designing ambient

Designing Ambientdrose@media.mit.edu

@davidrose

the age-old fantasy: to know

PCs, PDAs, and smart phones will not be the primary way most of us use the Internet

.com has given us portable content which people care about

Today’s interfaces demand a great deal of attention

push pull

Interruptive

Intrusive

Rude

Often embarrassing

Complex

Time-consuming

Requires navigation

Fraught with maintenance problems

Ambient: quietly waiting for YOU to attend

push ambient pull

•Peripheral •Seamless with environment

•Glanceable•Pre-attentive

•Calm

Interruptive

Intrusive

Rude

Often embarrassing

Complex

Time-consuming

Requires navigation

Fraught with maintenance problems

Stage 1: Early Processing

• Rapid parallel processing

• Feature extraction

• Involuntary

• “Hardware”

Stage 2: Late Processing

• Slower serial processing

• Emphasis on symbols

• Volitional

• “Software”

“basketball”

How do we perceive?

• Independent of number of distracters

• Parallel processing

• < 250 ms acquisition time

• Other tasks don’t degrade

• Non-distracting

Pre-Attentive Processing

Pre-Attentive Examples

Pop Quiz: Which is pre-attentive?

Simple

Affordable

Elegant

Peripheral

Calm

Even Polite?

A new category of Internet object?

never breaks, never needs upgrades, never makes you feel stupid,

that you’re delighted to live with for decades?

Summarization is worth more because it requires less of your time

Ambiguousmore summarized

FAST

Specificmore detailed

RICH

motion color angle pattern text

How simple can we make an information awareness object?

Knowing without thinking...

Orb

ambient

Ubiquitous bit-trickling connectivity

Scalable. Currently serving over 200,000 devices. Scalable to over 10 billion devices.

Vast coverage. Data-casts currently cover over 90% of US population. Largest footprint of any wireless messaging network.

Cost effective. Like a radio for Internet data, so no mandatory subscription fees.

ambient

Ambient Information Channels

eBay

Frequent

Flyer Miles

Pollen

Index

Weather

Forecast

Ski

Surf

Sailing

Golf

Air Quality Web Traffic

Online

Transactions

Election

Polls

NewsFutures Homeland

Security

Sales

Trends

Customer

sat

Inventory

Profit

Margins

Employee

Utilization

Competition

Email

Waiting

IM Buddy

Status

Mobile plan

minutes

Next

Meeting

Traffic

Messaging EnterpriseTravel Outdoors Health News Other Shopping

Developer*

DOW

FTSE

NASDAQ

My Portfolio

Bank

Balance

Credit Card

Balance

Finance

Opinion

Polls

Commute

Time

The opportunity for Ambient Devices is 10x larger than handsets, because

people spread multiple devices around their living environments.

Home OfficeCar Person

Investment trendsWeather forecastsFamily budget monitorHealth trackerMedia minder

Co-worker availabilitySales trendsOnline marketing effectivenessBalanced scorecardSecurity status

Traffic congestionFamily whereaboutsIn-touch social reminders

Golfing/Sailing conditionsBuddy statusMeeting countdownSports betting odds

ambient

Ambient datacasting system

Online content

Web Personalization

8000 towers90% of US

eBook

Umbrella

Bulb

Meter

Mirror

Post-it

GPS

Watch

Pillbox

Fridge

November, 2002

New York Times Magazine, December 2002

27

All devices are configured via web or (800) number

Fishing

Fishing

Fishing

Fishing

Fishing

Fishing

34

Open platforms have delightful serendipity, people currently use Ambient Devices to track:

Call center metrics: customer satisfaction, wait time

Salesforce.com sales performance

Real-time energy pricing for Southern California Edison

Build status for at Microsoft’s development center

Google Adword conversion rates

Visitors to my companies web site

Firewall status

My Book’s position on Amazon’s best seller list

Hot or Not rating

Betting odds for the next Yankee’s game

Friends online now

ebay bids

Blood sugar trends for diabetics

Steps walked for weight watchers

Developer*

ambient

ambient

After color -> angle

Temperature Forecast

How to not to be mistaken as a clock?

Single purpose, like the Orb, but infinitely configurable. What about Swappable faces?

How do we make it generic, like the Orb. Infinitely configurable?

But, co-axial doesn’t support three different types of data with different scales…

ambient

Ambient Dashboard

ambient

Smart-swappable faces. Insertion instantly reprograms the device.

What’s a common material, in which we could embed information?

Glass

47

Weather Forecaster

ambient

LG RefrigeratorIn BestBuy HomeDepot & Sears stores now.

ambient

Weather Wizard

50

Weather Wizard

Defining Ambient: a new consumer electronics category

Design Characteristics

Pre-attentiveGlance-able, no cognitive load required.

CalmNon-intrusive, seamless with environment. Evergreen. Friendly.

UniversalNo language, characters or numbers.

OpenAble to represent multiple types of data, coded, private.

Technology characteristics

Tiny computational footprint little local processing or power requirements

Browser-less interface requires no navigation, zero-training, or lag-to-information.

Persistent connection information is continuously updated. Bit-trickled.

Decision-driven data sophisticated algorithms on the server-side personalize and summarize data feeds.

52

53

Behavioral feedback loops address some billion dollar problems:

Glanceable portfolio makes you trade 3x more

Glanceable traffic makes you spend less time stuck in traffic jams

Glanceable steps makes you walk 2x more

Glanceable energy pricing makes you conserve 30% more

Glanceable nextbus predictions makes you trust public transport and ride the bus 20% more

Glanceable bloodsugar levels makes you test yourself more often and better control your diabetes

Precise information, in precisely the wrong location

56

SCE Implementation: Off-Peak ------------------------- ----------------- Event Planned / Active

C A IS O D a t a

Exposing customers to energy prices flattens the demand curve.

This saves a utility from buying energy on the spot market, laying new lines and building new plants

Joule

Energy Joule

6 mo trial begins in May in 1000 NY Apartments

Consumer Powerline manages 400k customers

ambient

Bus Pole

Ambient Umbrella

Google Clock

ambientclock.com

ambient

Growth areas for Ambient: People spread multiple devices around their living environments.

Home OfficeCar Person

ambient

Sailing Zone

People spread Ambient devices around their living environments.

People spread Ambient devices around their living environments.

Our approach is to daily behavior with packaging

3.5 Billion

z

Dramatically improving medication adherence through smart packaging, reminders, reports, and rewards.

V I T A L I T Y confidentialNon confidential

V I T A L I T Y

Vitality addresses each of the root causes of non-adherence

Patterns of adherence

May June

ABC

Call and missed

Took Missed

Call and tookPersistenceIssue

This is what poor-adherence looks like... Each row is person, each column is a day. Red indicates a missed dose.

Control group=71% of doses taken

This is what adherence looks like with GlowCaps

Over 95% of doses taken over 6 months

1) Pharmacist deliver medication in a GlowCap

“The smart pill cap will help you to remember with

light, sound, and if you want, a reminder call.”

Each GlowCap has a unique IP address and barcode

2) At home, you plug in the reminder light.

3) Every day, the GlowCap and reminder light flash for an hour, then play a ring tone every few minutes until you open the GlowCap.

3) Every day, the GlowCap and reminder light flash for an hour, then play a ring tone every few minutes until you open the GlowCap.

SimpleNo PC, Wifi or broadband required

4) If the cap is still not opened, Vitality places an automated call to ask “WHY?”

V I T A L I T Y Wellness offerings

GlowCap 2.0 Vitality Card

Meds Activity Food Mood + Stress Sleep

Vitality Watch

Cellular Hub

Vitality Watch • Stress is measured via galvanic skin response and pulse rate variability (shining a light into the arm under the wrist to get pulse rate)

• Activity is measured via accelerometers

• Sleep quality is also calculated

• Schedule is presented on the face of the watch

• Tracks steps and uploads wireless to the Vitality hub

• Local display shows progress with an e-ink fillbar

• Couples activity with financial incentives

Vitality Card