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The Inflatable Cat: Idiosyncratic Ideation of Smart Objects for the Home - YouTube
Channel: ACM SIGCHI
[5]
- Good afternoon, everybody.
[7]
I'm glad and honored to present this work
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on idiosyncratic ideation of
smart objects for the home.
[14]
And this paper's about how to design
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meaningful and emotionally
valuable smart objects
[21]
together with people and the context
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of their individual homes.
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This paper's a collaboration
of myself and colleagues
[30]
from Chemnitz University of Technology,
[33]
Will Odom from Simon Fraser
University in Canada,
[36]
and Eva Hornecker from Bauhaus University
[39]
in Weimar, Germany.
[43]
Smart objects for the
home, they're a hot topic
[46]
in design and research,
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yet as it stands the IoT
for the home produces
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a lot of pictures on the jammer,
hold a phone in front of it
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to make it better.
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And most IoT for the home,
it focuses on efficiency,
[61]
on comfort, and on security.
[64]
And there is not much emotional engagement
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apart from perhaps when
you want to go to bed
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but your smart light bulb decided it needs
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a very important update
before you can actually
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switch it off.
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But other than that, smart
objects, they do not spark
[82]
much emotional engagement.
[84]
So the question really is,
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is smart objects, if they
rely on so many sensors,
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why do they suffer from sensory
and emotional deprivation?
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And this is where we set off
to explore how to co-design
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meaningful and emotionally
valuable smart objects.
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There's a huge number of IoT design tools
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to conduct workshops in
order to come up with
[114]
a "novel" idea for the smart home,
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yet none of them focuses on
sensory and emotional qualities.
[125]
If you look at some of
these methods in detail,
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for example, the note cards on the screen,
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there's 60 different cards
for 60 different sensors
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and equally many for actuators.
[137]
Yet the biggest hindrance of these cards
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is that they fail to engage co-designers
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in a sensory and emotional way.
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And one of the reasons for
that is that these design tools
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are analog and request rather
high faculty of abstraction.
[155]
We argue in our paper in quite some detail
[158]
that these tools are quite
unfit to make designers
[162]
and co-designers alike to
relate to how a smart object
[166]
would make them feel,
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which emotion they might
elicit, let alone understand
[172]
how a specific actuator or specific sensor
[176]
actually makes you feel.
[180]
And that was where we stood
[182]
when we built our own co-design tool.
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It is called Loaded Dice,
[188]
and it consists of two interactive cubes.
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And we use this tool to
explore the design space
[194]
of smart, connected things
together with people.
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If you want to try them out, I
have them with me down there.
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Just meet me there.
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And it consists of two interactive cubes
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that are wirelessly connected.
[208]
One cube, the one to the
left, it's a sensor cube,
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and it has a different sensor
in each of its six sides.
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For example, temperature sensor,
[218]
motion sensor, a volume sensor.
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The side that is facing up is active,
[225]
and it communicates wirelessly
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with the side facing up on the other cube.
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So the second cube, you have guessed it,
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is an actuator cube, and it in turn has
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a different actuator on
each of its six sides.
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It reacts to the sensor
cube with light, vibration,
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or with heat.
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For example, we can detect
heat and display it as light
[250]
or convert it into air through
a fan on the other cube.
[254]
We have done quite a number
of co-design workshops
[256]
and in a number of other
papers we have shown
[258]
that Loaded Dice, it supports creativity
[262]
and exploration skills
in the very early stages
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of design processes.
[267]
So the question is,
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if you can use Loaded Dice
to transform heat into air,
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why can't you use it to, let's say,
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transform anger into
something more objective?
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We also looked into prior work at CHI,
[283]
and among others that chose
vocabularies, we took the one
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from Diefenbach and colleagues as a start.
[290]
They have provided an
interaction vocabulary
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that allows to describe
the "how" of interaction.
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We took that as a starting
point, adapted it quite heavily,
[301]
and updated it to be fit for
describing the interaction
[305]
with smart objects.
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So, how does this workshop work?
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It is basically a negotiation.
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It's relating sensory qualities
depicted with a card deck
[320]
of sensory qualities, and
functional possibilities
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of sensors and actuators
depicted through Loaded Dice.
[328]
To engage co-designers in workshops,
[330]
we usually conduct those workshops
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in the homes of our participants.
[335]
So in the first step,
co-designers, they define
[338]
a domestic problem that
they would like to explore.
[342]
And in a second step, we
use a part co-designers
[345]
to explore this problem in-depth
[348]
through the sensory vocabulary.
[351]
And they also make a
distinction between an input
[354]
and an output side, so
to sort sensory qualities
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into input categories and
into output categories.
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Only then, in the third step,
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co-designers are
introduced to Loaded Dice.
[366]
They use it in order to
explore sensors and actuators,
[370]
and to enrich the interaction of actors
[373]
within this problem space
through a connection
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of Loaded Dice and vocabulary.
[379]
So, for example, they can
connect the notion of, let's say,
[384]
a strange sound sensor with
a covered heating element.
[391]
We conducted a number
of co-design workshops
[394]
that followed this rationale,
and we used it to co-design
[399]
meaningful and emotionally
valuable smart objects
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in the context of everyday life.
[407]
Of these smart objects, our
co-designers came up with
[410]
their three in the paper,
[413]
and we analyzed those three
to understand the role
[417]
of sensory and emotional qualities,
[419]
and speculating smart
objects and services,
[423]
always together with people
in the context of their home.
[430]
The first one is the Anger Meter.
[432]
It was done by a group of
co-designers living together,
[435]
and their next door
neighbor often complains
[438]
that they're making too much noise.
[441]
So with the Anger Meter,
they can negotiate
[444]
between their own noise level
[446]
and the annoyance of their neighbor.
[448]
So the neighbor can signal
the level of his anger
[451]
with the potentiometer,
and to avoid misuse,
[454]
the device also contains a microphone
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that compares the subjective anger
[460]
with the legally allowed noise levels.
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And this speculative device,
co-designers, they acknowledge
[467]
their neighbor's issues,
yet they reject his anger.
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By doing so, the smart object
transforms one person's
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subjective emotion into
objective information.
[483]
Next one is the Automated Rent Debtor.
[491]
I will skip that one.
[495]
There's a bit of it in the paper.
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It's kind of an ethically
questionable thing,
[502]
so I invite you to read about all of that.
[504]
It's about prohibiting
people of having a hot shower
[510]
when they're late with their rent.
[513]
So, finally, let's talk about cats.
[516]
This smart object was conceived
by a group of co-designers
[519]
living together in a co-housing project.
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And the smart object is designed
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for their three-legged cat, Alfred.
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The problem of the apartment,
it has no cat flap.
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And often times, Alfred the cat,
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he meows in front of the front door,
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hoping for someone to let him in.
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This can take anytime from
one minute to one hour,
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especially during night.
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Co-designers, they longed for a remedy
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they would believe would
make the cat happy.
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So with the help of the
card set, the co-designers
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described the communication
of their cat as poetic.
[558]
They decided that a microphone
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and some animal speech
recognition at the front door
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would recognize the meows of Alfred
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and distinguish Alfred from any other cat.
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Co-designers described this as targeted,
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and to not let Alfred wait,
it also needs to be fast.
[577]
So co-designers also wanted
actuation inside the house
[581]
to be equally poetic.
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It also instant and attention grabbing.
[588]
Co-designers, they discussed
the notion of poetic
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quite strongly, and they figured,
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if they amplified the
meowing through loudspeaker,
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that would still be Alfred,
but loud and thus unpoetic.
[600]
They also considered
having Shakespeare poems
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being read aloud, also unpoetic.
[605]
Co-designers then switched to Loaded Dice,
[608]
and they explored sensors and actuators
[610]
through actual functionality.
[612]
Their final poetic idea is a
fan instead of loudspeaker.
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This does not disturb conversation
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through an unpoetic sound,
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but still it's grabbing attention.
[625]
So when Alfred meows at
the door, an inflatable
[628]
but larger copy of himself
would be inflated by a fan,
[633]
then rise to the ceiling and shake.
[636]
And this emphatic cat, it would be located
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in a resident's bedroom
and would only be triggered
[642]
by the meowing of Alfred,
but not any other cat.
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So, what should you take from this?
[652]
Our workshop design,
it allowed co-designers
[654]
to reflect on how sensory information
[657]
should be transformed into actuation.
[660]
In this example, a poetic
and targeted interaction
[663]
was transformed into a completely
different poetic notion
[667]
that was still friendly
and attention grabbing.
[671]
Our workshops enabled people
to develop their own ideas
[673]
and concepts for what
an IoT artifact might be
[675]
in the context of their home.
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That could now send you home
quite happily and invite you
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to build one of these
objects for next time or CHI,
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but these objects are not necessarily
[688]
what we want you to build.
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These smart object, they are
idiosyncratic in the sense
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that the ideas are highly
poetic and emotionally valuable,
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but only make sense in a
specific housing context.
[702]
And in exploring those with our workshops,
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the example they unravel, how
idiosyncratic smart objects
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mirror the housing situation
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that the co-designers are living in.
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Our workshops, they also
enabled co-designers
[718]
to ideate emotionally
valuable smart objects
[721]
that do not build on
objective measurements
[724]
towards efficient communication,
[727]
but they rely on situated
knowledge of the people involved
[731]
to imagine emotionally
valuable communication.
[736]
The Anger Meter, for
example, it makes only sense
[738]
in the context of an old
neighbor's need for rest
[741]
and the younger party
crowd living next door.
[745]
So, with future work we need to focus on
[747]
reflecting on "the home," on
more non-stereotypical homes
[752]
through the idiosyncrasies
of these smart objects
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individually created for them.
[759]
More importantly, how did the
workshop enable co-designers
[763]
to ideate smart object that foregrounded
[766]
these particular sensory
emotional qualities?
[770]
That was possible through
a back and forth process
[773]
with a lot of reflection and exploration
[775]
of sensory attributes on one side
[778]
and functional possibilities
on the other side.
[782]
So in the first phase,
the sensory vocabulary
[786]
allowed co-designers to
frame relevant issues
[789]
from their homes in a self-determined way.
[792]
And here, the cards,
they helped co-designers
[795]
to empathize with absent people,
[797]
with their angry neighbor
or with that cat.
[800]
Only then, in the second phase,
[802]
co-designers considered
issues of functionality
[805]
and they attributed emotional qualities
[807]
such as anger or poetics
into functional attributes
[812]
of sensors embodied in Loaded Dice.
[815]
But, more importantly, there was always
[817]
a back channel of negotiating
sensory attributes
[820]
and functional sensors and actuators.
[824]
Only this back and forth between these two
[826]
allowed to fine-tune the
translation of sense and emotion,
[831]
and to translate sensory
and emotional qualities
[835]
into objective input or objective output.
[841]
To sum up, by exploring sensory
and emotional properties,
[845]
by alternating between sensory vocabulary
[848]
and technical toolkit,
co-designers translated
[851]
between what does it
mean for an interaction
[854]
to be poetic and meaningful,
[856]
and only then, to make
a creative negotiation,
[860]
and to attribute functional
properties to an actuator.
[864]
In doing so, it becomes
meaningful for the residents
[867]
that a fan-inflated cat
communicates the need
[872]
of an actual cat in a poetic way.
[877]
These findings now, they raise
[878]
a number of questions
for the HCI community.
[880]
For example, how can HCI design further
[883]
upon these small but
crucial back and forth steps
[888]
between translating sensory perception
[891]
to emotion and vice versa?
[893]
There's also a need for future work
[895]
for a detailed investigation
on how these sensory
[899]
and emotional qualities
of smart objects relate.
[906]
And, with that, I'm taking your questions.
[910]
(applause)
[924]
- [Gregory] Hi. Gregory Abowd.
[926]
I wanted to thank you for
a thought-provoking talk.
[930]
I'm going to ask, I
have a lot of questions,
[931]
but what I'm going to ask is a kind of,
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from an engineering
perspective to a designer.
[936]
One thing that I'm skeptical about
[937]
in what you presented here
is that that vocabulary
[941]
that you gave to describe
the input and output
[943]
actually led to the ideas
that these creative designers
[947]
came up with.
[948]
So what evidence do you
have that those people,
[950]
even if they didn't have the
vocabulary that you gave them,
[953]
whether they would have
come up with these ideas?
[957]
Because I'm trying to think,
[958]
I would like to be creative like this.
[960]
It's not clear to me that
those words that you give me
[962]
are going to help me make the leap
[964]
to coming up with an inflatable cat idea.
[967]
- Well, there's definitely
no evidence of that,
[971]
so I certainly can't promise
you that your co-designers
[975]
will be as creative as our co-designers.
[977]
And we did just not as enough workshops
[982]
to actually know that.
[985]
From me as the designer asking
engineer, the question is,
[989]
how could we help co-designers
[993]
to build those very idiosyncratic
ideas just for their home
[998]
and not for, like, building more stuff
[1002]
that can be thought
like, by the thousands,
[1006]
so that people might in the end
[1007]
be able to ideate in
their home on their own,
[1010]
yet building things that
are meaningful from that.
[1013]
- [Gregory] Yeah, I mean,
because, for example,
[1015]
the cat: great idea, but the
failing I see with that is,
[1019]
you have to, what range
within the home is going to
[1021]
communicate that the cat wants to get in?
[1024]
Right? If it's in the bedroom
[1025]
and I'm in the kitchen, I won't see it.
[1026]
Poor cat.
[1028]
That's a very utilitarian
perspective on that,
[1031]
even though it's a clever idea.
[1034]
- Yes.
[1036]
(laughter)
[1042]
- [Woman With Laptop] (muffled speaking)
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