Smart Things

Key Features Tackles design of products in the post-Web world where computers no longer have to be monolithic, expensive general-purpose devices Features broad frameworks and processes, practical advice to help approach specifics, and techniques for the unique design challenges Presents case studies that describe, in detail, how others have solved problems, managed trade-offs, and met successes Description The world of smart shoes, appliances, and phones is already here, but the practice of user experience (UX) design for ubiquitous computing is still relatively new. Design companies like IDEO and frogdesign are regularly asked to design products that unify software interaction, device design and service design -- which are all the key components of ubiquitous computing UX -- and practicing designers need a way to tackle practical challenges of design. Theory is not enough for them -- luckily the industry is now mature enough to have tried and tested best practices and case studies from the field. Smart Things presents a problem-solving approach to addressing designers' needs and concentrates on process, rather than technological detail, to keep from being quickly outdated. It pays close attention to the capabilities and limitations of the medium in question and discusses the tradeoffs and challenges of design in a commercial environment. Divided into two sections ? frameworks and techniques ? the book discusses broad design methods and case studies that reflect key aspects of these approaches. The book then presents a set of techniques highly valuable to a practicing designer. It is intentionally not a comprehensive tutorial of user-centered design'as that is covered in many other books'but it is a handful of techniques useful when designing ubiquitous computing user experiences. In shot, Smart Things gives its readers both the ";why"; of this kind of design and the ";how,"; in well-defined chunks. Readership Primary audiences Industrial designers. Many people who are primarily industrial designers (at firms such as IDEO, Ziba, Pentagram, Lunar, etc.) are hired based on the perception that the design of anything that any non-software consumer product needs to be designed by industrial designers. Since they get tapped to do work that includes interaction and service design, this book will help them understand what needs to be done (and what skills they can look for in team members). Software or Web Interaction/Interface designers. The first Web designers came to the medium from traditional graphic design and discovered how different it is, even though it looks like it should be a similar set of skills. Now software and Web designers are discovering the same thing about designing for mobile an ubiquitous products and are looking for resources to help them understand where the differences lie, so they can avoid reinventing the wheel. Ubiquitous computing designers. Exclusively the concern of corporate and university research labs until recently, the emphasis in ubiquitous computing was primarily on technology, and not on design. However, many people now find themselves designing ubiquitous computing systems (maybe under the heading of entertainment, peripheral or appliance design), and some may even recognize the relationship to ubiquitous computing. Mobile application designers. There is a growing population of designers created applications for mobile services full-time. Their design challenges regularly intersect with the ideas of ubiquitous computing user experience. Other than informal networks and competitive analysis, there are few sources of information about the design process of interactive products for this medium. Secondary audiences Developers working in mobile media. Programmers always end up doing some amount of design (and, too often, all of the design) of the products they're coding for. Programmers are especially comfortable looking in documentation for solutions to their problems. Although this book won't have the kind of "cut and paste" easy solution for them, it'll have guidance for what's worked in the past, which is often as useful. Project/Product managers. Much like programmers, product managers, whose job requirement is to balance user and company needs, end up being the designers of the services they're shepherding. Contents 1. Introduction: The Hidden Middle of Moore's Law People typically read the Moore's Law chart as a trend in the number of transistors. What's implicit in the trend, however, is that it is the product of a conscious decision in the context of a semiconductor marketplace. The prices of new CPUs has stayed roughly the same over the last 25 years, generally between $500 and $1000 at the time of introduction. Thus, another way that to read the chart is that as transistor density increases, the price of older technology proportionally decreases. This price drop means that ubicomp, first postulated in the late 80s/early 90s has just become a practical reality: the pric

By Mike Kuniavsky, Founder, ThingM, a ubiquitous computing design and development company; cofounded Adaptive Path, a leading internet consultancy; cofounded Wired Digital UX for Wired Magazine's online division, where he served as the interaction designer of the award-winning search engine, HotBot.