques when it becomes wholly widgets’ are building by Saul Greenberg at the University of Calgary. impractical to build an entirely functional system. The complexity of such hybrid systems might seem to In this approach, some function of the system can be imply that building them would be a slow, laborious performed by a human who is invisible to the user (like the process. It certainly would be if doing so required what said wizard). one might call engineered quality. Instead, it will often mean building technologies which are sufficiently robust to 62 Whatever the technique or the technology used in this test and explore the concept in question, and little more. stage, the goal is to build something, in whatever fashion, If it turns out the concept appeals (according to whatever that allows researchers to produce evidence about the value is appropriate) then more polished engineering of experience they are trying to enable. Only then can the device or system will come later. researchers turn to the next stage, evaluation. Stage 5: Evaluate ‘The delivery of one value will have The fifth stage involves evaluation of what has been built. implications for other values’ Design work can only ever represent a best guess at what kind of solution will achieve some research and design goals. This is the stage at which that best guess is tested. might point towards values that seem somewhat distant Here, existing HCI methodologies can be used. There from the one originally designed for. A concern for these are many techniques to draw on: from focus groups to values in the evaluation stage is necessary, though, since it laboratory evaluations to in situ field tests of technologies will enable researchers to provide more extensive accounts and so on. Guidance as to what kind of evaluation of how the devices and services operate in a wider context. technique is appropriate comes, in part, from the design or research goal, of course. When values become part of Any of these various considerations might make HCI the research agenda, though, what counts as pertinent and researchers revisit their original design. For this reason, the relevant to evaluation is also altered and broadened. If the iterative process remains important. Nevertheless, these values are related to, say, digital footprints, then evaluation considerations may also suggest to HCI researchers that might concern itself with whether a chosen design delivers other experts from other disciplines need to participate in useful resources for, let us say, government monitoring or, evaluation. A further goal of this stage might be then for by way of contrast, for an individual amassing personal HCI researchers to identify what expertise outside of their data. What counts as good and bad, as worthwhile or domain may be required. invasive, will vary accordingly. In other words, the set of criteria against which a design is to be evaluated will be  A new device being closely bound to the type of values being pursued. evaluated in a longterm field trial in a At the same time, when evaluation occurs, it is almost family kitchen. certain that the delivery of one value will have implications for other values that may be in one way or another dependent upon it. Moreover, delivering one value may contradict another value in ways that had not been expected prior to the evaluation. In other cases, they may have unexpected benefits over and above the original intentions. For example, aspects of digital footprints that are designed to satisfy the desires of an individual may have knock-on benefits or drawbacks for governments. A further challenge in evaluation for HCI in 2020 will be the need to assess some of the longer term and more farreaching impacts of the design in question, and again this 63 3.3 Three Case Studies To illustrate how HCI research can embrace human values For traditional HCI, where the model of the human is throughout the various phases and to show the benefits essentially an information-processing one, the task for of doing so, three case studies are presented here. Each research in relation to this convergence is easy to define. explores both the positive and negative possibilities First, it would seek to investigate such things as the that the technology of concern can engender. They also minimal required level of visual or auditory quality to cover areas that are topical and contentious: trading enable a user to have a good experience watching that versus trafficking content, tracking versus surveillance in content on a small device. Second, it would be to explore families, and finally, exploring the set of values involved in how the design of the devices in question should allow the augmenting human memory. user to engage in that experience easily and efficiently. Case Study 1: Trading versus trafficking content As it happens, these two concerns have been the topic of a great deal of HCI research. There is a considerable body of work on mobile TV that treats the subject as one of Overview: an investigation of the design of services and compatibility between the human eye and the constraints applications for mobile TV is a case study of how one might of a hand-held TV display device, for example. This use the extended HCI approach. A concern for values in literature is predominantly based on laboratory studies of addition to a concern for usability led to a new direction different screen resolutions and compression algorithms. for the design of mobile TV services and applications. The There is also a great deal of work concerned with the study also highlights the need to make choices about certain design of electronic programme guides (or EPGs – Radio values and the price that sometimes comes with such choices. Times as big as a credit card) and making these easy Differences in the weight one gives to different values can have and efficient to use. These of course must be designed a profound impact on system design, right the way down to somewhat differently to those offered on normal TV the design of its operating system. [See Bibliography: Harper, screens because of size constraints. Regan et al, 2007] One particular concern reported in this research is that This research needs to be placed in context. It was undertaken some compression algorithms systematically remove small at a time where two trends appeared to be merging, creating objects from mobile TV on the grounds that they are opportunities for new kinds of interactions. On the one hand, ‘noise’. This is rather irksome when the users in question there was the convergence of different content ‘channels’ are trying to watch football (or ice hockey) on their mobile allowing many different types of content (such as radio, voice, phones. This aside, the gist of this general ‘speeds and and broadcast TV) to be delivered on many kinds of device. feeds’ research is that there is a need to be better on all On the other, there was a trend (continuing today, obviously) fronts: compression algorithms need to compress more toward the miniaturisation of technology. This allowed the effectively, and EPGs need to be easier to use (demanding consumption of content originally designed for larger devices fewer clicks per selection, for example). to be achieved on progressively smaller ones. Inevitably, this 64 trend was leading to the emergence of mobile phones that Yet we would claim that such research, though necessary, afforded ‘TV watching’. only points to some of the basic requirements that HCI should attend to. It does not sufficiently encompass all the ‘Users seem to delight in using broadcast values related to the use of mobile TV, nor does it explore whether there might be contradictions in the types of values that might be enabled through mobile TV. Another way of putting this is that the existing body of research does not begin by ascertaining which human values might content on mobiles to augment their real experiences’ be pertinent to the mobile TV experience. Rather, the bulk of it deals with what one might call the ‘usability problem’ occurred while at a football match. And here it is not just of allowing users to view TV anywhere, anytime. about reliving the moment. Rather, in doing so they are A different approach could begin with an investigation of So, for example, fans of one side of the football match the values at play in viewing mobile TV, one that begins might keep replaying the goal their side had scored to with Stage 1, a conceptual analysis of the problem. Such torment their friends who are fans of the opposing side. also sharing that experience with the people they are with. an analysis seeks to determine the range of purposes, goals, intentions, and motives – in a phrase, the possible In short, conceptual analysis leads to the recognition that set of values that lead users to use mobile TV. Crucial ‘TV-in-the-hand’ may support other things that a person to this stage is recognition, at the outset, that the might be doing, apart from literally holding a TV in the consumption of mobile TV may not be the same as the hand. It may support a person’s ability to claim that they consumption of TV in normal settings. It recognises that watched something ‘for real’ for instance, or to share a other values might be relevant, and that the idea of moment again and again with a friend nearby. Mobile TV ‘anytime, anywhere’ TV watching may not be particularly might not primarily be about consumption of multimedia pertinent to the types of experiences that people seek. content by an individual, then, but be more about the social use of that material. This means the substitution of In fact there are glimmerings of this within the existing traditional TV might not be the important issue. Rather, body of HCI research in this area. Some studies report that it might be how mobile TV augments social connectivity. users are remarkably tolerant of the experience afforded The values pertaining to this might be quite different by mobile TV devices. It turns out that they are happy to from the values in relation to ‘anytime, anywhere’ media watch mobile TV, whatever the screen resolution, even consumption. These suggestions attest to the need to watching football when they can’t see the ball. All they properly reflect and conceptually locate the kinds of really desire, apparently, is to claim to have ‘seen the human endeavours we are thinking of for these devices. goal’. Another finding in this literature is that in trials (if not in laboratory studies), the primary value of TV This leads onto Stage 2, which is essentially empirical and content on the phone would not appear to be to watch concerns itself with how the values in question are played TV, as if mobile TV was a substitute for more traditional out in everyday life and might also lead to the recognition TV watching practices. Rather, users seem to delight in of other related values. As it happens, in this case, there using broadcast content on mobiles to augment their are studies of related activities. There are, for instance, real experiences, such as replaying a goal right after it many ethnographies of how cameraphones are creating 65 opportunities for people to enrich their experiences. These The researchers came to call the system of exchange studies show that instead of photos being of an event, they had uncovered ‘trafficking’. The term was chosen for they become part of that event. This is bound up with the more than simply the trading allusion, however. For the disposability and ephemeral nature of digital imaging. researchers found that the users in question were concerned People take lots of images with their phones because it that the exchange of such materials might infringe digital costs nothing and because doing so makes experiences rights; they were also aware that some of the materials more fun. exchanged could be viewed by some people as offensive, even pernicious. This was trafficking then because it was a Other studies show that, just as capturing images can kind of illicit behaviour and one that might not be ‘good’ enhance the moment, so mobile phones are being used for the user. This highlights the potential negative side of as a new means of sustaining, embodying and creating the values achieved in these behaviours. social networks. The literature here is replete with studies showing how people exchange phone numbers, images, The point here is that sensitivity to the values in question and text messages, both when they are together and when was developed through the application of conceptual they are apart. They do so as a means of creating solidarity. analysis as well as an empirical study (Stages 1 and 2). With What mobile phones allow for is the creation and sharing this as a basis, Stage 3, design, was the next step. of new ‘digital currencies’ that bring people together. In this case, the designs that were proposed entailed Reading the empirical literature of course is only part of treating mobile TV not as a way of creating a substitute what might be necessary in Stage 2. Sometimes first-hand for traditional TV watching, but as a means for enabling a studies might be required too. In this case, the researchers different set of values to be supported, namely, techniques (a team from a mobile operating system company and for allowing people to enrich their real experiences and to a content provider) were able to examine and interview create bonds between themselves. More specifically, what users about the kinds of mobile multimedia they was designed was a system whereby users could download downloaded and watched. They found confirmation that segments watched on conventional TVs onto their mobile these users were augmenting their real-time experiences, devices. The goal here was to allow the user to augment as was suggested by the mobile TV literature. But the their experience by letting them watch a chosen moment research also found that they were engaged in the routine again and again. Football goals came to mind, as did funny exchange of files, via BlueTooth, to create similar processes moments in sitcoms and so forth. Second, and as a key of social bonding that the literature suggests is achieved part of this design, the system was also built to allow the with SMS and other messaging forms. The researchers downloaded files to be exchanged with other mobile users. found that, beyond this, the exchanging of multimedia 66 files has come to have various social codes associated In Stage 4, the system was built, the technology chosen for with it, such as the need for the receiving of a file to be exchange relying on BlueTooth. The resulting prototype reciprocated by the giving of one, the consequence of enabled users to collect or ‘grab’ content, and then trade which is that there is a kind of ‘economic’ system at work, or ‘traffick’ it later on. The prototype system meant that albeit without money. trafficking was richer than what had been possible before, since it could include TV segments downloaded to the discoverable BlueTooth device, choose a file and send it. mobile as the user watched traditional TV. He then drew attention to how the receiving device would show an ‘accept file’ dialogue box as if a file transfer was This system was then evaluated, as part of an overall happening. He then pointed out that once that dialogue iterative design process, constituting Stage 5. It is worth box disappeared, the device went back to its idle state. discussing this evaluation process as it highlights how a ‘Nothing happens,’ he exclaimed. ‘It doesn’t work!’ concern for human values can be of great consequence, even down to the basic assumptions of the design of an The researchers were perplexed by this since they knew operation system. that the files had in fact been transferred. What had occurred was a consequence of the design of the particular In the evaluation of the trafficking system, participants mobile phone used in the trial. This device, based on the in a trial readily understood the concept of downloading Windows Mobile operating system, places, by default, all segments from their TVs, and were able to grab content files sent by BlueTooth into the ‘My Documents’ folder quite easily. A problem emerged, however, when they tried under the ‘Explorer file directory manager’. Further, such to exchange or ‘traffick’ files with other people. files are listed, alphabetically, under their own name. There are good reasons for this design. Developers of Windows This can be illustrated with the experience of one Mobile assume that users want their mobiles to act in the The left hand image individual. This person found downloading straightforward same way as their personal computers, filing things neatly shows the states that and could select a file to exchange. He had no problem away in a hierarchical system. The assumption is that this the Windows Mobile discovering a nearby BlueTooth device either and could efficiency and consistency is what mobile users will value. device goes through, first showing the file in the send to that device. However, he then went on to say, even before he had attempted to exchange a file, that However, the consequence of this design is that when a file process of being received he knew it wouldn’t work. He showed the research team exchange occurs, the exchanged file seems to disappear, and second, once the file this was true by demonstrating how he could find a the phone instead defaulting to what one might call the has been received. The right hand image shows the same states on a Symbian device. It is the end point of both experiences that is at issue: one indicates nothing about the presence of a new file (it being tidily placed in the My Documents folder); the other draws attention to it, presenting it in the Inbox.  ‘Design for values can and often will Beyond this issue, the research also highlighted the other sets lead to profound choices’ The most obvious had to do with digital rights. The production of values being played out when trafficking was undertaken. and the broadcasting of TV content obviously costs money. The design of the system does not deal with that problem. ‘desktop’. To find the file in question, users have to open up It allows users to grab any piece of TV content without a Explorer and click through to the ‘My Documents’ folder. payment system. In a sense, it allows users to thieve. Despite all the users being familiar with this occurring on their personal computers, all of the users in this study But the issue was not quite as simple as that either. The found this at odds with their expectations in this different content provider in question viewed the ability of users kind of situation. to download and traffic segments of their content as an opportunity to foster ‘viral marketing’. All that was important It turned out that their expectations were more consistent from their perspective was that their brand be conveyed at with mobile phones that run a different operating system the point of transfer. In this way, the person trafficking was, in such as Symbian. On these devices, when files are sent via effect, paying by supporting this advertising. Whether the user BlueTooth, the operating system treats any file like a message, would be happy doing this was a question that the research regardless of what type it is. This means an SMS message and did not address. The lesson here is that enabling one set of a multimedia file sent by BlueTooth are both presented to the values might lead to implications for another set. Design for user in the same way once the transfer has occurred, namely values is not always straightforward. by appearing in the ‘Inbox’. The result of this is that when a BlueTooth file transfer has completed, the user is presented Finally, another concern had to do with the choice of content with a dialogue box that prompts them to click through to for trafficking. The design assumes that users want to grab the new message (these differences are highlighted in the TV content to trade. But it also allows users to trade in other figures on page 67). files, gathered from other places. And while broadcast TV Recognising this difference was something of an epiphany for and propriety, other kinds of files may not be. Indeed, some the research team. It was only at that point that they realised kinds of content might be self-created precisely because that the design of their mobile devices, though perhaps ideal they are intended to be offensive. Or such materials might for other practices, did not fit practices oriented towards be downloaded from the largely unregulated world of the trafficking. They came to recognise that the important Web. This means that supporting trafficking might end up difference between Symbian and Windows Mobile devices encouraging the exchange of files to support values other than content is editorialised and subject to agreed levels of taste 68 was not in terms of number of clicks or menus, but rather social cohesion or in-the-moment laughter and fun. Rather, it had to do with how the interface supported the values in could support exploitation and dubious behaviour of various question. With one, the recipient of a file felt as if they had kinds and even criminality instead. Again the moral here is that a virtual object ‘in the hand’. With the other, it was as if design for values can and often will lead to profound choices. something had been exchanged, but that the computer (in Moreover it also serves to remind us that the links between the device) had consumed it. values are not always clear or distinct. Case study 2: Tracking versus surveillance in families to support families with location-based information needed to start with a conceptual analysis (ie Stage 1). In this case, they reflected on both the positive and negative aspects of what Overview: This study looks at the home and considers new kinds of it means to monitor and keep track of the people one cares technologies that could be used to enrich family life. In particular, about. These included more positive values such as facilitating in the past few years there has been a range of technologies the coordination of activities in social groups, as well as more developed that use wireless networking and location information negative ones such as intrusion into personal privacy. And it also to help families keep track of each other. There are numerous included considering the various factors that might determine services to subscribe to that let parents track their children via their the trade-offs involved. This entailed questions such as: At what mobile phones; GPS devices that can be worn as a wristwatch or point does monitoring become spying? What is it about the sewn into a jacket letting parents view children on satelllite maps; nature of the relationship between the person monitoring and and even chips that can be inserted under a child’s skin much as the person being monitored which makes the difference? What one might micro-chip a pet. [See Bibliography: Brown et al, 2007; are the contextual issues that might influence this? Taylor et al, 2007] With regard to contextual issues, the researchers considered With tracking technologies, a range of human values come into the ways in which values from tracking systems might be quite play. On the one hand, they raise the ire of civil libertarians and different in different kinds of social groups, different places and conjure up the spectre of Big Brother: we are using technology even different cultures. Here, the decision was to design a device more and more to watch people’s every move. This is one step for families with children. There is a large literature not just in further toward a total surveillance society. Moreover, monitoring HCI but in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and the like of this sort (within the parent-child relationship) is asymmetric: that the researchers drew on to deepen their understanding of power and control lie with one party and not the other. The flip how these kinds of technologies might play out in families. The side of this is that it is all about giving children more freedom literature suggested that the way location-based information is and independence. If parents are able to worry less about used in the home might be quite different from the way it is used where their children are, they are more likely to allow them their in other situations, such as at work. However, in advance, it was autonomy. Tracking, they argue, is about caring, not intruding. difficult to know just what the value for families would be. Against the backdrop of the ongoing debates, and as the result Stage 2 of the research therefore involved grounding this analysis of some earlier work investigating how families communicate, in more detailed studies of home life. As it turns out, the project the research project team in this case became convinced that team was able to make use of the growing body of work in HCI awareness was a key value for families which technology might evaluating location-based systems for tracking friends and work be able to support. Here they had in mind the importance of colleagues. As another activity, they studied a handful of families awareness in supporting the management of what can often in-depth to look at their current practices with regard to how be complex, day-to-day activities. The goal then was primarily they maintained awareness of each other’s day-to-day activities to build a device which would allow families to more effectively using ordinary technologies such as mobile phones and notes, plan activities, organise themselves and to communicate better but more generally understanding how different members of with each other. But they also realised that developing a system those families were accountable to one another. 69 ‘Values such as reassurance, togetherness show everyone in the family together rather than focusing only and enchantment call for different ways of is then given equal status on the display they thought would thinking about how we design technology’ on children or on one person at a time. The fact that everyone symbolise the fact that everyone is equally accountable, and would emphasise the family as a unit. A final design decision was that it was important to offer this information ‘at a glance’: that is, without requiring time to turn the device on, or change the This then led to Stage 3 where the team began to sketch status to view its settings. out the design of a device that they hoped would support awareness for families, without the more negative connotations Stage 4 involved building a number of prototypes and a robust of spying or surveillance. The result was a device they called infrastructure to enable researchers to conduct studies of the ‘The Whereabouts Clock’ – a kitchen display designed to show Clock’s use in people’s actual homes. The aim was to enable a the general whereabouts of family members, using the location real-world study to be conducted to assess how human values of their mobile phones. The research team wanted the Clock to play out in practice over a long period of time. The result was a allow people at home to see at a glance where everyone in the robust prototype that looked like a clock both in the design of its family was at any point in time. When Dad leaves work, or the physical shape and its interface (see illustration, right). kids are on their way home from school, the Clock chimes as they move from one segment of the Clock to another, letting people In Stage 5, the Clock was deployed in five family homes and at home know of their imminent arrival. studied over a period of six months. Here the research team was both surprised by the positive way in which families In designing the Clock, there were several key features the incorporated the device into their everyday lives, but also by researchers thought might support the positive aspects of the value that the Clock turned out actually to deliver. While awareness without infringing on people’s privacy. First, they the Clock was originally designed with the goal of supporting designed the device to be situated within the family home and activity management and planning for busy families, what viewable only in the home. This meant that the right to see they found was that the Clock was valuable not because it information on the Clock was tied to a person’s entitlement to communicated what families didn’t know about their loved be physically in the home. Second, they designed the Clock so ones’ whereabouts, but rather because it confirmed what they it showed only coarse-grained information about any person’s already knew. In other words, the Clock was mainly valued whereabouts. When family members are out and about, because it let the family know ‘all is right with the world’, information from their cell phone places them in the ‘home’, and that everyone was where they were supposed to be. The ‘school’, or ‘work’ regions of the clock (or in a region which Clock therefore mainly supported reassurance rather than task means ‘elsewhere’). These categories can be contrasted with management. It let families show that they cared for each other the more accurate and fine-grained information that GPS and and were accountable to each other. other location-based information can broadcast. Accuracy of 70 information is often seen as a feature of the commercially-based Moreover, the Clock was also valued because it became a symbol systems. Here, the designers wanted to give as little information of the togetherness of the family. It not only made families feel about location as possible. Third, they wanted the Clock to more connected to each other, but showing all members of the family’s icons together reinforced each person’s notion of were more important than supporting ‘getting things done’. what it meant to be a family. It supported and displayed their This set of revelations made the team re-examine their earlier identity as a family unit. One example here was a household assumptions and gave them a new understanding of what they with grown-up children who had recently moved into their might design for in the future. own homes. Here, the parents liked to see that their children were nestling at ‘home’ even though home was not the same Another important point is that values such as reassurance, physical place it had been, or indeed one that they all shared. togetherness and enchantment call for different ways of This result highlights how home is as much an ideal or a thinking about how we design and evaluate technology. concept as it is a place. For example, because the Clock was not primarily a Finally, the Clock was discussed as having almost magical of resolution of the information displayed – family members properties. Something about the aesthetics of its design and the had no need to know exactly where someone else was. The way people moved around the screen, sometimes chiming into rather coarse-grained way information was shown was, for ‘home’ before they walked in the door created a sense of wonder the purposes of these families, ‘good enough’. Further, they about the device which families were drawn to. also expressed no concerns about privacy, which confirmed communication device, there was no need for a high degree that in this respect the research team’s design decisions had One conclusion to draw from this is that the decision to succeeded. But more than this, the researchers learned that focus on one set of values, namely supporting awareness and it is part and parcel of family life to know what others in their coordination in family homes, ended up in fact supporting family are up to and to share that information. The success a range of other important, and in some ways unanticipated of this device, therefore, had little to do with what we might values. Reassurance and feeling connected were key here, as was understand to be work-oriented criteria about such things as the ability to show to others in the family that they cared for and accuracy of information, protection of information and so on. were accountable to each other. These values in fact turned out Rather, it shows that we need to design as much for our ideas to be much stronger and, in terms of this technology at least, and aspirations in life as we do the task in hand.  The Whereabouts Clock: the lefthand image shows the clock in its case; the middle image is a close-up of its interface; and the righthand image shows what happens when you touch on a text message. 71 Case study 3: The ‘value’ of augmenting human memory Lifelogging, it is proposed, will change forever how we use and share personal data, enabling us to look back over our lives and search through past experiences. New technologies, in Overview: this study considers the human values associated sum, will give us all a comprehensive set of ‘digital memories’ with a research topic more generally; namely, how to design to augment, or even replace, our biological ones. [See new technologies that can augment human memory. Memory Bibliography: Harper, Randall et al, 2007; Harper, Randall et al, is fundamental to what it means to be human not only in 2008; Sellen et al, 2007] the way it defines who we are and bolsters our identity, but in how it helps us function in everyday life. At the same But just what benefits will these efforts bring us? Will these time, memory is notoriously fallible. As a result, the human technologies really help us to know ourselves better, make our tendency to forget is often invoked as the motivation behind a lives richer, strengthen our connections to those we care about recent surge in technical efforts to build technology to provide and bring us closer to the world around us? And what are all-encompassing support for human memory. So-called the appropriate research questions here? How do we design ‘life-logging’ systems, for example, aim to save every bit of these potentially complex and far-reaching technological information we ever touch, record every event we experience, systems? As we embrace the emergence of digital footprints and log every action we take. These systems aim, in other in the bigger sense we have described, where this footprint words, to create ever larger and more comprehensive personal has all sorts of properties, content and possible uses, just archives of data (eg pictures, sounds, documents, location what we mean by memory and, further, what aspect of data), or what we have called earlier, digital footprints. memory we might be interested in designing for, need careful consideration by HCI researchers. To tackle these new kinds of questions, Stage 1 begins by taking a step back from the initial assumptions which appear to be driving this class of technology and asks what we mean by human memory, and how this relates to fundamental human values. What aspects of memory will make our lives richer? In what situations might we want to remember and why? And even, is it sometimes better and more desirable to forget? None of these questions makes much sense, however, until we first establish what long-term values we wish to support. As suggested earlier, this process is helped along by appealing to other perspectives and disciplines on these different topics, such as considering what cognitive psychology has to say about memory, or what are the views of philosophers and sociologists. Next, we can begin to discern many kinds of human values that the concept of memory is linked to. For example, memory might be about supporting productivity and efficiency in one’s working and personal life. This would imply developing tools that help us retrieve information we may need as easily and as accurately as possible (such ‘In what situations might we want to remember and why? And is it sometimes better and more desirable to forget?’ as people’s names, documents we may have lost, dates when important events occurred and so on). If that is the There are many other human values that might also be looked case, the technology need not help people truly relive at here, including the collection of personal data for the purpose or re-experience events from their past, only access the of reflection on the patterns in one’s life; or it might be about information they are after. It might also focus on memory honouring and connecting the family to a shared past; and not for past events but – paradoxically – for the future, in many more besides. The point here is that ‘memory’ means the sense of providing triggers to help people remember many things when analysed as a multi-faceted concept. And their intentions, remind them of their appointments and the value of a class of technologies which supports memory is so on. rich and diverse. An initial step is to disentangle what that set of On the other hand, it may be that the purpose of the therefore at this point largely a conceptual analysis. values might be, and to choose which are of most interest. It is personal archive or digital footprint is to promote a person’s individual sense of identity. In this case, helping Stage 2 moves on from the conceptual unpacking of Stage people re-experience or truly recollect events from their 1 to ask how the human values of interest are played out in personal past is much more important. The value here is everyday life. This stage may involve fieldwork; actually going through evoking that connection with autobiographical out and looking at what currently goes on in everyday life. It events and experiences, and says that we ought to be would also involve taking into account existing literature, not thinking about the kinds of materials that would trigger just in HCI but in other relevant fields too. such recollections. Deciding what is of relevance here is determined by the human However, it might be that the main motivation for this values of interest. Not surprisingly, different kinds of values class of technologies is more about the sharing of the point toward examining different kinds of cultural and social past with others; it might really be about strengthening contexts, encompassing different practices and artefacts in our connections to others we care about by providing people’s lives. So for example, if the goal is to support people materials that help us tell stories about them. In this in more productive and efficient lives, this would point to the sense, the technology we are designing and the research large body of work on personal information management questions we would have in mind would be directed more practices in offices, the way people use reminders, the ways toward issues of interpersonal entertainment, of theatre, in which people do focused search for well-defined facts and and of ‘in-the-moment’ sharing with others. Memory in so on. There is already a large literature in HCI which tells us this sense is not so much about the past as it is about how about the kinds of memory problems people have at work, the past is enacted in the present. and offers insights into the way it might be usefully presented. 73 ‘Different human values guide us in For example, the goal might be to design systems that can different directions, both in terms of the their sense of identity with others, and to help them socially literature we need to look at, and the work from digital footprints might be used quite differently as that needs to be carried out’ help elderly people with memory problems re-establish engage with those they care about. In other words, the data materials for storytelling with others about aspects of the past that people can talk about with authority. We might, for example, begin to think of ways that elderly, housebound people can ‘play back’ materials to share with others. Here, If it is about recollection and reliving one’s personal past, the design process would benefit from input from clinical there are different issues at stake and a different literature psychologists, product designers who specialise in the home, to turn to. Here there is a large amount of research in and perhaps even people with a film background to think autobiographical memory in psychology. However, much of about how the materials might be best edited and presented. that work makes little connection to the kinds of materials The social milieu of the home and relationships to carers and one might capture with digital lifelogging technology family all need to be considered as input to the design, as do (such as images, ambient sound, location and so on). This technical constraints and possibilities. suggests that some experimental work needs to be done to understand the relationship between the kinds of cues It is important to recognise that many possibilities might one can capture, and the way in which it might trigger be pursued. The myriad roles that memory has in everyday recollection for people. life suggest one might imagine many different sorts of social technical landscapes. HCI can be involved in devising Likewise, if the topic of interest is about storytelling with technologies that support a productive life; that support others, there is some work to turn to in HCI looking at how the art of conversation; that support personal identity and people engage in ‘photo talk’ around printed photographs connection to our past; or even support forgetting. A focus in home settings. One might start also by looking at both on human values will provide important guidance but at the the written word and the spoken word in sociological and same time will open up a rich space of possibilities. These anthropological research; and even at the design of theatre values will also help us make decisions about bigger issues and broadcast content. The point is that, again, different to do with the design of interaction, such as questions of human values guide us in different directions, both in terms effective data management, who should have ownership of of the literature we need to look at, and in terms of the field personal data, and how people’s privacy can be protected. or experimental work that needs to be carried out. These decisions of course are fundamental to pointing us toward certain designs and not others, and in determining Once the conceptual landscape has been mapped out, what we build in Stage 4. and the empirical details and insights gathered, the next 74 stage, Stage 3, is to determine the design goals, and then to Stage 5 is the point at which designs, prototypes, or imagine what assembly of different technologies, applications probes are subject to evaluation, field deployment, focus and devices might help achieve those goals. group testing and other kinds of methodologies. Office memory-support systems might be tested in real workplaces; about people who may be handicapped or elderly, how much systems to support recollection might be evaluated in a should be done without their awareness? Who owns their more controlled setting to test the power of the materials data when they are gone? If we build life-logging systems for in sparking recall; different designs for a ‘storytelling’ device one group of people with their consent, how do we protect might be presented to groups of older people for feedback the rights of people whose movements and activities might and more informal evaluation. as a by-product be captured by those same technologies? Can they opt out? How should society manage the storage But of course with all such technological developments, and access of human data ethically and responsibly? How can there are much more consequential issues that could be the privacy and security of digital footprints be ensured to raised. To what extent do we want our everyday lives to be prevent misuse but at the same time allow them to be shared dependent on memory-support systems? What happens with others when needed? How do people find out about when these systems go wrong? If we collect and amass data their digital footprint and what tools should be provided?  The Digital Shoebox, by designer Richard Banks of Microsoft Research Cambridge UK, is an attempt to make the storage of digital photos more tangible. Photos can be sent wirelessly to the box, and users can browse through them by running their finger across the top of the box. 75 3.4 New concepts, frameworks and theories The final proposition for a new agenda for HCI is that we need It follows that the ‘I’ in HCI – interaction – will need to be new concepts, frameworks and theories. In other words, in order understood at many different levels too. First, it will be to broaden HCI, we need a new lingua franca to enable us to necessary to think about different ‘sites of interaction’, for talk to one another, especially when it comes to exploring the example interactions on and in the body; between bodies; nuances of human values in the context of design and change. between bodies and objects; and at the scale of kiosks, rooms, buildings, streets and public spaces. All of these different levels It should include new ways of conceiving of the ‘human’ in HCI of interaction offer different physical and social parameters or the ‘users’, especially given that people are nowadays as much that technologies can potentially change. consumers, creators and players as they are users of computers. Conceptualising the emotional and pleasurable aspects of In a world in which people’s movements and data transactions experiencing technologies is already starting to happen. Terms can be tracked and where people can trigger events through like ‘magic’, ‘enchantment’, ‘fun’, ‘wonder’, ‘excitement’ and non-deliberate interactions such as being in a certain place at ‘surprise’ have begun to creep into our vocabulary when thinking a certain time, the notion of interaction itself is fundamentally about the value of technology to people. But we need to ask altered. The concept of technology use as a deliberate, what do these terms really mean and how do technologies conscious act becomes difficult to sustain and other models engender these experiences? The aesthetics of computational of interaction and communication will need to be developed. products has also gained importance in terms of understanding At the other extreme, digital technologies will continue to be better user satisfaction and reflection. Again, new models and used in more deliberate and engaged ways as media for self frameworks would provide a better understanding of how these expression, community building, identity construction, self aspects of the user experience relate to human values. presentation and interpersonal relations. Understanding the complexity of the new forms of social relations and interactions At the same time, we need to have a new conception of the will be required if we are to develop technology that can help ‘computer’ in HCI. We need a better way of understanding how us engage more effectively in these multiple worlds rather than the embedding of digital technologies in everyday artefacts, stifle or reduce that engagement. in the built structures around us and in the natural landscape 76 is transforming our surrounding environment into a physical- The new forms of engagement, then, require us to digital ecosystem. We now need to address not just the design conceptualise users as embodied individuals who are part of the artefacts themselves but also the spaces within which of a social, economic and political ecology, with desires, these artefacts reside. More than this, design has to deal with dreams, concerns and worries. The fact that we now live deeper, systemic issues. As the computer becomes more reliant with technology and not just use it also means that people’s on a larger world, and in particular as the connection to a forms of engagement with technology and the nature of their network becomes essential, the opportunity for improving the interactions with it are continuously changing and developing. user experience simply through a better interface is rapidly At the same time, the distinction between designer and disappearing. We need concepts, frameworks and methods that user will be harder to draw. Finally, understanding the new will enable us to consider people and computers as part of a relationships between people and computers will involve messy world full of social, physical, technical and physiological asking questions about process, potential and change rather limitations and opportunities. than attributes, capabilities and being. Summary HCI needs to move forward from concerns about the production and processing of information toward the design and evaluation of systems that enable human values to be achieved. Doing so requires HCI to shift its epistemological constraints away from their psychological roots towards other approaches, such as the philosophical, where conceptual sensitivity to meaning, purpose, and desire is possible. This suggests adding a fifth stage to HCI’s conventional design/research model: a stage of conceptual analysis where we consider the human values we are trying to support or research. This affects the whole cycle of research and design, including how we understand the user, how we do studies in the field and the laboratory, how we reflect on the values sought in design, how we build prototypes and how we evaluate our designs. Finally, HCI researchers need a larger assembly of skills and know-how if they are to succeed, which has implications for the concepts, frameworks and theories of HCI. 77 4 Recommendations Digital technologies have become a central feature of the 21st century and will become an even more fundamental and critical part of how we live. Our relationship with technology is changing and these changes raise fundamental questions about what we anticipate of computer systems in the future. What is clear is that digital technology in the world of 2020 will be as different from today as technology twenty five years ago was different from what we have now. These shifts and transformations in technology, and in our judgments about what we want computing to do, pose fundamental questions to those involved in Human-Computer Interaction. These questions require the HCI community to bring to the fore the fundamental human values shaping our everyday world and to use these to guide how HCI helps shape the ways people of all kinds will relate to computing technologies in 2020. This shift towards an emphasis on being human leads us to propose seven key recommendations to conclude this report. 78 We need to change HCI if it is to make sure  that the future role of human computing is based on solid foundations. 79 Future Directions We make seven recommendations for how to bring about complement and extend existing ways of designing and a new way of undertaking HCI research and design and to building which emphasise usability and closeness of fit make it more relevant to today’s world. The goal is to find between prototyped and engineered solutions. In the ways HCI can make a stronger impact on the relationship future, more lightweight, rapid prototyping and design between people and technology at a personal, iteration processes will be required, and ones that will interpersonal and societal level. allow complex ecosystem experiences to be investigated as well as simpler, human-machine relationships. New Recommendation 1: Revisit research and design prototyping tools and technologies will be especially methods in HCI important, allowing the rapid and easy assembly of As HCI has emerged as a distinct research area, the novel hardware and software to test alongside and methods and techniques that have been used have altered within everyday artefacts and living spaces. over the years. Computer systems and the views of their • Reconsider how to evaluate digital technologies. users continue to change and diversify, so there is a need There is a need to be sensitive to a shift away from to be cognisant of the implications of these changes for the world of work, with its emphasis on productivity the methods and techniques HCI will use in future. Thus, and efficiency, towards considerations of leisure and as we approach 2020, there is a need to: entertainment pursuits as well as towards aesthetic and cultural systems of value. Work will continue to • Explore new ways of understanding users. This be important, of course, but so too will these other will require the articulation of diverse methodologies. domains and concerns. What will count as good in Over the last decade we have seen, for example, one domain may not apply in another; what is good techniques rooted in design-based practices (such for work may not be good for home life. The contrast as cultural probes) come to prominence. These have here is not between, say, industry at work and idleness complemented existing techniques of understanding at home; it is between productivity and efficiency as that have emerged from scientific and engineering one very limited set of explanatory criteria and a whole traditions – Human Factors and Cognitive Science, for range of other criteria that are encompassed in the instance. Other ways of extending and complementing spectrum of human value. Evaluation tools, techniques existing techniques will be required beyond design; and criteria must reflect this new richness and diversity. these may include views from more diverse disciplines and cultural traditions. The use of conceptual analysis Recommendation 2: Be explicit about the remit of HCI as the first stage of a new HCI is a case in point. This Digital technology had a massive transformative effect technique derives from analytic philosophy, and entails on the 20th century. Most especially, it revolutionised clarifying the systems of meaning and value any the world of work. In the early part of the 21st century, particular set of activities involves. we have started to see more widespread transformative • Explore new ways of designing and making. The 80 effects raise a new set of issues of major societal, ethical design and building of prototypes of new devices and culture importance, examples of which were sketched will need to be undertaken in ways that are directed out in Part 2 of this report. This raises the question of how at particular kinds of user value. These will have to far – or even whether – HCI, as a research area, should continue to extend itself. The dominant approach over the last twenty years has been to grow HCI by assimilating researchers and techniques from a broader and broader set of disciplines. As it has done so, the remit of HCI has grown. It is not longer clear that this approach is tenable. HCI cannot continue to broaden its concerns indefinitely. Should HCI be involved with any and all aspects of the interaction between people and digital technology? Clearly not. Should it concern itself with more than it has in the past? Clearly it should. ‘In the future, more lightweight, rapid prototyping and design iteration processes will be required, ones that will allow complex ecosystem experiences to be investigated as well as simpler, human-machine relationships’ If we have asserted that HCI needs to encompass values rather than just performance, then this recommendation include architects, urban designers, economists and is that there is a need to specify what HCI specifically philosophers, to name but a few. Allied to the need to be concerns itself with and what it does not encompass. It aware of its boundaries, there is a need for HCI also to needs to say where its boundaries are so that it might consider how to establish connections between itself and offer substantive insight within them and recognise the these other disciplines. need to draw on the expertise of other disciplines outside those boundaries. • Disciplinary exchange One requirement will be for HCI researchers to know how to converse with disciplines As a case in point, one might suggest that HCI is with very different traditions. Such sensitivities will concerned with the design of digital artefacts and need to be taught, as well as cultivated in practice. HCI landscapes. It creates new possibilities. Philosophy, researchers will need to know what other disciplines meanwhile, is the discipline that explores and surveys are good at and what those skills and techniques offer. the value landscape thus produced. Such explorations For example, economists treat all activities – including can lead HCI to develop new design possibilities, further value-laden ones – in terms of opportunity costs. For altering and crafting that landscape. HCI undertakes one HCI, the ability to recognise where an opportunity cost set of tasks; philosophy another. They are not merely steps analysis might be appropriate is clearly important, but in a process, however, but disciplines that, when properly the ability to carry out an analysis is not something understood for what they are, can be marshalled together. that HCI researchers need to take on themselves. . Economists are the experts in this and thus should be Recommendation 3: Develop disciplinary involved in such studies. Similarly, philosophers are techniques that allow HCI to collaborate with other very good at the investigation of ethics. Ethics will be research communities clearly important in some domains HCI is seeking to The broadening and diversification of the digital in design for. As with economists, HCI researchers need our everyday lives requires an increasingly broad set of to understand what philosophers can do and why disciplines with an interest in human values. These could philosophy is important. 81 ‘Just as computing has gone beyond the interface, so, too, will HCI professionals need to move outside of the scientific of computing’ too. Only in this way can they develop sufficient understanding of computing to enable them to be fully computer-literate when they are adults, and help them to shape the world in relation to technology. To achieve this will obviously require a change in the community they have lived within and find curricula of school teaching, most especially in ICT. But ways to engage with society as a whole’ children to learn and reflect upon. Here the professional it will also require a shift in what parents expect their bodies of HCI, such as SIG CHI in North America and the BCS HCI Group in the UK, might help facilitate this change through helping to highlight the importance of HCI in • Beyond interdisciplinary boundaries HCI should ask public discourse about society in 2020. what might be the appropriate models for allowing interdisciplinary investigations to happen. There may Recommendation 5: be differences in how this can be achieved in academic More advanced training for future HCI researchers research and in broader industrial practice where This report has argued for the need for HCI to be able measures of contribution, success, and output may to understand and design for an increasingly rich set of be different. Above all, the HCI community should relationships between computer systems and users. However, be articulating good examples of interdisciplinary we would suggest that, currently, there is a deficiency of HCI practice. This is an area where investment in basic researchers with the breadth of training and experience to research theories and approaches, in the elements of deliver on this broad canvas of concerns. It is imperative that HCI competence and skill, and in the foundations of the HCI considers how it might scale-up its educational processes philosophy of science are required. to develop a generation of researchers and practitioners that can comfortably engage with the broad set of disciplines we 82 Recommendation 4: Teach HCI to the young have outlined. In addition to increased support for training This report has argued that the changing landscape and the production of PhDs in this area, this will require being brought about by computers in our contemporary HCI to revisit its curriculum. HCI students will need to be society has diverse and far-reaching implications for capable of using new, lightweight prototyping and coding society. These implications are so complicated, rich and tools (like ‘phidgets’), for instance. They will also need greater consequential that analysis of them should be introduced methodological adroitness in choosing the right investigative to people at an early age as a school topic. Teaching the techniques for the problems they are given, and they will practical skills of computing is one thing, and important in need to be able to communicate to those outside of the itself. But learning to use a word processor or spreadsheet discipline matters that might be of crucial importance to the tool will no longer be enough to understand the potential other professions. Throughout their work, part of the training impact of computing in society. We suggest children will be to explore ways to alert the public at large to the should be introduced to the ‘properties and possibilities complex and value-laden design possibilities they are dealing with. Just as computing has gone beyond the interface, form stronger links with the general public. Above all, HCI so, too, will HCI professionals need to move outside of the needs to foster the public’s concern with what computers scientific community they have lived within and find ways to might enable so that the society of 2020 is the one they engage with society as a whole. seek and desire rather than the one they end up with. Recommendation 6: Engage with government, policy Recommendation 7: Offer an inclusive future in 2020 and society This report has presented a vision of where we are heading Throughout this report we have stressed the enormous by 2020 and the challenges this holds for HCI. It is all too impact that the relationship between people and easy to get excited by the future by thinking solely of the technology will have in shaping all our futures. Given new capabilities and technologies and the advantages this, it seems to us certain that HCI will need to take they will bring. However, there is also a need for some increasingly seriously its role in these technologies. By the balance. There is a need for HCI, in particular, to recognise same token, it will also need to take seriously the societal the global nature of future development. While radical importance of this role. technologies will continue to emerge, an equally exciting research agenda has to do with the use of computer Consequently, HCI will need to engage actively in the systems in all parts of the world. It is imperative that HCI construction of future government regulation and policy. remembers that in 2020 the vast majority of those who So far this has been done in a limited way, for example rely on and use computer technologies might not have in the area of the ‘digital divide’ or in an advisory role access to the most sophisticated and cutting-edge devices in issues to do with trust and security in computer and applications. This will not mean, however, there will be systems. The emphasis has often been on technical those who have and those who do not have computing. issues or economics and not on the wider problems and It will mean, instead, that how computing is used and possibilities of interaction. But we would argue that HCI what computing is used for will be different depending should not confine itself to the problems of ensuring on where we look. This diversity will reflect not simply usability for the economically deprived, or in dealing with economic realities but cultural differences. In other words, users with nefarious intentions. Rather, it should act in a it will reflect differences in values. wider advisory or steering role whenever there are salient consequences of the complex and diverse transformations In 1999, the science fiction writer William Gibson stated that new forms of interaction with computers can achieve during a radio interview: ‘As I’ve said many times, the in all aspects of society. future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.’ One can read this as alluding to differences in economics. Professional bodies will play a crucial role in alerting But we would prefer to read it differently. The last of the government to this new importance. They will also have recommendations from this report is that, by 2020, HCI a role in conveying considerations of values in HCI as of will need to be able to design for and support differences interest beyond the lab, indeed for everyone, at work in human value, irrespective of the economic means of and at home. Doing so will require HCI to build upon its those seeking those values. In this way, the future can be considerable experience of engaging with users so as to different and diverse because people want it to be. 83 Appendix: What is Human-Computer Interaction? Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a term used to functions. The result of these developments is that HCI refer to the understanding and designing of different has become an integral part of the design process across relationships between people and computers. At the the board, although it can still be the case that other outset, in the late 1970s, the main concern of HCI was demands in design and development get prioritised, ‘usability’. Since then, HCI has established an impressive meaning that the impact of HCI comes ‘too little, too late’. track record for developing and applying all manner of design and evaluation methods to ensure that Irrespective of its success or failure in particular instances, technologies are easy to learn and easy to use. So, for the importance of HCI is such that knowledge about it (if example, it has produced a large body of insightful not about the nuances of its techniques) has seeped into data or evidence on what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ usability, the consciousness of nearly all members of our society. developed methods for the production and analysis of Terms such as ‘usability’, ‘user-friendliness’, ‘human factors’ such evidence, and developed an armoury of tried and and ‘user experience’ signal the impact of HCI in such tested techniques that HCI practitioners can depend upon diverse outlets as advice columns, guides to consumers, in daily practice to ensure usability. cartoons and even advertising. Consumers of all kinds increasingly see usability – as one of the dimensions that More recently, HCI has begun to develop techniques for HCI has expertise in – as a way to choose from a vast array inventing things that are not just usable but useful. It of similar technological products. has also begun to investigate the relationships between people that computers and computer networks enable, such as patterns of behaviour between people and within social groups. The evolution of HCI Central to the practice of HCI is a set of concepts, techniques and methods that underpin research, and help It is hardly surprising that nearly all computer and practitioners make decisions when designing interaction communications companies, as well as companies with technology. These have evolved over the past 30 years. developing Web applications or computer games, have HCI practitioners either scattered throughout their The earliest techniques and concepts of HCI, many of product development groups, or as centralised resources, which were first formed in the late 1970s, had their roots or even both. Nearly every company of any stature in the in an amalgam of thinking that emphasised the tradition technology industry has experts in HCI. As computing of Human Factors Engineering. This approach saw the technology has begun to pervade a wider spectrum of primary metaphor for human-computer interaction products, including vehicles and white goods (such as as being one of ‘human-machine coupling’; as one ovens and fridges for instance), so other companies are that entailed optimising the ‘fit’ between the user beginning to employ HCI professionals too. And within and machine. Key elements of HCI still stem from this organisations, HCI expertise is of increasing importance influence and associated metaphors and models. as efforts are made to improve the efficiency of their 84 intranets, a concept which covers such things as internal For example, a characteristic and successful methodology documentation, information sharing and administrative for predicting and analysing user behaviour – the idea that a user needs to fit the computer – is through the technology for a particular activity. In one famous study application of Fitt’s Law (1954). This is a model of human (Gray et al, 1995), the technique was used to evaluate movement which is used by researchers to predict, for a novel workstation proposed for telephone company example, the time required for a user to click on a given operators, demonstrating that the operators’ performance sized target using a mouse. It has been used widely on new workstations would, in fact, be slower than the as a method for evaluating systems where the time to existing workstations. physically locate an object is critical to the task in hand or where there is limited space on the device for the This new more cognitive approach built on rather placement of digital objects in an interface. For instance, a than displaced the prior Human Factors-oriented HCI. number of mobile phone companies used it to predict text The combination produced considerable dividends. entry rates for different input methods using a 12-key cell Indeed, many would argue that much of what we now phone keypad. It can also be used to determine the size take for granted – including advances in the Graphical and location of so-called soft keys on smart phones that User Interface, the speed with which ‘points and clicks’ only have a touch-sensitive screen and no real buttons. can be made, and more – are the consequence of this accumulation of cognitive and Human Factors approaches. As HCI has developed, so there has been a turn towards a greater emphasis on aspects of the mind and less on During the 1990s, the concerns of HCI started to shift the behaviour of the body; less on pointing and clicking towards communication between people enabled by with fingers and more with how people understand and computers. This mirrored the growth in communication come to recognise objects and processes. There was a networks linking computers together. If, before, the ‘cognitive revolution’ at the heart of much of HCI research concern of HCI had been to determine how to let users in the 1980s and 1990s that reflected this shift. This was efficiently and effectively interact with a computer, now presented most famously by the Xerox PARC researchers researchers started asking how users might interact with Card, Moran and Newell in their book, The Psychology each other via a computer. Researchers with a background of Human-Computer Interaction (1984). In this view, the in more socially-oriented sciences, like Anthropology and human is seen as an information processor, with inputs Sociology, began to engage with HCI. These disciplines (mainly visual), mental processing, and outputs (keyboard not only emphasised the effects of computing on groups strokes, mouse actions and so on), which then in turn of people (or users) but also how computers were ‘input’ information or data into the computer. interpreted and appropriated by those same groups of users. These disciplines also brought a concern for the This approach enabled the production of generalisable social, emotional, as well as technical ways in which models of human interaction, somewhat akin to the the relationship with technology develops. Eventually models produced by the earlier Human Factors approach. the approaches of these disciplines were amalgamated One notable method was the Goals, Operators, Methods so that concerns that had been central before, such as and Selection Rules (or ‘GOMS’) model, which allowed those related to cognitive processing and so forth, were researchers to develop a model of a user undertaking a supplemented (and in some ways replaced) by more particular cognitive task. This allowed them to optimise complex social modelling views and techniques. 85 At the same time, there was a growing realisation that design, rapid generation and exploration of alternatives design, as a set of related practices in its own right, may be best, and so on. should also become an important part of HCI. If it was the case that part of the goal of HCI was to ‘design’ beyond concerning HCI (see Bibliography) as well as websites computer-mediated interaction between people, then and journals (Human-Computer Interaction, International other concerns might be relevant too, such as cultural and Journal of Human-Computer Studies – and magazines aesthetic desires. Science and social science perspectives such as Interactions and User Experience Magazine). As were thought too limited to capture the essence of what HCI has developed, so has the number of international this meant. And so it was that by the mid-1990s designers conferences devoted to it, with over 20 or so conferences and ‘design practice’ became heavily involved in HCI. per year at the current time. And of course this book has Notions of ‘interaction design’ came to the fore. These its origins in just such a conference. A good overview of emphasised practice-based approaches to the exploration an increasingly diverse field is provided online by the HCI of the relationship between computers and people and Bibliography – http://www.hcibib.org/ – which provides placed less stress on the modelling of the user, as had a useful starting point for interested readers. Further been the case before. suggestions are also presented in the Bibliography. At the start of the 21st century, HCI is an interdisciplinary field which has undergone enormous change. In terms of a science or a discipline, these changes have occurred over a very short time. HCI now encompasses many philosophies, perspectives and types of expertise. There are multiple and overlapping groups of researchers, some emphasising design, others evaluation, and yet others user modelling. These experts all work within a complex space, each examining different aspects of human-computer interaction. Different techniques are used, depending on different goals. If the goal is to incrementally improve a routine task – shave seconds from the time to enter each of millions of census forms, for example – then a carefully controlled large-scale experiment with rigorous statistical analysis is essential. If the goal is to find glaring problems in the initial version of a new consumer application, a relatively quick iterative design evaluation may be better. Understanding a complex social task may require a longterm field investigation to understand the setting where 86 This diversity is reflected in numerous textbooks interaction between user and machine and beyond even the technology may be placed. To identify an engaging Bibliography General books about HCI Raskin, J, (2000) The Humane Interface: New directions for designing interactive systems. Boston: Addison-Wesley. There are a great many books and reference materials for HCI. Here is a selected list of books and articles, including Rogers, Y, Sharp, H, and Preece, J (2007) Interaction Design: classic and new texts that will give the lay reader a good Beyond Human Computer Interaction. 2nd ed. Hoboken, New introduction to the discipline: Jersey: Wiley. Baecker, R, Grudin, J, Buxton, W, Greenberg, S (eds) (1995) Rosson, M and Carroll, J (2001) Usability Engineering: Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction. 2000. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann. New York: Morgan Kaufmann. Buxton, B (2007) Sketching User Experience: Getting the Shneiderman, B (2002) Leonardo’s Laptop. Boston: MIT Press. Design Right and the Right Design. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann. Thimbleby, H (2007) Press On: Principles of interaction programming. Boston: MIT Press. Carroll, JM (ed) (2002) Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium. New York: ACM Press. Thomas, JC (1995) ‘Usability Engineering in 2020’ in Nielsen, J (ed), Advances in human-computer interaction. Norwood, Dix, A, Finlay, J, Abowd, G and Beale, R (2003) Human- New Jersey: Ablex (Intellect). Computer Interaction. 3rd ed. Prentice Hall. Websites Jacko, J and Sears, A (2007) Human-Computer Interaction Good sources of websites, blogs, videos, software etc on Handbook. 2nd ed. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. interaction design and HCI can be found at these two websites: Jones, J and Marsden G (2005) Mobile Interaction Design. http://www.id-book.com/starters.htm London: Wiley & Sons. http://www.hcibib.org/ McCarthy, J and Wright, P (2004) Technology as Experience. Boston: MIT Press. Norman, D (2007) The Design of Future Things. New York: Basic Books. Norman, D (1988) The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books. 87 Other relevant or influential books and articles: Reflections on the History of HCI Anderson, C (2007) The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating The following books and articles provide more background Unlimited Demand. London: Random House. reading to accompany the Appendix on the history of HCI, including the specific references in that section: Clark, A (2004) Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford Card, S, Moran, T and Newell, A (1984) The Psychology of University Press. Human-Computer Interaction. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cousins, N (1966) ‘The Computer and the Poet’, Saturday Review, July 23rd. Erickson, T and McDonald, DW (2008) HCI Remixed. Reflections on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Dourish, P (2004) Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Community. Boston: MIT Press. Embodied Interaction. Boston: MIT Press. Fitts, P (1954) ‘The information capacity of the human motor Emmott, S. J., Shapiro, E., Rison, S., Phillips, A., and Herbert, A. J system in controlling amplitude of movement’ in Journal of (2006) Towards 2020 Science.UK: Microsoft Research Ltd. Experimental Psychology, 47, 381-391. Greenfield, A (2006) Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Gray, WD, John, BE, Stuart, R, Lawrence, D and Atwood, ME Computing. New York: New Preachpit Press. (1995) ‘GOMS meets the phone company: Analytic modeling applied to real world problems,’ in Baecker, R, Grudin, J, Jenson, S (2002) The Simplicity Shift: Innovative Design Tactics in Buxton, W and Greenberg, S (eds) Readings in Human a Corporate World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Computer Interaction: Towards the Year 2000, pp 634-639, San Francisco: Morgan-Kaufmann. Rheingold, H (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus. Grudin, J (2007) ‘A Moving Target: The Evolution of HumanComputer Interaction’, in Sears, A and Jacko, J (eds), Human- Rogers, Y (2006) ‘Moving on from Weiser’s vision of calm Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving computing: Engaging UbiComp experiences’, in Dourish, P and Technologies and Emerging Applications, pp1-24, Mahwah, Friday, A (eds) Ubicomp 2006 Proceedings, LNCS 4206, pp 404- New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 421. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Harrison, S, Tatar, D, Sengers, P (2007) ‘The Three Paradigms Sellen, A and Harper, R (2001) The Myth of the Paperless Office. Boston: MIT Press. Weiser, M (1991) ‘The Computer for the Twenty-First Century’ in Scientific American, pp 94-10, September. 88 of HCI,’ alt.chi, CHI’ 07. New York: ACM Press. References from the Case Studies in Part 3 Harper, R, Randall, D, Smyth, N, Evans, C, Heledd, L and These papers describe the original research referred to in the Moore, R (2007) ‘Thanks for the memory’ in Interact: HCI case studies in Part 3: 2007, Lancaster: British Computer Society, September, pp3943, Vol 2. Brown, B, Taylor, A, Izadi, S, Sellen, A and Kaye, J (2007) ‘Locating Family Values: A Field Trial of the Whereabouts Harper, R, Regan, T, Al Mosawi, K, Rubens, S and Rouncefield, Clock’, in Proceedings of UbiComp 2007. Godalming: M (2007) ‘Trafficking: design for the viral exchange of Springer Verlag. multimedia content’, Mobile HCI 2007. Singapore: ACM, Research Publishing, pp49-64. Taylor, A, Harper, R, Swan, L, Izadi, S, Sellen, A, and Perry, M (2007) ‘Homes that make us smart,’ in Personal and Sellen, A, Fogg, A, Hodges, S, Rother, C and Wood, K (2007) Ubiquitous Computing (special issue “At Home with IT: ‘Do life-logging technologies support memory for the past? Pervasive Computing in the Domestic Space”), Number 5, An experimental study using SenseCam.’ Proceedings of CHI June 2007 ’07, available online at: http://portal.acm.org. Harper, R, Randall, D, Smyth, N, Evans, C, Heledd, L and Moore, R (2008) ‘The past is a different place: They do things differently there’ in Designing Interactive Systems 2008 (DIS), New York: ACM Press. pp 271-280. 89 HCI 2020 Forum Participants Christopher Bishop Gilbert Cockton Chris Bishop, Deputy Director of Microsoft Research, Gilbert Cockton is Research Chair in HCI at the University Cambridge UK, has a Chair in Computer Science at the of Sunderland in the north east of England. He is a Fellow University of Edinburgh, and is a Fellow of Darwin College of both the Royal Society for the Arts and the British Cambridge. He has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Computer Society, and has published extensively on Academy of Engineering. Research interests include usability and accessibility, grounded- and worth/value- probabilistic approaches to machine-learning, as well as centred design, as well as notations and architectures for their application to fields such as computer vision. interactive software. Barry Brown Thomas Erickson Barry Brown is currently an Associate Professor of Thomas Erickson is an interaction designer and researcher Communications at UC San Diego and Equator Research at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center in New York, to Fellow, Glasgow University. His recent work has focused which he telecommutes from his home in Minneapolis. on the sociology and design of leisure technologies. His primary interest is in studying and designing systems Recent publications include studies of activities as diverse that enable groups of all sizes to interact coherently and as games, tourism, museum visiting, the use of maps, productively over networks. television watching and sport spectating. AJ Brush David Frohlich AJ Brush works at Microsoft Research as a researcher in David Frohlich is Director of Digital World Research the VIBE group. Her main research interest is human- Centre at the University of Surrey and Professor of computer interaction with a focus on computer- Interaction Design. He joined the Centre in January 2005 supported cooperative work. She enjoys investigating to establish a new research agenda on user-centred how technology can help people and groups with innovation for the consumer market. everyday problems. Matthew Chalmers Bill Gaver Matthew Chalmers is a Reader at the University of Bill Gaver is a professor at Goldsmiths College in London. Glasgow. He combines ubicomp theory, infrastructure Bill has pursued research on interactive technologies and interaction, explored via systems for tourism, health for over 20 years, following a trajectory that led from and leisure. He has published widely on topics including experimental science to design. Currently he focuses on mobile multiplayer games, the use of philosophical design-led methodologies and innovative products for hermeneutics to design computer systems, and the everyday life. nature of the museum visit experience. Adam Greenfield Lars Erik Holmquist Adam Greenfield is a writer, consultant and instructor at Lars Erik Holmquist is an Associate Professor and leads New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications the Future Applications Lab at the Mobile Life Center in Program. His first book, Everyware: The dawning age of Kista, Sweden, where his employment is shared between ubiquitous computing, has been acclaimed as ‘the first the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and the work on the topic suitable for general audiences’. He lives University of Stockholm. and works in New York City with his wife, artist Nurri Kim. Jonathan Grudin Kristina Höök Jonathan Grudin is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Professor Kristina Höök is a full professor at Department Research, where he has been since 1998. Immediately of Computer and Systems Science, Stockholm University/ prior to Microsoft he was Professor of Information and KTH since February 2003. She is also a laboratory Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. manager of the interaction lab at SICS. The focus of her He has also taught at Aarhus University, Keio University, group is on social and affective interaction, and narrative and the University of Oslo. intelligence, often in mobile settings. Richard Harper Steve Howard Richard Harper is Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research Steve Howard is the Head of Information Systems at in Cambridge, UK and Professor of Socio-Digital Systems the University of Melbourne. Steve left school at 16 at the University of Surrey. His most recent book is and for four years worked in an engineering factory. He Fieldwork and Design (with Dave Randall and Mark then meandered through an education in psychology, Rouncefield, Kluwer, 2007). He is currently completing ergonomics and HCI, and the interaction between a new book called Texture: Communication in the 21st technology and people has remained his interest. He Century (MIT Press), due out summer 2008. focuses on the application of IT to areas of real social need. Andrew Herbert Shahram Izadi Andrew Herbert is a distinguished engineer and Shahram Izadi is a researcher at Microsoft Research managing director of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, in Cambridge, UK. His research centres on interactive England. Initially joining Microsoft Research in 2001 as surfaces, specifically looking at a future where diverse an assistant director, he succeeded the founding director, display technologies are cheap and all around us. He is Roger Needham, in March 2003. interested in exploring interaction techniques beyond the keyboard and mouse, utilising hands, tangible objects and haptic feedback. Scott Jenson Jofish Kaye Scott Jenson is an interface designer at Google. He has Jofish Kaye is a doctoral candidate in Information been doing user interface design and strategic planning Science at Cornell University. His dissertation research is for 20 years. He worked at Apple until 1993 on System 7, concerned with producing theory and methodology for Newton, and the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. For the evaluation of experience-focused – as opposed to three years he was the director of Symbian’s DesignLab, task-focused – HCI. managing 20 people to design, prototype, user-test, and specify future mobile products. Matt Jones Wendy Kellogg Matt Jones is a Reader in Computer Science, helping to Wendy Kellogg manages Social Computing at IBM’s TJ set up the Future Interaction Technology Lab at Swansea Watson Research Center. Her current work focuses on University. He has worked on mobile interaction issues for computer-mediated communication (CMC), including the past twelve years and has published a large number social translucence and virtual worlds. She holds a PhD in of articles in this area. Cognitive Psychology from the University of Oregon and writes in the fields of HCI and CSCW. Wendy chaired CHI 2005 Papers and the CHI ’94 conference. Sergi Jordà Boriana Koleva Sergi Jordà is an Associate Professor in the Technology Boriana Koleva is a lecturer in the School of Computer Department of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Science at the University of Nottingham. Her research Since then he has taught courses as diverse as OOP, HCI, area is the field of Human-Computer Interaction, with a Computer Music and Interactive Digital Arts. He is best particular emphasis on Ubicomp interfaces. Her thesis known as the inventor of the Reactable, a tabletop new work focused on mixed reality boundaries which link musical instrument hand-picked by Icelandic songstress virtual and physical spaces. Björk for her 2007 world tour. Rui José Steven Kyffin Rui José was born in Portugal, where he did his Steven Kyffin (Master of Design, Industrial Design, Royal undergraduate and MSc studies in Computing at the College of Art, London) is Senior Director of Philips’ University of Minho. In 2001, he received his PhD Design Research & Innovation programmes. In this degree in Computer Science (Distributed Systems) from function he directs the Ideas (Innovation) Engine of Lancaster University, UK. He is now an Assistant Professor Philips Design and the programme of Design Research in at the Information Systems Department of the University Philips Electronics worldwide. of Minho. Paul Luff Jun Rekimoto Paul Luff is a Reader at Kings College, London. His Jun Rekimoto is a professor at the University of Tokyo and research involves the study of everyday work and director of the Interaction Lab, Sony Computer Science interaction drawing upon detailed analysis of audio- Laboratories. He received the BSc, the MSc and the PhD visual recordings of human conduct. These analyses are in Information Science from Tokyo Institute of Technology frequently utilised within projects that seek to develop in 1984, 1986, and 1996, respectively. He was appointed innovative kinds of technologies such as enhanced media to the SIGCHI Academy in 2007. spaces, robots and augmented paper. Gary Marsden Tom Rodden Gary Marsden is an Associate Professor in the Tom Rodden is Professor of Interactive Systems at the Department of Computer Science at the University Mixed Reality Laboratory (MRL) at the University of of Cape Town in South Africa, where he has worked Nottingham, where he directed the Equator IRC and is since 1999. Originally he worked in the field of Mobile now an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow. His research focuses Interaction Design, but since moving to Africa, his on the development of new technologies to support research has focused more on the use of ICT for human users within the real world and new forms of interactive development. technology that mix physical and digital interaction. Tom Moher Yvonne Rogers Tom Moher is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Yvonne Rogers is a professor of HCI at the Open the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He also holds University, and a visiting professor at Indiana University. an adjunct Associate Professor position in the College of She researches and teaches in the areas of HCI, Education there, and serves on the steering committee Ubiquitous computing and CSCW. A particular focus for the UIC Learning Sciences programme. is augmenting and extending everyday learning and work activities with novel technologies including mobile, wireless, handheld and pervasive computing. Kenton O’Hara Mark Rouncefield Kenton O’Hara is a Senior Research Scientist at HP Labs Mark Rouncefield is an ethnographer and sociologist Bristol in the Mobile and Media Systems Lab. His research and is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of explores the social and behavioural factors that shape the Computing. He is also a Microsoft European Research design and use of emerging technologies. Fellow studying social interaction and mundane technologies. Abigail Sellen Michael Twidale Abigail Sellen is a Senior Researcher in Microsoft’s Michael Twidale is an Associate Professor of the Graduate Cambridge UK Lab and co-manager of the Socio-Digital School of Library and Information Science, University of Systems group, an interdisciplinary group with a focus on Illinois. His research interests include computer supported the human perspective in computing. She has published cooperative work, collaborative information retrieval, widely in HCI, but her current pre-occupation is with user interface design, museum informatics, ubiquitous designing technologies for the home and to support learning, in interaction of learning work and play, and human memory. rapid prototyping and evaluation techniques. Wes Sharrock Alessandro Valli Wes Sharrock is Professor of Sociology at the University of Alessandro is an Italian interactive systems engineer and Manchester, UK. He has had a career-long interest in the experience designer at iO. He received his MSc and PhD philosophy of social science, especially the implications degrees in computer engineering from the University of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for social science, including of Florence, in 2000 and in 2004. In 2001 he started the philosophy of mind, involving an opposition to focusing on the topic of natural interaction between reductionism in all its forms. He also has a long-standing humans and machines. interest in observational studies of work. Alex Taylor Geoff Walsham Alex Taylor is a member of the Socio-Digital Systems Geoff Walsham is a Professor of Management Studies Group at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK. He has (Information Systems) at the Judge Business School, undertaken investigations into the mundane aspects University of Cambridge, UK. In addition to Cambridge, of everyday life. For example, examining paper lists, he has held academic posts at the University of Lancaster fridge doors, junk drawers and pottering. Through in the UK where he was Professor of Information these investigations he has developed an unhealthy Management, the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and preoccupation with hoarding, dirt and clutter. Mindanao State University in the Philippines. John Thomas Steve Whittaker John Thomas is a researcher at IBM. Prior to IBM, John Steve Whittaker is Chair in Information Studies at managed research on the psychology of aging at Harvard Sheffield University. His research interests are in the Medical School and led the AI Lab at NYNEX Science and theory, design and evaluation of collaborative systems, as Technology. His interests have spanned natural language well as multimedia access and retrieval. In the past he has processing, audio systems, and speech synthesis. designed and built many novel interactive systems. More recently he has worked on the business uses of storytelling, pattern languages and e-learning. Ken Wood Jian Wang Ken Wood is Deputy Director of Microsoft’s Cambridge Jian Wang is a principal researcher and Assistant UK Research Lab, with responsibility for the lab’s Managing Director at Microsoft Research Asia. He business-facing activities, including technology transfer, manages the machine-learning group, the data-centric incubation, licensing, spin-offs, and other models for computing group and Microsoft’s adCenter adLab in exploiting the intellectual property generated by the Beijing. Dr Wang’s research interests are ink and pen research groups. Ken also heads the Computer-Mediated computing, large-scale data and information processing, Living research group. seamless computing, and human cognition. Adrian Woolard Adrian Woolard leads collaborative research projects within the Research & Innovation Group, BBC Future Media & Technology. The Innovation team is a small multi-disciplinary unit focused on exploring the changing relationships between media, audience and technology in the emerging multi-genre, multi-platform environment. Peter Wright Peter Wright is research Professor of Human-Centred Design in the Art and Design Research Centre (ADRC), Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK. He joined ADRC in October 2006. Prior to this he was Reader in HumanComputer Interaction in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, UK. Oren Zuckerman Oren Zuckerman is a faculty member at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Israel. Oren teaches and researches innovative forms of humancomputer interaction, with special focus on physical interaction and cross-platform media experiences. Oren earned his Master’s and PhD degrees at MIT’s Media Laboratory. Glossary Actuators Ethnography Typically very small electro-mechanical devices that create or The term used to describe studies of people in everyday contexts, inhibit movement of one kind or another. Vibrators on mobile usually contrasted with studies of user behaviour in laboratory phones are an example of actuators. settings. Bayes’ theorem Graphical user interface (GUI) A mathematical relationship between probabilities which allows The use of graphical icons (such as folders and windows) for the the probabilities to be updated in light of new information. It can objects one can interact with on a computer screen, usually by be used to provide a formal foundation for Machine-Learning pointing and clicking on them with a mouse. (see below). Flexible displays BlueTooth Screen technologies that are bendable: such as e-paper. BlueTooth provides a way exchange information between devices Indirect interaction such as mobiles, PCs, digital cameras, and video game consoles The use of an object to control an object other than itself (such as over a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency. Brain-computer interaction Intelligent systems The use of brain signal monitoring to convey action commands to Computer systems that mimic some aspects of human a computer. 96 a mouse to control a pointer on the computer screen). intelligence, such as the ability to perceive and act on the Camera input environment, to make complex decisions, to learn, and to make The use of visual signals, from a camera, to provide instructions inferences about a human’s intentions. for a computer. Machine-learning Conceptual analysis A statistical technique that allows a computer to ‘learn’ how A philosophical technique that entails the investigation of the to perform a task by analysing a set of ‘training data’ which relationships between ideas and in particular, their linguistic represents examples of the task and the required solution. It formula. This book proposes it as a new first stage of HCI’s design/ has widespread applications including handwriting recognition, research model. computer vision, robotics, bioinformatics and data mining. This Digital footprint technique is often based on Bayes’ theorem (see above). The name given to the auditable traces of an individual’s Mash-ups interaction with computers. When users bring applications together in novel ways, such as E-paper when they combine a database of music sound tracks with a A display technology designed to mimic the appearance of video editor to create new audio-visual experiences. ordinary ink on paper. Unlike a conventional display, which uses a MEMS backlight to illuminate its pixels, e-paper reflects light like ordinary Short for ‘micro-electromechanical systems’, MEMS is a micro paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely fabrication technology that embeds mechanical devices, such as without drawing electricity. E-paper often uses a plastic substrate fluid sensors, mirrors, actuators, vibration sensors and valves, in and electronics, so that the display is bendable. semiconductor chips. Multi-touch Recognition algorithms Systems which support interaction using more than one finger Computer code or algorithms designed to instruct the computer at a time, and more than one hand. Such sensing devices are on how to identify and distinguish between various kinds of inherently also able to accommodate multiple users which is objects, either in the physical world (such as faces) or in the digital especially useful for interaction surfaces such as digital tabletops. world (such as letters scribbled on a tablet computer). Natural interaction RSI Typically used to refer to interaction techniques for the computer A repetitive strain injury (RSI) is any of a loose group of conditions which are modelled on the ways people interact with physical resulting from overuse of a tool, such as a computer and more objects in the everyday world. Using two hands to manipulate particularly a computer keyboard and mouse, that requires digital photos on an interactive tabletop is one example. repeated movements. Neural networks RFID The modern usage of the term refers to artificial neural networks, Radio-frequency identification: an automatic identification a way of building computer models inspired by the ways in which method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using biological neural networks are structured and process information. devices called RFID tags. An RFID tag is an object that can be OLED ‘Organic light emitting diode’ – elements whose emissive applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radio waves. electroluminescent layer is composed of a film of organic RSS feeds compounds. These can be used for displays and need no RSS (formally ‘RDF site summary’, known colloquially as ‘really backlight, hence can be thinner, lighter and use less power than simple syndication’) is a family of Web feed formats used to conventional displays. publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news Phidgets Small, simple, electro-mechanical and software-controlled devices headlines or podcasts. RSS feeds can contain either a summary of content from an associated website or the full text. that can be easily assembled together and programmed for Sensed interaction prototyping purposes. These arose from a research project led by The use of sensors, such as for light, movement and sound, to Saul Greenberg at the University of Calgary. create a signal for the computer to process. Podcasting Skype (Skyping) A podcast is a collection of digital media files distributed over the Skype is a proprietary Internet telephony (VoIP) network that Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media allows registered users to make telephone calls over the internet. players and PCs. The term, like ‘radio’, can refer either to the content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated. Smart fabrics Pressure input they change a property of themselves to reflect a computational The embedding of sensors and other electronics in textiles such The use of different levels of pressure on a screen or other command, eg Italian firm Luminex’s idea of weaving fibre-optics computer device to create different kinds of input to a computer. into fabric, so the wearer can light up a room when they enter it. 97 Picture Credits SMS-texting The authors express their gratitude to the individuals and Short Message Service (SMS) is a communications protocol companies below for generously supplying the images for allowing the interchange of short text messages (of up to 160 characters) between mobile telephone devices. Texting is used as a colloquial synonym for the use of SMS. Page 13: The world of the future – Philips Design Social metadata Page 14-15: Four Computer Eras Diagram – Nick Duffield Labels and other high-level descriptors of digital data created by Page 16: The Reactable – Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona multiple users. Factoring in the opinions, naming conventions, Page 17: The HotHand – Source Audio LLC, Massachusetts web habits, locations, and behaviours of ‘ordinary’ people and Page 18: Animated Textiles – Studio subTela at the Hexagram their friends could ‘humanise’ machine algorithms, and lead to Institute, Montreal, Canada hundreds of fascinating applications. Page 20: The iCAT robot hardware platform – Philips Design Tangible interface Page 21: The Rovio robotic webcam – WowWee Robotics An interface that uses the manipulation of physical objects to Page 22: Gordon Bell – Mark Richards, IEEE Spectrum create instructions for the computer. This can mean either using physical objects in conjunction with computers, or embedding computers within the objects themselves. UGC Page 24: Twitter Blocks – Twitter Inc, San Francisco Page 25: The Ambient Periscope – Equator Project, University of Sussex ‘User-generated content’: the kind of material produced by users Page 26: The Ambient Wood – Equator Project, and made available for broadcast on social network sites like University of Sussex YouTube and Flickr. UGC is normally contrasted with editorialised Page 27: Audiovox’s Digital Message Center – Audiovox content, content subject to some kind of professional production. Page 28: Sony’s EyeToy – Sony Computer Entertainment Vibro-tactile display Page 29: A man in Cape Town, South Africa, selling mobile A technique that uses vibration as the output from computers to phones – Gary Marsden, University of Cape Town create new kinds of sensory experiences for users. Page 30: Visa Micro Tag – Visa Web 2.0 Page 33: Tokyo artistic installation, ‘Duality’ – Design agency, The name for web-usage and tools that emphasise user-created ART+COM content and experiences, and in particular the user-creation of Page 36: Electronic Sensing Jewelry – Philips Design novel amalgams of applications. WiFi A wireless technology brand owned by the WiFi Alliance intended to improve the interoperability of wireless local area 98 this report. Page 38: The History Tablecloth – Interaction Research Studio (Goldsmiths College, University of London) Page 40: I-Garment – I-Garment consortium (YDreams, designer network products based on the IEEE 802.11 standards. Common Miguel Rios and the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Lisbon) applications include Internet and voice over internet protocol, Page 48: Vodafone’s young musicians – Vodafone such as Skype, phone access, gaming, and network connectivity Page 53: The Kiss Communicator – IDEO, Palo Alt for consumer electronics. Page 62: Phidgets – Saul Greenberg, University of Calgary © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-9554761-1-2