SMART THINGS UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN

This book comes very early in a time of major technological shifts in the world. We’re still coming to terms with the changes brought by the Internet and mobile telephony, which are merely the latest examples of an even larger shift brought by the computational manipulation of information. Saying anything about future changes with any degree of certainty is difficult and likely futile. In 2005, I first proposed this book as a series of descriptive case studies of mobile and ubiquitous computing products. Thinking that it was too early to draw any firm conclusions from a young industry, I thought readers would be interested in extracting design processes and approaches from the material themselves, based on their own needs and perspectives. After spending a year interviewing designers, I changed my mind. Making busy readers (like the designers I was meeting) distill a book of stories into personally useful knowledge was, to put it mildly, a user experience mistake