A selection of images from submitted papers, click for larger image.

The diverse range of topics and the varied backgrounds of the applicants for our Nordichi workshop in October is promising for a topic that spans architecture, hci, computer science, interaction and industrial design. We are really looking forward to seeing everyone in Oslo.

These are the 15 accepted papers:

Bootstrapping the Internet of Things
Claus Dahl, Imity

CybStickers – Simple Shared Ubiquitous Annotations for All
Odd-Wiking Rahlff, Sintef. (See also Cybstickers)

Designing Expressive Near Field Interactions
Johan Sandsjö, Hidden Interaction

Designing social affordances for material objects
Ulla-Maaria Mutanen & Matt Biddulph, University of Helsinki (See also Thinglink)

Everyday Intelligence
Gill Wildman, Plot (See the Everyday Intelligence film)

*The Kinetic User Interface *
Vincenzo Pallotta, Béat Hirsbrunner, Pervasive and Artificial Intelligence Research Group, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Mobile Prosumer
Florian Resatsch, Stephan Karpischek & Daniel Michelis, IEB, University of Arts Berlin

PERvasive serviCe Interaction
John Hamard, DoCoMo Euro-Labs

RFID work
Morten Borup Harning RFIDsec

Responsible design of connected objects
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino

Security Aspects in Design of Touch-based Applications
Janne Jalkanen, Nokia

Social Construction Kits for Kids, Digital Infrastructures for Pervasive Play
Martin Brynskov, Interactive Spaces, University of Aarhus

Unconscious Kitchen, Everyday domestic behaviors & Blackbox, Public Energy Awareness
Joseph Yang

Use of Near Field Communication in emergency Rescue situations
Gunnar Kramp, Aarhus School of Architecture

Waschsalon mobile service
Chris Woebken

You can only touch what is there
Chris Heathcote, Nokia

We also had expressions of interest from Willem Velthoven with the Symbolic Table and Rob van Kranenburg. We’ll keep in touch and hope you can attend.

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If RFID becomes an open web-based platform, and users can tag, share, and contribute content to the digital existence of their own places and objects, we can truly speak of an Internet of Things. This opens perpectives for new sustainability scenario’s, for new relations between people and the stuff they have, and for other locative applications. The participants of this workshop will develop critical, utopian or nightmarish concepts for an Internet of Things in a hands-on way. Ideas can range from scripts for small new rituals to outlines of societal changes of epic scale. Prototypes can be tested with the workshop tools The Symbolic Table or the Nokia3220 phone with RFID reader.

The previous Mediamatic workshops on RFID have been extremely productive and interesting, see their RFID Reader for the previous workshops and an overview of alternative practice in RFID.

Radio frequency identification is a technology that is now rapidly developing. A growing number of logistical companies sees the advantages and possibilities of RFID for managing large bodies of objects. But to what uses can this technology be applied that are not in the logistical realm? How can it serve and/or change society and human interaction? How does it change the concept of information and information networks as we know them today? This reader compiles a number of resources on the technical and philosophical aspects of RFID.

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“develop an understanding of how mobile devices (particularly mobile phones, smartphones and PDAs) can be used as interaction devices. [...] we aim to develop new ideas on how mobile phones can be exploited for new forms of interaction with the environment.”

The other papers at the workshop look interesting:

• Telling a Story on a Tag: The Importance of Markers’ Visual Design for Real World Applications, Enrico Costanza (MIT Media Lab, USA), Mirja Leinss (Harvard GSD, USA)
• Mobile Pointing & Input System for Eye Glass Display, Youngjin Hong, Sanggoog Lee, Yongbeom Lee, Sangryong Kim (Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea)
• User Perceptions on Mobile Interaction with Visual and RFID Tags, Sara Belt (University of Oulu, Finland), Dan Greenblatt, Jonna Häkkilä (Nokia Multimedia, Finland), Kaj Mäkelä (Nokia Research Center, Finland)
• Hovering: Visualising RFID Hyperlinks in a Mobile Phone, Pasi Välkkynen (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland)
• The Mobile Phone as a Universal Interaction Device – Are There Limits?, Christof Roduner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
• Alternative RFID based Architectures for Mobile HCI with Physical Objects, Stefano Puglia (WLAB Ltd., Italy), Andrea Vitaletti (University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy)
• Automatic Composition in Service Browsing Environments, Paul Wisner (Nokia Research Center, USA)
• Constructing assemblies for purposeful interactions, Pollini Alessandro, Grönvall Erik (University of Siena, Italy)
• Finding the Path from Here to There: Some Questions about Physical-Mobile Design Processes, Amnon Dekel (The Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel)
• Understanding Real World Practices: a Place-Centred Study of Mobile Workers, Darragh Murphy, Iride Bartolucci, Luigina Ciolfi (University of Limerick, Ireland)
• Public Display Advertising Based on Bluetooth Device Presence, Matthew Sharifi, Terry Payne, Esther David (University of Southampton, UK)

• Exploiting incidental interactions between mobile devices, Jamie Lawrence, Terry Payne, Raul V. Kripalani (University of Southampton, UK)

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The user-centred Internet of Things

The so-called ‘Internet of Things’ is a vision of the future of networked things that share a record of their interactions with context, people and other objects. The evolution of networking to include objects occupying space and moving within the physical world presents an urgent design challenge for new kinds of networked social practice. The challenge for design is to overcome the current overarching emphasis on business and technology that has largely ignored practices that fall outside of operational efficiency scenarios.

What is imminently needed is a user-centred approach to understand the physical, contextual and social relationships between people and the networked things they interact with.

The mobile device as early enabler

The mobile phone is likely to play a key role in the early adoption of the internet of things. Mobile devices offer ubiquitous networks and interfaces, enabling otherwise offline objects at the edges of the network. Near Field Communication (NFC) is a mobile technology that has been designed to integrate networked services into physical space and objects. NFC introduces a sense of ‘touch’, where interactions between devices are initiated by physical proximity.

In use, the mobile phone brings with it a history of personal and social activities and contexts. It is in this evolution that we see user-agency and social motivation emerging as an interesting area within the internet of things.

Workshop goals

In this workshop we intend to build knowledge around the hands-on problems and opportunities of designing user-centred interactions with networked objects. Through a process of ‘making things’ we will look closely at the kinds of interactions we may want to design with networked objects, and what roles the mobile phone may play in this.

We will focus on the design of simple, effective and innovative interactions between mobile phones and physical objects, rather than focusing on technical or network issues.

The primary questions for the workshop are:

• What kinds of common interactions will emerge as networked objects become everyday?
• What role will the mobile phone have to play in these interactions?

• How do we encourage playful, experimental and exploratory use of networked things?

  Some secondary questions are:

• What interaction models can we bring to the internet of things? Do the fields of embodied interaction, tangible, social, ubiquitous or pervasive computing cover the required ground for designers?
• What new kinds of social practices could emerge out of the possibilities presented by networked things? 
• How will the physical form of everyday objects and spaces be transformed by networks and near field interactions? How this would be reflected in users’ behavior?
• How can the design of physical objects help in overcoming potential information or interaction overload, and how does search or findability change when in a physical context?
• How can we move beyond commonsensical features such as object activation or findability?

• What kind of user-communities will co-opt the technology and how will they hack, adjust and re-form it for their needs?

  Workshop structure

  Each workshop day will begin with a keynote presentation from invited experts. On the first day, participants will each give a short presentation of their position paper, no longer than 5 minutes.

  Then groups of 3-4 people, each with different skills and backgrounds will then work on concepts, scenarios and prototypes. Prototypes may take the form of physical models, scenarios or enactments. We encourage the use of our wood, plastic and rapid prototyping workshops to create physical prototypes of selected concepts. We will provide workshop assistants for the creation of physical models.

  Outcomes

  The outcomes should be in a range of implementation styles allowing for a variety of outputs that speaks to a wide audience. A report will be written on the workshop, and published on the Touch project website and in other relevant channels.

  Call for participation

  The workshop is open to participants from human factors, mobile technology, social science, interaction and industrial design. Practitioners and those with industrial experience are strongly encouraged. Prior research work on embodied interaction, social and tangible computing would be particularly relevant. Participants will be selected based on their relevance to the workshop, and the overall balance of the group. Space is limited to 25 participants.

  Call for short position papers

  Application is by position paper no longer than two pages. The position paper can be visual or experimental in design and content. The themes should cover an issue that is relevant to the design of interactions with everyday objects.

  Deadline for papers is 1 August, selected participants will be notified on the 9 August. The workshop itself is October 14 and 15, 2006.

  Papers and any questions should be submitted to timo (at) elasticspace (dot) com before 1 August.

  Organisers

  Timo Arnall is a designer and researcher at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design (AHO). Timo’s research looks at practices around ubiquitous computing in urban space. At the moment his work focuses on the personal and social use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies, looking for potential interactions with objects and city spaces through mobile devices. Previously his research looked at flyposting and stickering in public space, suggesting possible design strategies for combining physical marking and digital spatial annotation. Timo leads the research project Touch at AHO, looking at the use of mobile technology and Near Field Communication.

  Julian Bleecker is a Research Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication and an Assistant Professor in the Interactive Media Division, part of the USC School of Cinema-Television. Bleecker’s work focuses on emerging technology design, research and development, implementation, concept innovation, particularly in the areas of pervasive media, mobile media, social networks and entertainment. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MS in computer-human interaction. His doctoral dissertation from the University of California, Santa Cruz is on technology, entertainment and culture.

  Nicolas Nova is a Ph.D. student at the CRAFT (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne) working on the CatchBob! project. His current research is directed towards the understanding of how people use location-awareness information when collaborating in mobile settings, with a peculiar focus on pervasive games. After an undergraduate degree in cognitive sciences, he completed a master in human-computer interaction and educational technologies at TECFA (University of Geneva, Switzerland). His work is at the crossroads of cognitive psychology/ergonomics and human-computer interaction; relying on those disciplines to gain better understanding of how people use technology such as mobile and ubiquitous computing.

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