End-User Programming for the Home: a Challenge
In Proc. of the 1st workshop on Pervasive Computing @ home, held at the 6th international conf. on Pervasive Computing 2008. pages 37-40. 2008.
Résumé
Ubiquitous computing promises unprecedented empowerment from the flexible and robust combination of software services with the physical world. For the HCI research community, this means that end-users will be able to shape their own interactive spaces and build imaginative new forms of interaction and functionalities that were not anticipated by thesystem’s designers. This means providing end-users with the capacity to “program” their interactive spaces including their home. This vision sounds very attractive. But to hold the promise, we need to find a way to master the intrinsic complexity of networked artifacts. To demonstrate this complexity, I propose to use an analogy with chemistry where a smart artefact is modeled as a composition of physical and digital atoms whose configuration evolves under particular conditions.