Customer Reviews

Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This beautiful and simultaneously unbelievably useful book represents several firsts, incorporating the Interaction Design and User Experience Design of Mobile Devices and Household Appliances; at the same time it provides ideas and design guidelines for the design of Ubiquitous Computing solutions, suggesting what we can usefully do with the emerging "Internet of Things". The author is a leading light in Interaction Design having been a co-founder of Adaptive Path and the first firm offering Physical Computing Solutions with a Design and HCI flavor, ThingM. He is the originator of the concept of "Sketching In Hardware", an idea that owes some intellectual roots to Bill Buxton of Microsoft but which points the way to those Artists and Engineers who combine Physical Computing, Electronics and Interaction Design. He has a track record of developing real Physical and Computational solutions which illustrate an Engineering as well as an Artistic Problem-Solving Ethic. His physical creations include the interactive intelligent and beautiful WineM wine rack and a smart multicolor LED for Arduino (and other microcontroller) experiments.

Many scholarly, and a few idea-centric books (notably Adam Greenfield's "Everyware") and articles have been written about Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, but no other book to date has given the design parameters, heuristics and suggestions about how these communicating engineering devices can be incorporated into a desirable user experience. Simultaneously, Mr. Kuniavsky has written one of the first books documenting the optimal methods of designing Interactive Intelligent Objects including mobile computing devices and appliances (such as centralpark refrigerator). He develops useful metaphor's and monikers for designed Interactive Objects (e.g. Information Shadows and Service Avatar). This is a beautiful, interesting and necessary book.

Ira Laefsky, MSE/MBA
HCI Researcher and Consultant
formerly on the Senior Consulting Staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corporation

This book really gave me food for thought. I've always thought about a user's interaction with a device in terms of its interface (buttons, GUI, etc.). This book opened my eyes to the fact that it's not just the interface, but the user's entire experience with the device that matters. Anyone who has a hand in designing or making something that must be interacted with should learn about this.

There are chapters on things like "Applianceness", "Scales of Experience", and "Information Shadows". Each one discusses an important design consideration, and how it relates to user experience. Some of the chapters are more like case studies: the development of a specific product (like the iPod) is discussed, with a focus on how its overall user experience was designed. I found them interesting and enlightening. It's fascinating to read about some of the products. As the author points out, some devices are easy to use but not useful. Other devices, like the iPod coupled with iTunes, provide a good overall experience and do well. Still others, while they may have a solid design and reasoning behind them, do not do well in the marketplace.

The author references many sources in the book, so if you want to do any additional reading on the subject you shouldn't have any difficulty in assembling a reading list. The author chooses to cite his sources inline using (author and year), as opposed to a number like [42]. Unfortunately, placing a reference citation inline is disruptive, and because he uses the longer citation format it got annoying at times.

I think that if you need (or want) to learn about user interface/experience design principles, this book will be an informative read.

I am an interactive designer/web developer by trade and when I ordered this book, I expected it to contain discussions of different interactive technology platforms and implementation methods for creating "smart things", machines or objects with embedded processors that can respond to sensory input and do something cool.

Having "computing" in the title, I expected to be able to learn how to make and program simple gadgets or at least encounter some theory on human-machine interaction, like the excellent The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems by Jef Raskin. My expectations were perhaps misplaced. This is not an instruction manual or an engineering book. Instead, it contains a lot of foundation-type material like the kind of book you might find in a Design 101 class. It will teach you the vocabulary and concepts of the field, not the hows. It is a high level overview of design concept like "avatar ecologies" and "information shadows", and explores a wide range of products throughout the last few decades, including the iPod, Atari game machines, Nabaztag, QR codes, cellphones, and other electronic gadgets.

Recommended for students of the interactive design field so they can get a lay of the land. If you're looking to create specific products using various technologies, you will have to look at instructional books on programming iPhone, Android, HTML/PHP, or Flash instead.

I expected this book to take me through creating excellent user experiences for software and the Web. Instead, I got a tour of the authors' view of everything from buildings to sex toys. I can see this as a design text book. It certainly provokes thought about the way people communicate about things. The examples are sometimes surprising and the text fairly dense. However, there is serious value in this book.

Having said that, I believe this text is aimed at professional designers of all kinds. It also is an interesting sociological view of the way modern society thinks about the things it owns or desires. The book kept my interest. It isn't easy reading and the illustrations are not inspiring. However, I walked away with a deeper understanding of how design and society interact.

If you want a book to help increase your user interface design skills, this isn't it. If you want to gain deeper insight into the entire spectrum of people and things, you won't be disappointed.

Exhilarating textbook of user-centered design for a wider wired world. It's fresh, smart, insightful, and well-illustrated with clear pictures and interesting quotes. Combines the traditional skill sets of user-centered design with modern examples of several products of varying computing power that are connected to networks in several different ways. We scoff at the cliche idea of an internet connected fridge, but the chapter about Whirlpool's real product has depth and understanding because of the behind-the-scenes descriptions from a Whirlpool VP talking to the author (who himself was a consultant to Whirlpool). There are great descriptiona of the iPod evolution and a range of other examples including the singing big mouth Billy Bass, plasma posters, and roomWizard.

In addition to the case studies, some chapters look at techniques, including simulation, modeling, sketching. And others look at broader issues, for example what he calls information shadows and interaction metaphors. The whole thing is vibrantly laid-out and fully referenced. It's not for software folks designing a webpage. But if you are designing something physical that interacts with people and also connects to a computer network, then you will want to read this book first.

This inspiring, easy to read book provides a comprehensive overview over a quickly maturing field, and sound design advice grounded in countless, non-trivial, real world examples of Ubicomp products and services. While there are many more "Smart Things" to come, Mike Kuniavsky's deep understanding of the underlying concepts will no doubt help those who build the future to do it right. Despite the author's claim to the contrary, the essence of this book will not become outdated, at least until the Singularity is here.

This book is timely in it's discussions around how to incorporate smarts in items that previously had no information processing capability. Now we are seeing computers and interfaces in items that never had nor needed them. Part of the wisdom in design is knowing why, when and where you should make this processing visible to the user..

As with any new ideas a language has to be built up, so you have a frame of reference and this author coined the term; "Smart Things" to cover all the the items out there that have processing capability (whether they use it or not) and may well be a cog in a very large system. Think ipod and you see what he is calling a Service Avatar. This book provides examples of the "Frameworks" needed to understand the variations of products out there that fit into the category of Smart Things and why.

It is easy now to look back and see what made the ipod so successful. However it was not so obvious before it was created, as to what would work. This book attempts to deconstruct that method of creation, that got Apple there in the first place. In the section called "Techniques" he provides a step by step method with details to achieve this:
1. Observation and Ideation
2. Simulation and Sketching
3. Examples
4. Augumentations and Mashups
5. Common Design Challenges

This book takes real life examples and discusses what was done and why, it did or did not work. If you work in ideation or commercialization, you will find something here that will resonate. There are solid examples and references that the practitioner can use today and build on.
This is a book that will be dog eared for it's timely advice.

I'm not really a design focused kind of person. So it may seem odd to you that I'm interested in a very design focused book.

A lot of times I feel that design goes hand and hand with creativity. Generally you'll find those most artistic and creative doing your 'design' work. However while this is true, it seems that true fundamental design is about understanding what your product is and what purpose it serves. Ultimately if you are able to answer those questions you can design something that becomes seamless to the user.

This book combines real world experience, real world examples, and explains the design and the choices behind it. It stresses that you need to focus on the design instead of the technology. This book really shines in showing how the technology, how the 'engineering' of it all can be worked into this process, or really become part of this process. Ultimately this will bring you back to the basics, and help the way you 'help' your customers, your clients, etc.

Review of Smart Things Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design

So, What's Up With the Chair?

Is it just me, or did anyone else wonder about the intriguing chair embossed on the front cover? I don't believe the author writes about chairs anywhere in the entire book. Indeed, there is scant mention of any kind of furniture aside from a 1 page sidebar.

I decided to review this book after previewing the section about Moore's Law. I was impressed with the author's insights and observations about this apparently misunderstood "law". Now that I've read the entire book, and taken some time to think about it, I must say I learned a few interesting things from it.

The book attempts to provide an introduction to ideas and techniques useful in ubiquitous computing user experience design. It does this by providing a little history, some design frameworks and methodologies, complimented by case studies of commercial products.

There are a some intellectual gems here, such as the author's observation that "design is as much a process of discovering constraints as creating within them". Or, the idea that most every industrially created product has an "information shadow", which is the digitally accessible information about it.
I especially like the concept of "smart garbage", in which objects self-disclose how to fix, disassemble and recycle them.

If you are a designer, some of the author's recommended techniques such as the "desire line method" (see where people are walking and making paths across the grass, then install your sidewalks there) are worth considering. Advice that a product "has to work for someone before it can work for anyone" is worth keeping in mind, and could prove to be a great persuading tool in heated design meetings.

I particularly liked the author's ideas about metaphors. They are "the tools of thought" and allow consumers of novel gadgets to comprehend them by relating them to concrete concepts.

I am thankful to the author for helping me understand why I so much dislike being present when a robot vacuum cleaner (Roomba) is operating: "they were designed to emulate insect behavior". (And I hate bugs.)

So, what's not like?

Well, a few things actually.

In addition to insects, I hate typo's. No author, and no book is perfect, and so I have developed the ability to ignore the existence of a reasonable number of typo's without undue discomfort. However this book has exceeded my pain threshold. Typo agony begins even before the first page of the book, in the third paragraph of the Preface ("user experience design from a different perspectives:"). And there are unfortunately more to follow, including footnotes in the sidebar, mixed up labels, and so on.

The writing is sometimes obscure, as if the reader is assumed to have prior detailed knowledge about what is being said (in that case, why read the book?). For example, on the last page of chapter 15 the author shows a photo of two wooden blocks, with mating wooden joints facing each other, and sliding doors opened to reveal circuit boards hidden within. His description is

"Cottram (2009) for example, used light-weight technology prototyping components to explore the heavyweight idea of 'a harmonious intersection between tradition and technology, between natural materials, high craft and digital functionality'"

Huh?
Perhaps I'm missing something, but that description tells me next to nothing about the two wooden blocks, what they are for, what they do, or why I should even care.

One of the author's design recommendations is "Focus On Core Functionality" (title of section 18.1.2 ). I fail to see how that is consistent with the idea of adding LCD picture frames (and other gadgets) to the exterior of a refrigerator, whose core functionality seems to me to be to keep food fresh and cold. Yet the author describes this appliance - the Whirlpool Centralpark - as a "successful user experience design".

In reading this book, I kept asking myself if perhaps this ubiquitous computing thing is going a bit too far. Although he ignores this idea until the final chapter, the author seems to be having his own doubts as well. He confides that in order to write the book he "had to escape pervasive digital technology", by composing it in an anti-digital coffee shop, with no networking or electrical outlets.

In conclusion, this is a book which would be of most interest to designers, and retired nerds (like myself). The author is very clever, with a breadth of knowledge about his subject area, and some interesting insights. I look forward to reading his future work, (especially if he reveals the secret of the cover chair).


Disclosures:

I did not pay for my copy of this book. As a member of the Amazon Vine program I received it for free.

I have a long and varied background in software design, having worked on cell phones when the vast majority of the public did not know or care what they were (quite understandably, since at that time the handset was the size of a small lunch box). I moved on to other projects, until decades later, I found myself working again with these vastly improved gadgets (by then most everyone knew what they were, and indeed most everyone owned one). As a designer, I was drawn to this book after reading the preface which states it is primarily a tool for design practitioners.

Smart Things is a book that reads like an undergraduate classroom textbook. I'm guessing it's intended that way since it's published by Elsevier who is an academic publisher. This format comes with both positives and negatives. The positives of the format is that it surveys a wide variety of aspects relating to user experience design for smart things. The negatives are that it surveys a wide variety of topics without as much focus or in-depth information on some of them.

I do interaction design. Device design is a little outside my usual work space but it is related in many ways. Because this book covers a lot of ground and I don't want my review to be a novel, I'll point out some of the things I liked and disliked about this book.

I liked the primer information pointing out that devices are in "the middle of Moore's law" since they are often less powerful technologies than current computer hardware. The technology is often a bit older, smaller and less powerful to be able to fit into small devices that use less power. This seems obvious once you think about it, but has a lot of design implications when creating a satisfying experience around a new device.

I generally liked the chapters that were case studies (refrigerator, toys, ipod, room scheduler) since they explore how a device came about and how it tried to fit the needs of interactions to target users. I work well with concrete details, so this may be my favored way to look at things. For some of these studies, the products themselves were not particularly successful with consumers, so I wondered if I should be learning as much from their failures as the successes that the book mostly focuses on.

The last chapters of the book focus on design techniques for creating and getting feedback about the products you're creating. There are some good suggestions here, but again the suggestions are very general overviews. For those who really want to get into the details, I found books by people like Alan Cooper, Jacob Nielsen and Don Norman more interesting and useful.

Overall, this is a decent book as a starting point and when supplemented by other resources, but it's a little too general for me to give a full five star rating.