The physical interface design of Ambient Triggers for evoking ambient reconfiguration involves the design of AT Object and AT Action.
5.3.1 Ambient Trigger Objects Design
It has been shown that design media or mediated objects were used not only for mediating design activity, but also for defining and triggering the design activity (Gay and Hembrooke, 2004). As a result, we designed three kinds of AT objects for evoking different states in the physical test-bed environment: Designer’s Suitcase,
Ambient Pen, and Colleague Surrogates. They were used to mediate and interact
with different test applications. We intentionally exploited the physical constraints by putting Ambient Pen, Colleague Surrogates and other AT objects into Designer’s Suitcase (Fig 5-3). This way, all the mediated objects required to interact with the environment could be collected and managed easily as a whole, as depicted in Figure 5-2. Moreover, we designed a docking platform on the table surface for the Designer’s Suitcase, as an initial trigger point to evoke a PDE ambient interaction.
Fig 5-3: The design of Designer’s Suitcase constraining AT Objects.
The conceptual design for each AT object was illustrated as follows:
Designer’s Suitcase
Suitcases are often used by businessman carrying important documents and perhaps some frequently used goods. A suitcase is not only a container for managing important personal materials; it could also be seen as an identity for that person. We envisioned the Designer’s Suitcase a personal suitcase containing mediated objects needed for interacting with an Ambient Mediated PDE, as well as an embodied interface that can be used to ambient trigger environmental personalization. The form of the Designer’s Suitcase is shown in Figure 5-4.
Colleague Surrogates
A surrogate is something representing someone when he is absent. Colleague Surrogates are physical artifacts envisioned as substitution for remote colleagues who cannot be present and cannot be interacted with at the same place. Each Colleague Surrogate represents different remote colleagues, and each are used to trigger a remote collaboration environment with the specified colleague. An example prototype of Colleague Surrogate is shown in Figure 5-5.
Fig 5-5: The appearance of Colleague Surrogate.
Ambient Pen
A pen is a fundamental design media, as using a pen to sketch, draw, and write is an essential skill for most of designers. The Ambient Pen is a pen that could ambiently trigger some pen-based design activities, and can evoke ambient responsive visualizations (Fig 5-6). We were not trying to change or envision the pen as
Fig 5-4: The appearance of Designer’s Suitcase.
something unique, but to augment it with a digitally enhanced service.
Fig 5-6: The appearance of Ambient Pen.
5.3.2 Ambient Trigger Embodiments
Table 5-1: Elaboration of Fundamental AT interaction
AT Interaction in Non-interactive State Evoked States
Put the Designer’s Suitcase onto the modular docking platform with it open Personal Design Ambience Take out only the Colleague Surrogate from the Designer’s Suitcase in the
modular docking platform, and place it on the Task Space.
Distantly Bonded Spaces
Take out only the Ambient Pen from the Designer’s Suitcase in the modular docking platform
Ambient Sketch Space
Take out both Ambient Pen and Colleague Surrogate from the Designer’s Suitcase in the modular docking platform
Pen-based Media Space Environment
Concerned with how mediated objects can be embodied, we followed framework design principles and chose behaviors of placing on and taking off AT objects as concrete cues for ambient triggering. The reason for us to choose these behaviors is that we see that the placement of the object is sometimes the initial point to carry out an activity, and the taking away the object sometimes means the termination of an activity. We specify the system to evoke different interaction states by the user
placing them on or taking them off different AT objects. The fundamental Ambient
Trigger embodiment design is summarized in Table 5-1, and the overall AT embodiment design is elaborated in Figure 5-7 and Table 5-2.Fig 5-7: Triggering environment with different AT Action.
Table 5-2: List of AT Actions in our implemented framework
No. Original State AT Action towards AT Object Evoked States 1 Non-interactive Personal Workspace Placing on Designer’s Suitcase +
Taking out Colleague Surrogate
Distantly Bonded Space
2 Non-interactive Personal Workspace Placing on Designer’s Suitcase + Taking out Ambient Pen + Taking out Colleague Surrogate
Pen-based Media Space Environment
3 Non-interactive Personal Workspace Placing on Designer’s Suitcase Personal Design Ambience 4 Non-interactive Personal Workspace Placing on Designer’s Suitcase +
Taking out Ambient Pen
Ambient Sketch Space
5 Personal Design Ambience Taking out Designer’s Suitcase Non-interactive 6 Personal Design Ambience Taking out Colleague Surrogate Distantly Bonded Space 7 Personal Design Ambience Taking out Ambient Pen Ambient Sketch Space 8 Personal Design Ambience Taking out Ambient Pen +
Taking out Colleague Surrogate
Pen-based Media Space Environment
9 Ambient Sketch Space Taking out Designer’s Suitcase Non-interactive
10 Ambient Sketch Space Putting back Ambient Pen Personal Design Ambience 11 Ambient Sketch Space Taking out Colleague Surrogate Pen-based Media Space
Environment 12 Ambient Sketch Space Putting back Ambient Pen +
Taking out Colleague Surrogate
Distantly Bonded Space
13 Distantly Bonded Space Taking out Designer’s Suitcase Non-interactive
14 Distantly Bonded Space Putting back Colleague Surrogate Personal Design Ambience 15 Distantly Bonded Space Putting back Colleague Surrogate
+ Taking out Ambient Pen
Ambient Sketch Space Description of numbered AT Action are summarized in Table 5-2.
16 Distantly Bonded Space Taking out Ambient Pen Pen-based Media Space Environment
17 Pen-based Media Space Environment Taking out Designer’s Suitcase Non-interactive 18 Pen-based Media Space Environment Putting back Ambient Pen +
Putting back Colleague Surrogate
Personal Design Ambience
19 Pen-based Media Space Environment Putting back Colleague Surrogate Ambient Sketch Space 20 Pen-based Media Space Environment Putting back Ambient Pen Distantly Bonded Space