CALM AND AMBIENT TECHNOLOGY||Tech wise||

CALM AND AMBIENT TECHNOLOGY

The Internet of Things has its roots in the work done by Mark Weiser at 

Xerox PARC in the 1990s. His work didn’t assume that there would be 

network connectivity but was concerned with what happens when comput-

ing power becomes cheap enough that it can be embedded into all manner 

of everyday objects. He coined the term ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp

for short, to describe it, and through his research and writing sought to 

explore what that would mean for the people living in such a world.

With its focus on computing power being embedded everywhere, ubicomp 

is often also referred to as ambient computing. However, the term “ambient” 

also has connotations of being merely in the background, not something to 

which we actively pay attention and in some cases as something which we 

seek to remove (e.g., ambient noise in a sound recording).

We prefer, as did Mark Weiser, the term calm technology—systems which 

don’t vie for attention yet are ready to provide utility or useful information 

when we decide to give them some attention.

Such proliferation of computing devices into the world comes with all 

manner of new challenges. Issues include configuration, how to provide 

power to all these items, how they talk to each other, and how they commu-

nicate with us.

The power and networking challenges are purely technical and are driving 

developments such as 6LoWPAN (www.ietf.org/dyn/wg/charter/

6lowpan-charter.html). This is a standards drive from a working 

group of academics, computing professionals, and others to take the 

next-generation Internet protocol (IPv6) to the simplest and lowest-power 

networked sensors. (It is revisited when we look at future developments in 

the next chapter.) It aims to provide the scale of addresses and lower power 

usage needed by so many sensors. 

Configuration and user interaction, however, obviously involve people and 

so are difficult problems to solve with just technical solutions. This is where 

good design can aid in adoption and usability. You can see this with the 

introduction of the Apple iPod in 2001. It wasn’t the first portable MP3 

player, but the combination of the scroll-wheel user interface and the 

companion iTunes software made it much easier to use and turned them 

into mass market gadgets.

Designing a connected device in isolation is likely to lead you to design 

decisions which aren’t ideal when that object or service is placed into the 

seething mess that is the real world. To bastardize Eliel Saarinen’s maxim on 

design, we suggest you think of how the connected device will interact as 

one of a wealth of connected devices. 

In addition to thinking of a device in the physical context one step larger—

Saarinen’s “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger con-

text—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an 

environment in a city plan”—we should do the same for the services.

For connected devices which are just sensing their world, or generally acting 

as inputs, as long as their activity doesn’t require them to query the people 

around them, there shouldn’t be any issues. They will happily collect 

information and deposit it into some repository online for processing or 

analysis.

When the devices start interacting with people, things get more complicated. 

Already we’re seeing the number of notifications, pop-ups, and indicator 

noises on our computers and mobile phones proliferate. When we scale up 

this number to include hundreds of new services and applications and then 

spread that across the rest of the objects in our world, it will become an 

attention-seeking cacophony.

Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown proposed an antidote to such a problem 

by suggesting we design ubiquitous computing systems to seek to blend into 

their surroundings; in so doing, we could keep them in our peripheral 

perception until the right time to take centre stage:

Calm technology engages both the center and the periphery of our 

attention, and in fact moves back and forth between the two.

—Designing Calm Technology, Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, 

Xerox PARC, December 21, 1995

A great example of this approach is Live Wire, one of the first Internet of 

Things devices. Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko when she was in 

residence at Xerox PARC under the guidance of Mark Weiser, Live Wire 

(also sometimes called Dangling String) is a simple device: an electric motor 

connected to an eight-foot long piece of plastic string. The power for the 

motor is provided by the data transmissions on the Ethernet network to 

which it is connected, so it twitches whenever a packet of information is sent 

across the network.

Under normal, light network load, the string twitches occasionally. If the 

network is overloaded, the string whirls madly, accompanied by a distinctive 

noise from the motor’s activity. Conversely, if no network activity is occur-

ring, an unusual stillness comes over the string. Both extremes of activity 

therefore alert the nearby human (who is used to the normal behaviour) that 

something is amiss and lets him investigate further.

Not all technology need be calm. A calm videogame would get 

little use; the point is to be excited. But too much design focuses 

on the object itself and its surface features without regard for 

context. We must learn to design for the periphery so that we can 

most fully command technology without being dominated by it.

—Designing Calm Technology, Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, 

Xerox PARC December 21, 1995

The mention of the distinctive sound from the motor when the Live Wire is 

under heavy load brings up another interesting point. Moving the means of 

conveying information away from screens and into the real world often adds 

a new dimension to the notification. On a computer, updating the screen is 

purely visual, so any additional senses must be engaged explicitly. Like Live 

Wire, Bubblino—Adrian’s Internet of Things bubble machine which searches 

Twitter and blows bubbles when it finds new tweets matching a search 

phrase is a good example in which the 

side effect of the motor is to generate an audible notification that something 

is happening. With their Olly (www.ollyfactory.com) device, agency 

Mint Digital combines the motor with a deliberate olfactory indicator to 

provide a smelly notification of one of a number of social media events.

These noisy “side effects” are something that we should also be wary of 

losing with a move to “better” technology. Years ago all airport and railway 

arrival and departure boards were built using split-flap displays. They

consisted of a number of flaps on a roll—sometimes with full place names 

printed onto the flap, and in other times as individually controllable 

characters—which could be rotated until they showed the correct item.

In most locations these split-flap displays have been phased out in prefer-

ence for dot-matrix LED displays. The newer displays are much easier to 

update with new destinations. They also have capabilities such as horizon-

tally scrolling messages which were impossible to add with the split-flap 

technology. Sadly, in doing so they have lost one important characteristic: 

the flurry of clacking as the display updates. As a result, passengers waiting 

in a station terminal must stare endlessly up at the display waiting for their 

train to be announced, rather than attending to other tasks and checking the 

departures board only when a change occurs.

That is not to say that screens are never the right choice, merely that in this 

age of mobile phones and tablets they are often chosen without realising a 

choice is being made. If you start from a position of trying not to use a 

screen, then if you return to it you will have worked out that a screen is the 

best solution.

There has been some interesting experimentation in the use of screens 

around what has been called glanceable displays. These are secondary 

screens, meant to sit away from your immediate surroundings in the same 

sort of places in which you might place a picture frame.

They aren’t all screens. For example, Russell Davies, agitator for the recently 

possible, built Bikemap (http://russelldavies.typepad.com/

planning/2011/04/homesense-bikemap.html), a handful of LEDs

inserted into specific places on a printed-out map. The map shows the area 

around his home, and each LED marks the location of a bike stand for the 

London city bike rental scheme. If there are more than five bikes available at 

a stand, the corresponding LED lights up. It is mounted into a picture frame 

and hangs near to Russell’s front door, so a glance over to it as he leaves lets 

him know which direction to head in order to find a bike.

One of Russell’s roles is as a partner in the Really Interesting Group, a 

multidisciplinary agency based in London. Others in the agency, and some 

of their wider network of friends, have also been exploring the area.

They have a set of AirTunes WiFi speakers in the studio, which anyone can 

take control of and play music through. When you were working there, you’d 

often wonder exactly what a particular track was but had no way of finding 

out short of interrupting the entire office to ask who was in charge of the 

music at that moment and what was playing right now.

To solve that problem, they stuck a spare monitor out of everyone’s way on 

top of a bookcase and, through a combination of watching the network 

traffic and hooking into the last.fm service that they all used to record what 

tracks they play, built a system to display the current track and who had 

played it.

The screen updated only whenever the song changed, and wasn’t positioned 

in anyone’s eye-line, so it didn’t distract you from your work. However, if the 

music distracted you, the screen was there to satisfy your curiousity.

The Bikemap also provided some inspiration for RIG studio-mate Chris 

Heathcote. Chris is an interaction designer and realised that every morning 

he would check a few different apps on his phone to find out things like the 

weather forecast, his appointments for the day, and how the trains on the 

London Underground were running.He didn’t have any power sockets near 

to his front door, and so settled on a bedside information display instead. 

Given that it would be always on and next to where he sleeps, a standard 

monitor or other LCD display, with its persistent glow, wouldn’t be suitable. 

The e-ink display on a Kindle, however, was ideal. He took advantage of the 

WiFi connectivity and computing power in the Kindle to make it a self-

contained device and configured it to just display a web page, which 

refreshed every few minutes.

The resultant device, which Chris called the Kindleframe (http://

anti-mega.com/antimega/2013/05/05/kindleframe), would then 

always display up-to-date information from the mash-up of websites that he 

pulled together to collect all the information that he needs at the start of the day.

SEE ALSO:

who-is-making-internet-of-things

The-technology-of-internet-of

The-internet-of-things

the-internet-of-things