context aware smart home

- an exploration in ubiquitous computing

Project aim

As an extension of a class taught by Prof. Tom MacTavish, History of IxD, I started to explore the topic of cloud computing and how we are trending towards a future of Ubiquitous computing. 

This project is an exploration in cloud computing and how society is trending towards a future of ubiquity, conceptualizing a context-aware home where a user's individual and social contexts are accessed within a dynamic home computing environment.

Initial explorations

The internet has become a digital storage medium for transferring files all over the world. In a way, this is a move into the cloud and away from physical devices' limitations.

In general, wearable computers play supporting roles in what the user is doing – as opposed to the computer use being the primary focus itself. Bringing technology closer to our body perhaps might get technology out of our way.

We are getting embodied and embedded with sensors over time, and it's only going to increase in the future, This will influence the way we interact with the world and artifacts soon enough.

Making technology that's there when you need it, gone when you don't. Intending to help people get on with their lives, without focusing on the technology. 

The Challenge

Smart Homes is a concept which already exists, as we start connecting all the electronic devices and appliances in the house over the internet to control and monitor them from anywhere on the globe. However, The most critical aspect is to give it sense (context-awareness) by which the home could analyze its surroundings and act accordingly.

For example, What if the alarm clock wakes you up at 6:00 am and notifies the coffee maker to start brewing coffee for you or if the refrigerator could tell you, once you are out of milk/the carton has passed its use-by date? If you need to travel to a destination, Your car will be able to access your calendar and choose the best route. If the traffic is terrible and you will not be able to make it to the destination on time, The car can send a text message to the person you are going to meet. ( See project - The Connected Car Experience )

In this project, I tried to build on a context-aware home attempting to give computing, its context by accessing information of the user's individual and social settings. 

context-aware system framework

The outcome

We leverage our phones and wearable devices in our lives to the extent that they are part of our bodies. However, the interaction we have with these devices is still limited to Touch and, to an extent, conversational. 

I feel there is a lot of scope for Gesture-based interactions, especially at home when you are away from other handheld devices.

Ginger –a Home bot with a built-in conversational interface, Gesture recognition and ability to project information can monitor and control all the appliances in the house and track your daily schedule based upon your digital activity traces.   

STORYBOARD

To illustrate the idea furthermore, I made a storyboard to introduce the Home-bot in a smart home environment, assuming the house is equipped with devices and appliances which are intelligent and can connect to the internet. The idea was to illustrate a Multimodal way of interaction between the User and the system.