Intel: Envisioning Interactions in the Home of the Future – uw ixd

COMMENT: Feedback is the past’s future and future’s future…

ART383 – Fundamentals of Interaction Design, Autumn Quarter 2009

Prof. Axel Roesler
In collaboration with Intel Labs Seattle

During an intensive five week project, five student teams conducted an iterative user-centered design process to explore future applications for the projection of interfaces on any surface suitable for display and interaction in the home of the future.

Design techniques ranged from contextual inquiry, ideation, and storyboarding, to concept visualizations and video protypes. Each design team was comprised of students from the Division of Design’s Interaction Design program and the HCI concentration in Human Centered Design and Engineering, the iSchool, Computer Science and Engineering, and students from other UW HCI-oriented majors.

The resulting five projects envision the embedding of community networks into the home, a search, interaction across walls, lifestyle coaching, and interactive cooking.

Watch videos of each of the five team presentations via the links provided at the end of each project description below:

Real Ideal is a life consultant that utilizes wall and floor space in the house to display ambient cues relating to a person’s current task or goal. We utilized Intel’s Bonfire technology to create a system that provided “reflections through projections”, highlighting and annotating parts of the house and everyday life that could be improved or changed. This lead to the creation a life consultant that was helpful and constructive without being intrusive or obnoxious. By taking areas where action is typically invisible and visualizing it, mundane or incomprehensible tasks such as water consumption become engaging and interactive. This idea of visualization can be applied in all of the areas of life from health, to finances, to calendars and scheduling, helping to streamline life’s obligations, increase productivity and achieve goals.

Watch a video of the Real Ideal presentation
Real Ideal PDF documentation

Drew Bregel (Human Computer Interaction & Design)
Lauren Cascio (Design Studies)
Rachel Choung (Biology)
Patrick Douglas (Informatics)
Shweta Grampurohit (Interaction Design)
Kaisha Hom (Visual Communication Design)
Jeremy Juel (Visual Communication Design)
Nate Landess (Interaction Design)

Mprint is based around the idea of an objects physical history. It makes use of these histories by visualizung a solution to an all too common problem: Losing things!

Mprint captures and leaves a residue underneath every object on designated surfaces. These residues are an indication that any particular object has occupied that space. Object residues become the entry point into Mprint’s interface which can locate a lost object and take snapshots of surfaces so that meaningful layouts and spatial relationships can be saved and recalled later.

Watch a video of the Mprint presentation
Mprint PDF presentation

Daniel Frum (Geography)
Hannah Getachew (Human Centered Design and Engineering)
Imri Larsen (Industrial Design)
Ben Mabry (Industrial Design)
Kristofer Martin (Interaction Design)
Daniya Ulgen (Design Studies)

Spaces envisions entire walls as displays that provide interactions with images, stories, and facilitate communications by merging spaces that are otherwise separated by walls.

Users can remove visual occlusion caused by the walls around them by making the wall transparent. Multiple users can paste a room from each of their respective houses together, share a conversation and exchange media such as created environments or artwork, etc. Users can add objects to the wall display by gestural interaction – for example, they can ‘throw’ a slide or image on the wall, and the image will be come a part of the display. Objects could leap from the pages of the book onto the wall display, providing engagement and immersive experience.

Spaces tracks location and movement of users in the home environment and automatically adjusts settings such as color, texture, implied size of rooms, and lighting to provide the most utility for a task. Audio spatialization technology merged with ambient visual display can match the display of a performance or communication partner in the distance much closer to what would be a direct experience.

Watch a video of the Spaces presentation
Spaces PDF documentation

Elizabeth Abrahanson (Interdisciplinary Visual Arts)
Kristen Bales (Industrial Design)
Aron Chavez (Interdisciplinary Visual Arts)
Tim Damon (Design Studies)
MikeJohnson (Interdisciplinary Visual Arts)
Sean Ren (Computer Science)

Wall[ace] is a social networking interface that represents friends and community as avatars that live as projections on the walls of the home environment. Wall[ace] is operated by natural language and gesture recognition and can be controlled from almost any
location in the home. The ambient interface facilitates real interactions with friends in one’s social network by projecting their avatars in context with their activities / one’s own activities

Wall[ace] redefines the home with a simple command, changing it from a place of separation and privacy into a social arena. With Wall[ace] activated, the feeling of being at home will be characterized by the following: The social network will occupy the user’s ambient space at home. User’s can have a constant feeling of presence. User’s can share live experiences

Watch a video of the Wall[ace] presentation
Wall[ace] PDF documentation

Daren Chaisy (Human Centered Design and Engineering)
Leslie Ferguson (Design Studies and Computer Science)
Craig Kochis (Informatics)
Jon Sandler (Interdisciplinary Visual Arts)
Jacob Warren (Human Centered Design and Engineering)

Foodie is envisioned as an interactive coach that makes cooking easier. Currently, many people cook with their laptop in the kitchen. Without prior cooking experience some terminology within the recipe can be confusing. A new cook may not know the difference between mincing and chopping an onion. Timing is an issue. A recipe may list the ingredients needed and in which order to use them but it does not tell you if multiple parts of the recipe need to be made at the same time.

An interactive, distributed display system projects information located in context with the cooking task and in proximity to counter workspace, pans, and pots – synchronized with the progress of cooking. A laptop is no longer needed in the kitchen. Video tutorials projected onto the kitchen counter right next to the task at hand provide further explanation for the inexperienced cook step-by step. An overview of timing is provided to help the cook manage their time well.

Watch a video of the Foodie presentation
Foodie PDF presentation

Derek Chan (Visual Communication Design)
Annaliese Chapa (Industrial Design)
Lindsay Haggman (Human Centered Design and Engineering
Joshua Ng (Informatics)
Jamilia Popov (Human Centered Design and Engineering)
Calder Thami (Human Centered Design and Engineering)