Ubiquitous computing design
Designs systems in which technology is spread across objects, spaces and bodies and connected, instead of being concentrated on a screen. It includes connected products and the smart home.
What problem it addresses
When there are dozens of connected devices in a home or an office, each with its own alerts and settings, technology stops helping and starts demanding attention.
Principles
Let it disappear
The best technology blends into everyday life and stops being noticed, like writing.
A system, not separate devices
Connected objects are designed together: how they are set up, how they alert and what happens if one fails.
Useful offline too
A connected switch or lock has to keep working when the network fails.
Applications in design
Use it like this
Design the object, its app and what happens when something fails together, not each part separately.
Avoid
Connecting an object just because you can, without the person gaining anything.
Don’t fall for it
Think about who else lives with the device: at home the whole family uses it, not just whoever installed it.
Connections
Builds on
Authors and works
- 1991
Mark Weiser
Imagined rooms with hundreds of computers of different sizes, so woven into everyday life that they would no longer be noticed.
- 2015
Claire Rowland et al.
Wrote a guide to designing the experience of consumer connected products, the so-called Internet of Things.
Sources
Original sources
- Weiser, M. (1991). The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American, 265(3), 94–104. View source: Weiser, M. (1991)
Secondary sources
- Rowland, C., Goodman, E., Charlier, M., Light, A., & Lui, A. (2015). Designing connected products: UX for the consumer Internet of Things. O’Reilly.
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