Interactive spaces: towards a better everyday?

• Published in: Interactions (New York, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2005-07, Vol.12 (4), p.44-45
• Main Author: Petersen, Marianne Graves
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Architects; High performance computing; Human-computer interaction; Impact analysis; Intelligence; Laboratories; Libraries; Social conditions & trends; Systems design
• ISSN: 1072-5520; 1558-3449
• DOI: 10.1145/1070960.1070985

The vision of ambient intelligence holds promise of a new and changed everyday life of people. There is a range of scenarios depicting how, in the future, our environments will react intelligently upon our presence and behavior. Our home will greet us when we come home, recipes will automatically be selected based on the contents of our fridge and our personal preferences, and we may remotely control and monitor our homes, etc. Somehow, many of the abovevisions seem to be driven by efficiencyideals rather than fundamental concerns of how we may creatively use thetechnical possibilities to shape and improve quality of everyday life for people of all ages. At the Center for Interactive Spaces we take a different approach to shaping future interactive environments than what is most often represented in ambient intelligence visions. Our starting points are to: exploit technical possibilities toshape an improved quality of everyday life for people support playful experiences amongst co-located people in interactive spaces make computing remarkable and visible rather than ubiquitous and invisible design for experience in interaction rather than having transparencyand efficiency as interaction ideals.