itr: community-centered ubiquitous computing

ITR: Community-Centered Ubiquitous ComputingWilliam G. Griswold, James D. Hollan, and Adriene Jenik

Michael Cole, Joseph Goguen, Edwin Hutchins, and Ingolf Krueger

The miniaturization and commoditization of comput-ing components is enabling a world in which computingis ubiquitous. The most recent trend is the unbundling ofthe monolithic “computer” into fragmentary, appliance-like components that provide specialized functions fordata storage, transmission, processing, entry, and display.Critical to the vision and current realization of ubiquitouscomputing is that a person can carry some subset of theseappliances—perhaps a programmable phone—while ap-propriating others—such as a large display—wherevershe goes. This trend intertwines with others in our in-creasingly nomadic lives, stressing traditional notions ofplace, community, work, and leisure.

This technological trend and the accompanying needpresent tremendous opportunities for the efficacious de-sign and implementation of distributed, loosely coordi-nated applications. They also raise important questionsabout human values, and promise to expose new cognitivephenomena. These questions are best explored in con-cert, as progress in any dimension provides implicationsand opportunities for the others. With the founding ofthe California Institute for Telecommunications and Infor-mation Technology (Cal-(IT)2) and the establishment ofa campus-wide laboratory comprising a ubiquitous wire-less network and a newly formed residential college, SixthCollege, UC San Diego is uniquely positioned to explorethese questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. Aprototype ubiquitous computing infrastructure called Ac-tiveCampus has been in operation at UC San Diego forover a year as part of a collaboration between the Depart-ments of Computer Science, Communication, CognitiveScience, Visual Arts, and Sixth College.

One of the central problems we face with the arrivalof ubiquitous computing systems is that we can no longerthink of a single type of user interacting with a single com-puter providing a narrow range of functionality. Now, themembers of diverse communities will interact with dozensto thousands of computers. As computers leave the work-place and the home to pervade our public spaces, the no-tion of an average user or consensus in design is fraughtwith new problems.

We propose to forge an interdisciplinary system devel-opment infrastructure and scientifically-informed designmethod for community-centered ubiquitous computing.First, in support of community-centered design, we willcreate open, multi-level infrastructures that will give spe-cialists programming interfaces that are natural to their

domain. In concert, we will investigate how softwareartifacts can serve as an effective medium for the dis-cussion of design and values for all the stakeholders incommunity-centered design. Second, we will augmentthe personal experiences of the designing community withcomprehensive ethnographies, enabled by digital cogni-tive ethnography and a new generation of digital and intel-lectual tools suited to the analysis of loosely coordinated,physically distributed settings. Third, we will stimulateour community and environment by involving new me-dia artists, bringing unique perspectives and expertise tothe design process as well as a critical perspective to theadoption of new technologies. Fourth, we will apply thelatest methods in cultural theory to develop a deeper un-derstanding of how values can drive the process, with theintent of elaborating a theory of value-centered design.

The intellectual merit of the activity we propose is theintegration of multiple complementary disciplines into anew kind of computational science that is especially wellsuited to the challenges of the modern world, where wecan no longer separate our understanding of computersfrom our understanding of people, nor technical issuesfrom social issues. Each blends and interacts with theother in ways that challenge independent investigation anddevelopment.

Broader impacts of the proposed activity include bothresearch and educational components. First, this projectwill indirectly support the construction and permanentinstallation of an open research resource that will beavailable to all interested researchers through Cal-(IT)2.This resource will also enable work in access for per-sons with disabilities. Second, this infrastructure and re-search collaboration will be an enabling educational re-source. Specifically, it is proposed to develop an interdis-ciplinary, multi-level design course that includes studentsfrom Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Communica-tion, and Visual Arts. Multi-functional design teams willbe assembled, including community participants from thediverse Sixth College community. This curriculum inno-vation would not only have its own intrinsic benefits, butwould also advance the research by exposing phenom-ena of design, values, and cognition in the course of theproject. Our educational efforts extend to community out-reach, in particular internships for High Tech High Schoolstudents, among other activities. Finally, we will conducta multi-year vertical study of the evolving and emergingvalues of the Sixth College community, including under-graduates, administrators, and faculty.

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ITR: COMMUNITY-CENTERED UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING B-1

B.1 IntroductionIn this new world of ubiquitous computing, a softwareengineer who wishes to implement an application can nolonger simply “write a program”, compile it, and transferit to the computer’s hard drive. Pieces of the computer areeverywhere, and it is unknown which pieces will be avail-able at the time the application is run. Considering justthe output interface, this application should run effectivelyregardless of whether the interface is visual or auditory,and if visual, whether the screen is large or small. More-over, this application must interoperate and share avail-able resources with other applications, regardless of howlittle screen space, for example, is available. Recent workin component frameworks and software architectures forubiquitous computing have begun to address these chal-lenges, providing mechanisms for the development, con-figuration, and integration of applications[20, 21, 57].Yet, a considerable barrier to further progress is the deepintertwining of application development with diverse is-sues, such as location awareness and access control (pri-vacy).

Once the functional components of a ubiquitous com-puting application are implemented, there is still the is-sue of its interface design. In particular, how can a per-son effectively use an application whose mode of use de-pends upon which devices are currently available? Be-cause many of these interface issues result from shifts ofmodality (e.g., visual versus auditory) rather than use ofthe same modality at a different scale, the traditional ap-proach of preserving isomorphism through scaling will beinsufficient. Quantitative differences can also impose inqualitative ones: when display sizes vary by a factor of100 or more, the processing capacities might vary sim-ilarly, prohibiting high-cost display animations at smallscales.

Important questions regarding values also emerge.With the “computerization” of our public lives, we arefaced with critical questions. Current technology trendshave revealed a deep need to communicate; not just infor-mation (“the stock market is up”) but also affective cues(“I’m thinking of you”). Understanding use from this per-spective can expose important trends and inform the de-sign of future technologies. Intimately related to these is-sues are questions about how to enable the design of sys-tems that are what we term value-centered (See B.3.1).Current software design ontologies are implementer- andartifact-centric, inhibiting value-centered design even ifthe users participate. Due to the public nature of ubiq-uitous technologies, we are also likely to see increasingvalue conflicts, in which one use of these technologiesalienates others. Thus, value-centered design becomescritical to the development of broadly successful tech-nologies.

The unbundling of the computer and its release into thewild with working applications, will result in new workand living practices. To understand these practices andensure that applications evolve to effectively support usersrequires a data-driven iterative design process. Althoughuser-centered design is increasingly a component of soft-ware development, it too often involves only brief periodsof application testing, in artificial settings, and rarely ex-amines the wider community context. Although it is welldocumented [76, 79] that user-informed design improvesusability, unless we understand the overall context of realuse and make detailed data collection and analysis a partof design we are unlikely to develop the scientific founda-tion needed to support principled design. Here we proposea research program to not only integrate ethnographic datacollection and analysis with design, but to create tools tosupport it as an integral part of a ubiquitous computinginfrastructure.

What is required for principled design is fine-grainedunderstandings of the cognitive and social phenomena as-sociated with people using ubiquitous computing applica-tions, and of the way humans work in our rapidly chang-ing world. Such insights are fundamental to applicationand interface design. We propose to create a virtuous cir-cle of ethnography and design. To enable this virtuous cir-cle, we will explore and develop two important researchdirections. First, as recent developments in cognitive the-ory [65] as well as our experiences with ubiquitous com-puting indicate, there is much to be learned by examiningthe details of both action in and interaction with the so-cial and material environment. When cognition is viewedas a process that extends beyond the skin and skull of theindividual, a host of previously overlooked cognitive phe-nomena are exposed for study. Second, digital media havenow reached a level of maturity and availability that makeit possible to develop powerful tools to support all aspectsof the ethnographic enterprise. Digital representations ofactivity can be combined and transformed in ways thatreveal previously invisible phenomena. These two direc-tions are ideally suited to the trends observed in ubiqui-tous computing, as the deployment of decentralized com-puting throughout our world creates complex multi-agent,multi-artifact phenomena that are difficult to understandwithout a larger unit of analysis and the rich data that dig-ital media now enable.

B.2 Research ContextUCSD has a unique combination of setting, expertise,infrastructure, and historical commitment to interdisci-plinary research that is ideal for investigating the interplaybetween technology, cognition, design, and culture.

Setting. A university campus is a microcosm of our fu-ture world—a richly networked knowledge society that


thrives on innovation, yet is constantly stressed by its suc-cess. It is a community defined by tightly knit spaces,uniquely focused on learning, yet is becoming an oasisat a crossroads, where nomadic students as often drop infor periodic learning encounters as they make the cam-pus their home. Even as increased access has broughtmore people to the university, technology and powerfuleconomic forces have had an apparent centrifugal effect,respectively allowing and requiring people to experiencecampus life more like visitors than citizens.

Here as elsewhere, we are experiencing simultaneousinteracting changes in technology, cultural practices, andvalues. In this context, it is difficult to tease out the cause-and-effect relationships sought in scientific inquiry. Forexample, how did the pervasiveness of “multi-tasking”arise from the need to multi-task, the invention of tech-nologies that support multi-tasking, and the cultural ac-ceptance of mixing work with leisure? The microcosmof the university campus, with its forward-looking stu-dents, is ideally suited to studying these questions; notjust historically, or even contemporaneously, but in the fu-ture. That is, by introducing next-generation technologyto students who are already living a little bit in the future,we can stimulate and observe phenomena that not onlyexplain the past, but anticipate the future and reveal pre-viously hidden cognitive and social phenomena.

A special opportunity in our setting is the founding of anew residential college at UCSD. Each college at UCSDarticulates a coherent breadth-education requirement forits students. UCSD’s newest College, Sixth College, hasthe theme of Culture, Art, and Technology. We havea close collaboration with the leaders of Sixth College,with the freedom to try out experimental applications andconduct detailed observations in the College (See SectionI), and the ability to pursue novel curriculum ideas (SeeB.4). We also have the opportunity to look campus-wideto achieve the critical mass that is so valuable in answer-ing questions about culture and technology, having up to30,000 people as part of our community.

Tradition and Expertise. With our uniquely synergis-tic interdisciplinary team, it will be possible to investi-gate phenomena that cannot be boxed neatly into disci-plinary categories. Our team includes researchers in bothsocial and technical systems, spanning the departments ofVisual Arts (Jenik), Communication (Cole, Ratto), Com-puter Science (Goguen, Griswold, and Krueger), and Cog-nitive Science (Hollan and Hutchins).

This collaboration is an outgrowth of UC San Diego’slong history of supporting and encouraging interdisci-plinary research on contemporary issues in technology.The departments of Communication and Cognitive Sci-ence at UCSD have longstanding interests in cognition,

technology, and how they mediate human developmentand activity. The departments were precipitated by theinter-disciplinary activities of PI Cole and others suchas Donald Norman. UCSD’s Cognitive Science Depart-ment was the first in the world, and today provides a fo-cus for the evolution of the discipline. Cole’s Laboratoryfor Comparative Human Cognition in the CommunicationDepartment is the home of the Fifth Dimension Project,a consortium of after-school literacy programs that usetechnology with the aim of constructing sustainable ac-tivity systems. The departments of Cognitive Science andComputer Science have close ties, including participationwith seven other departments in an interdisciplinary grad-uate program in Cognitive Science.

The history and contemporary focus of ComputingArts at UCSD are among the most significant in the na-tion. In the renowned Music Department, technologywas embraced and expanded by pioneer composers RogerReynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and others. In the VisualArts Department, Harold Cohen developed and evolvedhis controversial AARON artificial intelligence drawingand painting program over 30 years. Several high-profileprojects are recognizing the importance of this area, in-cluding Sixth College and Cal-(IT)2. Since 1999, Vi-sual Arts and Music have offered the innovative Interdis-ciplinary Computing in the Arts Major (ICAM), whichsupports the education of a new hybrid of artist/engineer.

Institutional Infrastructure. A defining opportunityfor this project is the California Institute for Telecom-munications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT)2), amajor state/industry-funded research institute at UCSDand UCI, whose mission to facilitate large-scale inter-disciplinary research gave birth to the ActiveCampusproject, a central element of this proposal. Cal-(IT)2,with University support, provides us access to campus re-sources such as on-line maps and building plans, librarydatabases, and networking instrumentation. Cal-(IT)2 hasprovided matching for this proposal both to aid the instal-lation of devices like large displays in public spaces, andto enhance the project’s impact on access for persons withdisabilities (See Section I).

UCSD’s technological infrastructure is equitably per-vades its public spaces, providing access to all. The cam-pus is executing an aggressive 802.11b wireless networkinstallation, encompassing all public spaces, classrooms,and libraries, with expansion to dormitories to be finishedby 2004. With the help of Cal-(IT)2 Intersil, Sixth Collegehas been wireless from its inception. Also, Qualcommis providing 3G cellular networking at UCSD along withprogrammable BREW phones.

In complement to this ubiquitous infrastructure, HP hasdonated 700 Jornada 802.11b-enabled PDAs, matched by


Cal-(IT)2 with an additional 100 PDA’s and technical sup-port. A first group of PDAs was given to all ComputerScience and Engineering Freshmen in early 2002, with asecond distribution to the inaugural Sixth College fresh-man class of 300 students this September. Under the ob-servation of researchers in Cognitive Science and Com-munication, these students have been participating in ofresearch activities, described in part below.

In the year and a half since the ActiveCampus teamwas assembled, we have learned much from our effortsto build an extensible context-aware infrastructure, createactivities and a community around the resulting applica-tions, and acquire insights through ethnography. Theseefforts provide context for the research we propose, so webriefly discuss them here.

B.2.1 Design and CommunityTo create a “community sandbox” for our researchactivities, we built two major applications, Ac-tiveCampus Explorer (ACE) and ActiveClass (Seehttp://activecampus.ucsd.edu). Both are di-rected at sustaining a nomadic yet physically proximatelearning community. We focus on ACE here.

Sustaining communities through virtual spaces is wellknown [88]. Direct support of physical communities isseen in the discourse enabled by E-Graffiti [14, 15] andGeoNotes [28], where users can leave their electronicthoughts in physical space for those who follow. Theseprojects provide a compelling application and warn of theneed for a large community and sufficient content to besuccessful.

Our approach with ACE is a variant on a familiar theme[19, 73, 75, 78, 81, 84]: if you and every person on cam-pus carried a mobile, wirelessly connected device, then itcould be used as a kind of “x-ray glasses” into your imme-diate vicinity. It could let you see through the crowds andbuildings to reveal nearby friends, potential colleagues,departments, labs, and interesting events. By making thearchitecture transparent and highlighting otherwise invis-ible entities, once-unnoticed opportunities are now appar-ent, creating serendipitous opportunities for learning.

A simple realization of this concept, appropriate for asmall wireless device like a PDA, is shown in two screen-shots in Figure 1, both for a student named Sarah. Thelarge area in the first screenshot is a map of Sarah’s imme-diate vicinity, as detected through geolocation. Overlaidare links showing the location of nearby departments andfriends. Department links and the like can be followed tobring up a web page. A nearby colleague, formerly nomore available for lunch than a hundred others, is seen tobe in the vicinity and can be instantly messaged or foundon foot. Any place or entity can be tagged with digitalgraffiti, supporting contextual, asynchronous discourse.

Figure 1: ActiveCampus’s Map and Buddies services.The Map service shows a map of the user’s vicinity, withbuddies, sites, and activities overlaid as links at their loca-tion. The Buddies service shows colleagues and their lo-cations, organized by their proximity. Icons to the left ofa buddy’s name are actions on them: show on map, send amessage, and look at graffiti tagged on buddy. Additionalservices can be reached by the navigation bar.

The Buddies service, shown in the bottom screenshotin Figure 1, represents Sarah situated with respect to herbuddies; distinguishing buddies that are near, as well astheir activity level. If Sarah knows the places by name,she can find her way to a nearby buddy or she can clickon a buddy’s personal icon to show the buddy centered onthe map. The area below the title bar is reserved for otherservices to notify her of the arrival of new messages oran event about to happen in a building near where she isgeolocated.

From our initial experiments we quickly learned thatthe “build it and they will come” model is not viablewith quirky devices coupled with first-generation soft-ware. This led us to construct several events in and outof the classroom in order to stimulate concentrated use


and permit us to collect data suitable for ethnographicanalysis. Here, we describe our most ambitious effortto date, the Sixth College Explorientation (http://activecampus.ucsd.edu/explorientation).

Sixth College opened this Fall with its first incomingfreshman class, numbering 300 students. To help inau-gurate the College, the ActiveCampus team arranged forall the incoming students to be given WiFi-enabled PDAs,designed several modest extensions to ACE, and created aseries of orientation-week team challenges around them.Called the Explorientation, the event consisted of six in-the-world games revolving around campus life and his-tory, mostly using the PDAs in the campus setting or ask-ing students to reflect on technology’s role in campus life.The challenges were called Trigger Tag & Tell, MysteryHistory, Maprobatics, Off the Grid, Finders Keepers, andthe Student Idea Challenge. As an example, for the Mys-tery History game, historical campus maps for the 1960’s,70’s, 80’s, and 90’s were added to ACE (UCSD opened inthe early 60’s). On these maps we added links and con-tent regarding the campus during each of those decades.We then added historical clues, which challenged the stu-dents to solve mysteries revolving around famous UCSDalumni (e.g., Sci Fi author Kim Stanley Robinson). Theseevents got dozens of Sixth College freshmen running allover their new campus. The Explorientation culminated ina party where winners were announced, prizes given out,and the students’ work featured in a short video. Top ideaswere (and continue to be) displayed on the ActiveCampuswebsite.

B.2.2 Ethnography and DesignEthnographers from Communication and Cognitive Sci-ence blanketed the campus during the Explorientation,recording 14 hours of digital video, taking field notes,and performing interviews. One of the cameras used wasa novel student-worn “eye cam,” which films from thewearer’s perspective; it was especially vital for capturingdetail of the PDA’s use. These field data now form theinitial data set for our research efforts in Digital CognitiveEthnography (B.3.6).

Perhaps the most startling result from our early ethno-graphic efforts—which include dozens of hours of class-room observation on the use of ActiveClass—is that thephysical ecology of PDAs and similar devices is repletewith problems. By ecology, we mean how all the artifacts,agents, and practices in a setting interact to constitute ac-tivity. This should not be surprising in retrospect: by theirvery mobility, PDAs and similar devices can be carriedinto a wider diversity of settings than other computer de-vices. The likelihood that a computer appliance wouldfunction well in all these settings is quite small, oftencreating frustration for users. Typical classroom desks,

for example, are barely large enough to hold a full-sizednotepad. There is no natural place for a PDA to rest, afact evidenced both both the variety of elaborate schemesstudents concocted to use the PDA in the classroom andby the declining use of PDAs in the classroom as theirnovelty wore off [85]. PDAs are not alone in creatingthis challenge. Students bring laptops, food, drinks, ref-erence books, staplers, markers, etc. to the classroom,and juggle mightily with them. Simply put, the notebook-and-pen model of classroom information management isat best antiquated. We will continue analysis of the cam-pus’s physical ecology in the work we propose.

B.3 Proposed ResearchOne of the central problems with the arrival of ubiquitouscomputing systems is that we can no longer approach ap-plication design by thinking of a single type of user in-teracting with a single application that provides a narrowrange of functionality. Now, the members of diverse com-munities interact with dozens to thousands of computers.As computers leave the workplace and the home to per-vade our public spaces, the notion of either an averageuser or consensus in design is fraught with problems.

Numerous disciplines have begun responding to thischallenge. Operating from a single discipline’s perspec-tive is at once necessary and incomplete. Artists, as justone example, are superb observers of the human conditionand can imagine alternative conditions or ways to stimu-late the current environment. With the often dramatic andoften accidental impact of technology on culture, the roleof artists is vital to creating positive outcomes, and thosefrom other disciplines are ill-prepared for this role. Yet,the things they imagine could be beyond their ability tobuild. They may also be less likely to fully appreciatevital dimensions such as privacy, cognitive implications,and sociological elements.

Having all the necessary specialists involved is essen-tial, but not enough for effective ubiquitous computingsystem design. For one, in many settings, the specialistsfrom each discipline are physically dispersed (into depart-ments) and operate on different schedules. Two, there isa cultural chasm to be bridged between disciplines; notjust one of terminology, but one of values—what ques-tions each discipline holds as essential. Thus, each dis-cipline needs to create tangible or intellectual tools thatthose from other disciplines can use as enabling interfacesbetween the members of an interdisciplinary team. Wepropose to move beyond existing participatory [26, 27],negotiated [7], and user-centered design [80] methods(while also borrowing from them) to forge an interdisci-plinary design method and supporting infrastructure andtools for community-centered ubiquitous computing sys-tem design.


In the following sections, we sketch the proposed re-search. We begin with a discussion of the importanceof values (B.3.1) to the overall process of community-centered design and then describe the specific activi-ties we will undertake. First, in support of community-centered design, we will develop an open, multi-levelinfrastructure—and ultimately a toolkit—that encapsu-lates expertise so as to enable specialists to innovatewithin one domain without constant dependence on spe-cialists in other domains (B.3.2). An important serviceof such an infrastructure is a mechanism to efficaciouslydeliver information to a wide variety of modal interfaces(visual or auditory, large or small); we propose a multi-modal messaging mechanism for these needs (B.3.3). An-other need is for convenient, fine-grained privacy andanonymity where needed. We propose a mechanismcalled negotiated access (B.3.4). We propose facilities forcreating and supporting individual expression and iden-tity in ubiquitous computing environments (B.3.5). Weexpect these research activities will lead to the inventionof imaginative applications and help forge a critical per-spective to the adoption of technology, while also test-ing the adequacy of our infrastructure efforts and creat-ing cultural events that resonate even as they provide richexperimental data for all of our efforts. We will augmentthe personal experiences of the designing community withcomprehensive ethnographies, as enabled by digital cog-nitive ethnography, a new generation of digital and intel-lectual tools ideally suited to the analysis of loosely coor-dinated, physically distributed settings (B.3.6). In concertwith all of the above activities, we will investigate howsoftware artifacts can serve as a suitable medium for thediscussion of design and values for all the stakeholders incommunity-centered design.

B.3.1 Value-Centered DesignThe history of computing hardware can be summarizedas a progression from a focus on low-level componentstowards integration on larger and larger scales, from vac-uum tubes and transistors to LSI, VLSI, chipsets, personalcomputers, LANs, WANs, and now the global internet.But this machine-oriented view is far too narrow, becauseprogression on the human side has been at least as dra-matic and important, from isolated single users, to timesharing, to groupware and support for community activ-ities, to the frontier where ubiquitous, wireless, context-aware multimodal mobile computing enables currentlyunknown social possibilities. Certainly there are startlingvisions for education, art, security, medicine, business,and politics; on the other hand, the landscape is litteredwith failed schemes, from the ambitions of early logic-based AI to the recent dot.com meltdown.

We argue that values are the key to unlocking themysteries surrounding these enormous opportunities and

dangers. Claims are often made that better engineeringwill solve the problems, or better management, or furtherprogress in basic technical areas such as distributed algo-rithms, user interface design and ontologies. No doubt allthis will help, but until we understand not only what userswant (as in requirements analysis [67]), but much morefundamentally, why they want, i.e., their fundamental un-derlying motivations, progress will be heavily interleavedwith failure, and will continue be very expensive whenit does occur. Users are notoriously unreliable at sayingwhat they want, and traditional requirements engineeringis very error-prone, as shown by the shockingly commonfailures of large software systems [32].

Understanding how values relate to current and fu-ture computer-based systems is no simple task, involvingmany layers of analysis, and raising many problems in-tertwined with almost every other issue [35]. We cannotdiscuss all this, but raise certain points particularly rele-vant to this project. For studies of values to have practicalimpact in projects like ours, values must be considered assituated, embodied, and enacted, rather than as abstract,disembodied, and eternal. We need to know what moti-vates communities of users in particular real situations,not what individuals say they might do in imagined situ-ations, or what individuals say they are doing in artificialsituations. Without real-time social interaction in naturalsettings, the results are necessarily suspect. This has sig-nificant implications for research methodology [46]; forexample, questionnaires and protocol analysis are less re-liable than participant observation, or careful analyses ofaudio and video recordings of natural interactions.

But how can values be extracted from the field notes,audio and video recordings, etc. generated by ethnogra-phy? Case studies with small groups (such as co-workersin a company and cockpit crews) have shown that val-ues are embedded in stories and jokes told in informalsituations [34, 36, 47], and can be extracted using meth-ods inspired by ethnomethodology and discourse analysis[69, 92]. In particular, [69] shows how evaluative infor-mation is embedded in the structure of stories, and [92]considers value-laden interaction between speakers andaudience. Case studies have probed the values implicitin database interfaces [41], and in mathematical proofs[40]. But since we are concerned with the use of deviceslike PDAs and networked LCD displays, we must alsoconsider issues like communities of practice [70], mate-rial mediation [103], cultural historical context [18], af-fordances [33], and distributed cognition [65].

Although often recognized as important, such issueshave not been well integrated with the study of values.We believe that such an integration can shed significantlight on how and why devices are used, and most im-portantly, can provide a more reliable ground for predic-


tions, which are central to any design activity, especiallyfor novel applications running on relatively unfamiliar de-vices. Note that we are mainly concerned with engineer-ing, rather than social science research issues, which sooften degenerate into ideological disputes among com-peting paradigms [30]. Thus, although we draw ideasfrom ethnomethodology, grounded theory, cultural psy-chology, activity theory, discourse analysis, symbolic in-teractionism, etc., our focus is on practical results, ratherthan ideological purity. Drawing on insights from CSCW[25, 1, 89] and related work in sociology of technology[2, 8, 9, 96, 97], one specific idea is to relate activityto values and “institutions of practice” within particularcommunities. Another idea is to view context as situatedinteraction, rather than attempting to reify it with precise(context independent!) descriptions [93].

We propose to use the active campus project as a liv-ing laboratory to explore these ideas, developing a methodtentatively called value-centered design. This approach(not yet a method) is not merely user-centered, and cer-tainly not technology-centered; it is community-centered,but more than that, because it seeks the essence of whatholds communities together. If we can design artifacts thatembody the values of a community, we will have gone along way towards being able to reliably design artifactsthat will be embraced by that community. See [37, 38] forsome efforts at foundations for such a view. This approachto design has implications not just for requirements analy-sis, but at all levels, including how to procure components(e.g., in partnership with the manufacturer, as we are withHP), how to distribute devices and applications to users,how to evaluate systems, and even how to program ap-plications. The latter might be called value-centered soft-ware engineering, and one example is designing softwareso that students can more easily write certain classes ofapplications on their own (see [95] for more conventionalviews).

Finally, we will also take very seriously topics usuallyconsidered under the heading of “values,” including pri-vacy, freedom, security, access rights, and control overproperty (including intellectual property). For example,we will obtain the permission of users from whom instantmessage texts are collected, and our experiments (e.g., ne-gotiated access technology) will be evaluated in light ofprevailing privacy standards, though it should be notedthat today’s students are surprisingly unconcerned aboutsuch issues (in fact, this is an issue that cries out for em-pirical investigation). We will also consider how to makesystems “value-open,” in the sense of supporting uses thatreflect multiple values, or even values that are as yet un-known, bearing in mind that there is no such thing as avalue-neutral system.

B.3.2 ActiveCampus InfrastructureOver the last two years we have built a server-side archi-tecture for supporting tightly integrated context-aware ap-plications that are suitable for use on small form-factor de-vices. This infrastructure generates HTML on the server-side for rendering in a web browser on the client. Thisapproach provides lowest-common denominator ubiquity,but it also requires application developers to add code toour server; they cannot work independently. We have nowdeveloped a SOAP RPC layer that sits beside our HTMLlayer that permits application developers to work indepen-dently. Permit, however, is different than support. Writinga native client directly against our SOAP interfaces wouldbe daunting for those unfamiliar with systems program-ming, like our disciplinary specialists. In the followingwe describe our server-side architecture, and then proposea client-side architecture and toolkit for easing the devel-opment of context-aware native client applications. In thesubsequent two subsections, we talk about two additionalinfrastructural components that are critical to easing thedevelopment of community-centered ubiquitous comput-ing applications: support for multi-modal interfaces andsupport for managing privacy and anonymity through amechanism called negotiated access.

As advocated by Hong and Landay [64], we have takena centralized always-on client-server approach to provid-ing a context-aware application infrastructure. It pro-vides intrinsic support for tight application integrationto accommodate the constraints imposed by small de-vices [57]. The ActiveCampus server infrastructure sup-ports all functions that it can provide, with only the sens-ing of context and its rendering to end-user devices oper-ating outside the server. This both eases system admin-istration and minimizes the requirements placed on sen-sors and display devices, whose resources for computa-tion and program development can be limited. An impor-tant bonus is that newly deployed applications (what wecall services) can integrate with and leverage existing run-ning services. Most importantly, centralization providesgreater freedom to allocate behavior to components andorganize those components to meet the needs of extensi-bility, integration, and performance.

At the highest-level there are two aspects of the sys-tem’s component architecture: the interfaces to externalcomponents, and the internal system architecture. Sensor-reporting from external devices is supported by provid-ing a pair of components connected via XML/SOAP RPC(top two levels of Figure 2, on the left). One componentruns on the device to capture and send data, and the otherruns on the server to receive the data and marshall the rawdata into the system database. Both components are typi-cally written in C++. Display to devices (and interactionwith them) is componentized the same, with additional


support for HTML transport. The outgoing transport isimplemented in PHP.

Given this top-level componentization, most of the re-sponsibility for the operation of the context-aware systemis managed within the centralized infrastructure. The in-ternal infrastructure is implemented as a web server run-ning PHP, backed by an SQL database.

Internal Component Architecture. Context-awarecomputing, especially in a multi-application setting, isboth representationally and behaviorally complex. Tomanage the complex interrelationships of representations,we decided to use an architecture [31, 83] based on a hy-brid of the mediator and observer design patterns [29, 99].To manage behavioral complexity, we decided to uselayering to incrementally provide behavior and assertsystem-wide properties [23]. Interestingly, this results infragmenting the classes that one might naturally defineto provide basic context-aware functionalities for con-venient context-aware application development [20, 21].In particular it pulls out relatively orthogonal aspectslike distribution, communication, and storage, formingvertical columns through the layered architecture. Thispermits selecting optimized implementations for eachaspect, or eliminating them and their requisite cost whenthey are not needed.

These decisions provide considerable flexibility, butthey do not specifically assist the incorporation of newservices into ActiveCampus. In particular, the addition ofa new service often involves the addition of new repre-sentations of contextual information about an entity suchas a user, lab, or device. For example, new ActiveCam-pus services have caused the introduction of new ways of“naming” users, including short names and small icons,which were motivated by form-factor constraints of de-vices. Thus, a naive approach of centralizing an entity’sdata quickly leads to entity bloat.

Consequently, we took a normal-form approach to rep-resenting entities. This approach represents each entityas a typed object comprising a small set of keys (e.g.,uniquely-identifying index values) that can be used tolook up representational alternatives. For example, an en-tity’s identity key can be used to look up short names andsmall icons, or an entity’s {x, y, z} location can be usedto look up a location name or zip code.

The architecture that resulted is shown in Figure 2.There are five layers, bottom to top, the first not shown inthe figure. Boxes denote components, solid arrows denotecalls, and dashed arrows represent event notifications:

0. Data (not shown): The data layer provides for effi-cient storage and retrieval of data, in our case through

an SQL database. The data layer may store data dif-ferently than apparently organized in the Abstractionlayer for reasons of performance.

1. Entity Modelling: The Entity Modelling layer pro-vides modelling of the state and behaviors of indi-vidual entities that are supported by the system, suchas sensors, users, buildings, labs, etc.

2. Situation Modelling: The Situation Modelling layerrelates information among entities, thereby deriv-ing each entity’s context or situation. It does thisin two stages. The first, Sensor-Entity Correlation,correlates low-level sensor data (e.g., wireless sig-nal strengths) to an associated entity (e.g., a user),thereby permitting the inference of entity context(e.g., a user’s location). Using context data derivedfrom the first stage, the second, Service, correlatesentities to entities and computes efficacious repre-sentations for that context. For example, the Mapservice determines one’s colleagues within a certainradius and draws them on a map display.

3. Environment Proxy: The Proxy layer marshalls databetween Devices and ActiveCampus’s internals.

4. Device: In the top Device layer, components run ondevices and connect to ActiveCampus through RPCor a web browser.

A key feature of this architecture is how the represen-tations of the Entity Modelling layer are integrated bythe Situation Modelling layer, using the hybrid mediator–observer design pattern. Even though the states of enti-ties are derived from sensor data, entities have no directdependence on them or the processing of their data. In-stead, the Sensor-Entity Reconciliation component, oper-ating as a third party, mediates the relationship by receiv-ing change notifications from the sensor components andpropagating the changes to the entities. This separationin turn protects entities from implementation changes inthe sensor domain, as well as from changes in how situa-tion modelling is performed. In a sense, our approach isa modular, extensible implementation of Winograd’s pro-posed two-level tuple architecture for context-aware com-puting [104].

The result, then, is a kind of “matrix” architecture, de-fined by layers (rows) of modelling or translation, andcolumns of representation. This high degree of separa-tion of concerns enables evolving each component inde-pendently, while still providing powerful abstraction andhigh integration of functionality.

Decoupling of Integrated Services. The decoupling ofentities and their situation modelling does not do awaywith the coupling among services. Consider the Bud-dies service: how can the service come to know, with low


Figure 2: A graphical depiction of the essential elementsof the ActiveCampus server software architecture, focus-ing on the capture of user location and displaying it ona map. Boxes denote components, solid arrows denotecalls, and dashed arrows represent event notifications.

inter-service coupling, (a) what services are available ona user’s buddy, (b) what services want to notify the userof something, and (c) how to render service activators andnotifications on its view? To help decouple services, wefirst employ a registration mechanism that services use toregister their availability. Second, each service is requiredto support an interface that permits checking (a) whetherthe service can be applied to an entity by another entity,and (b) whether the service wants to notify an entity ofsomething. These operations return keys (just like thoseused by entities) that can be used to lookup representa-tions of the service’s activator or the service’s desired no-tification. Thus, any number of representations (icon, text,etc.) can be chosen by a service renderer to represent aservice’s activator or a notification.

Proposal: Client Infrastructure and Toolkit. Al-though experienced systems programmers are well pre-pared for the challenges of writing rich context-awareclient applications, it is our goal to provide infrastruc-ture that artists, HCI experts, and other community mem-bers can use to build applications to support their disci-plinary and interdisciplinary research. The programmingof context-aware computing applictions, both server-sideand client-side, present unique challenges to such devel-opers, even if they are competent programmers in theirdomain (e.g., Macromedia Flash or GUI toolkit program-ming). The challenges are magnified when the “client”computer is in fact a dynamic assemblage of several frag-mentary, appliance-like components providing special-ized functions for data storage, transmission, processing,entry, and display.

First, a context-aware client program is not just a clientin the traditional sense, providing an interactive two-waychannel between the user and the service. The client pro-gram (or other programs on the client device) must pro-

Figure 3: Graphic of the proposed ActiveCampus clientarchitecture. Boxes denote components, solid arrows de-note calls and event notifications, and dashed arrows rep-resent hardware–software integration. Connections backto the centralized server (Figure 2) are not shown.

vide contextual sensing services for other users of the sys-tem, for example conveying the user’s location and levelof activity to friends, and perhaps even audio and videostreaming to those who want to “peek” into the user’svicinity. Thus, there must be server sub-programs on theclient device to provide these services. Indeed, one ofthe principle functions of the centralized server is to con-veniently, reliably, and persistently aggregate the data ofthese numerous “unreliable” server sub-programs, whichwe call C-Servers.

Second, these C-Servers cannot run independently ofthe client program, nor the centralized server. Althoughin a sense they run for other users in the system, they arecapturing—implicitly or explicitly—information aboutthe user that could compromise privacy or anonymity. AC-Server’s communications with the server also consumethe client-device’s resources, most notably battery life foruntethered devices.

Third, since the user’s hardware will be dynamicallyreconfigured—for example turning on a bluetooth head-set to replace the built-in audio functions of the maindevice—these C-Servers and the client’s control of themmust be dynamically reconfigured.

With these considerations in mind, we propose to de-velop infrastructure to ease the development of dynami-cally reconfigurable context-aware clients. Once the ar-chitectural infrastructure is in place—developed duringthe first year, as described below—our software engineer-ing researchers will work closely with our cognitive sci-ence and visual arts specialists for the next two years to it-eratively co-design a toolkit structure that packages theseresources in ways that are productive for them. Theseresearchers are competent programmers with specialized


skill sets, so we need not fall into the tarpit of tryingto support end-user programming. Through our collab-oration we will learn about our colleagues’ programmingstyles to fashion a toolkit whose metaphor is natural tothem. Special technologies may also play a role, as vi-sual artists often use the idiomatic Macromedia Flash lan-guage. The availability of SOAP RPC components forFlash provides the possibility to develop a Flash-basedtoolkit for context-aware programming.

For the design of the enabling client infrastructure forthis toolkit, we take our inspiration from Anind Dey’sContext Toolkit [21], working from the premise that theserver architecture described above already exists to han-dle non-client tasks. We distinguish four kinds of compo-nents in our client architecture: Client, C-Server, Config-urator and C-Server Proxy, as shown in Figure 3:

The Client is the traditional client component in client-server computing. It knows how to manage communica-tion between the user and any servers.

The C-Server is a micro-server, often running with theClient, as described above. C-Servers can be called di-rectly for their data or they can automatically make call-backs at a rate-controlled interval. The former is typi-cally used by the local Client, the latter by the centralizedserver. A C-Server also possesses access and schedulingcontrols for managing privacy and performance. Becauseour centralized server provides fine-grained access controlto user data, client-side management of access is simpli-fied somewhat. The C-Server controls include (a) initialuser authentication of C-Server ownership (e.g., providingusername and password), an on/off control, a registrationmechanism for local announcement of events (e.g., “loca-tion changed”), and rate control (e.g., “report at no lessthan 30 second intervals” or “report at no less than 30 feetof movement”).

The Configurator senses and manages the presence ofancillary devices (e.g., sensors) in the environment, con-figuring them and the Client so that they work in con-cert. It provides an interface that clients (e.g., both userClient and the centralized server) can call to manage C-Servers’ access and performance settings. Because C-Servers have standardized controller interfaces, the Con-figurator is generic.

The C-Server Proxy is a local manifestation of a remoteC-Server, through which a Client or Configurator cantransparently access and manage the remote C-Server’sdata. The Proxy may also merge the inputs from remoteand local C-Servers (e.g., the inputs from on-device andremote microphones) or translate from a sensor-specificformat to a standardized one). In the case that an externaldevice is shared, the Configurator may need to use ne-gotiated access mechanisms (Section B.3.4) through the

centralized server to gain access to the device.

In closing, it is important to note that even before aformal toolkit is designed, this component architecturepermits systems programmers to separately develop andpublish the Configurator and device-specific C-Servers,enabling non-computing specialists to develop rich clientapplications without being distracted by these low-levelsystem functions.

B.3.3 Multi-Modal CommunicationA central challenge in ubiquitous computing environ-ments such as ActiveCampus is to provide a variety ofaccess methods to the available services. Two factorsdriving this demand are the growing use of computing innon-office settings and the rapid evolution of input/output(I/O) devices. An example of where keyboard and pointerinterfaces are problematic is the use of PDAs or cellphones while in motion and one’s hands and eyes are oth-erwise occupied. Another is providing access for userswho have difficulties typing or reading. In such circum-stances voice, as one example, is a more natural. Fortu-itously, each generation of small computing devices pro-vides increased processing power, memory, display qual-ity, and network capacity, along with equipment for soundrecording and playback. These trends enable the design ofuser interfaces that include voice.

To accommodate a range of service access methods,we have developed and implemented a software archi-tecture for multi-modal messaging (MMM). This archi-tecture consists of a central messaging component andpluggable modules handling a variety of input and out-put devices. The central task of the messaging compo-nent is to convert messages received from an input de-vice into a format suitable for a corresponding output de-vice. A typical usage scenario would be to record a voicemessage on a PDA and forward it as text to some user’semail account; another would be to combine voice andtext to yield a multi-modal instant messaging system. Toachieve a high degree of flexibility in accommodating I/Odevices and message formats we have designed this ar-chitecture around interfaces that abstract away from thetechnical details of the devices; the message formats sup-ported by a particular I/O device are stored in a database.As a consequence, addition of another message format orI/O device requires only implementation of the device-independent messaging interfaces. These services are pro-vided through .NET web service middleware, the SOAPmessaging protocol, pluggable voice-recognition engines,and VoiceXML. Exposing the central messaging compo-nent as a web service enables flexible use of multi-modalmessaging from within other applications.

We are now integrating MMM into ActiveCampus, fo-cusing first on adding new modalities to ActiveCampus’s


instant messaging system. This will both open Active-Campus to users with physical limitations and ease theinclusion of devices whose primary form of input differsfrom text and graphics. It will also allow the user to selectthe input mode most suitable for their current situation andcontext; in particular, combining preference selections to-gether with location information from ActiveCampus, theuser could activate context-aware and automatic choice ofaccess modes – inside a classroom voice might be consid-ered inappropriate as an input format, whereas outdoors itmay be the default. Another application would be to pro-vide navigation assistance for the blind, based on voice-enabled access to the geolocator and maps built into Ac-tiveCampus, and an extension to the existing messagingfacility, enabling instant messaging from/to a host of ac-cess devices.

With the multi-modal ActiveCampus interfaces inplace, we propose in the first year to investigate appli-cations like those described above within the setting ofour living laboratory. Interesting questions here includewhich interface modalities the members of our commu-nity use, in what context, and on what device, and whetherlocation information together with multi-modal interfacescan indeed be used to support community values such asrespecting privacy while providing flexible service access.This will provide valuable information for the software-engineering of ubiquitous systems. Once the categoriesof the users’ values and use modalities are known, thesecan be pushed back into the development process as re-quirements, resulting in a value-oriented development ap-proach – at least on the level of user interface design andimplementation. This in turn will result in access con-trols and modality controls that are structured around thecommunity’s values, enabling the contruction of value-sensitive multi-modal applications. As just one exampleof the possibilities, context could trigger the ’coding’ ofmessages to preserve privacy, a simple example being ab-stract background cues [77].

In year two we propose to extend our MMM to appli-cation control. In many respects this is a special case ofmessaging, but it is also a generalization, as specialized“gestures” admit unique kinds of processing and requireunique response. A typical example is the Earcon con-cept [6], which uses iconic forms of sound in applicationinterfaces. As with generic messaging, a host of designand values issues arise when modalities can shift accord-ing to the components available or the context of use, andwould be subject to iterative ethnographic analysis and de-sign.

With these two components in place, in the last twoyears we propose to explore dual person-level routing anddevice-level routing. Person-level routing has been ex-plored in the Mobile People Architecture (MPA) as a for-

warding mechanism for communications like e-mail [90].With our extensions for multi-modal application control,messages could be destined for applications, displays,people, etc., and shift over time. A key question here iswhat routing control metaphor would be useful to non-CSdevelopers and users, and what social issues arise. TheMPA, for example, possesses a powerful routing controlmechanism, but it requires computing sophistication toconfigure.

B.3.4 Managing Privacy: Negotiated AccessThe recent growth in wireless connectivity and a rapidlyevolving ubiquitous computing infrastructure presages aworld where one is continuously available, and intensi-fies the need for practical methods to negotiate access andavoid unwanted interruptions. Without effective mecha-nisms for access negotiation, ubiquitous computing appli-cations such as the ones we propose might become noth-ing more than additional sources of unwanted interrup-tions, rather than practical links between virtual spacesand the physical spaces and social institutions of the cam-pus.

We will explore a negotiated-access mechanism we re-cently proposed [63] (also see [62]) to mitigate prob-lems of arranging access to people and coordinating in-formation sharing. It supports asynchronous interactionand provides flexible boundaries between less urgent andmore urgent access. In addition, it allows control overtiming of access and permits tailoring of access level forspecific individuals or groups. The goal is to provide asimple process that minimizes negotiation time while re-maining sensitive to evolving context.

The negotiation process we propose employs a com-bination token and filter mechanism with cryptographicsupport for privacy. In the general case, a person providesa token to others to whom he or she wishes to give access,or enters the token into a central database. The originatormaintains control of the period a token and any associatedfilter are valid. The receivers of tokens or computationalagents with access to a central database can, during theperiod the tokens are valid, use them to participate in anegotiation with an agent of the originator. An agent canbe a person or, more typically, a computational process.The sender’s agent uses the token and potentially addi-tional information to select a filter from a database in or-der to dynamically configure and execute the negotiatedinteraction. This process can selectively reveal informa-tion to the token receivers, allow them to modify selectedportions of the sender’s database of state information, orresult in running a program to interface with other appli-cations.

The filter and token combination are created at the timeone initiates a new instance of negotiated access. In our


architecture this will involve an interaction between aClient and C-Server with periodic involvement of a cen-tral server. A token only enables potential access. Accessis determined by the associated filter client and state in-formation in the database (either from a C-Server or froma central server). The database can contain informationabout an individual’s location, schedule, interests, desireto currently limit access, and a wide range of other in-formation. While this information can, of course, be en-tered manually, we will explore how portions of it canbe included and updated as a byproduct of other activi-ties and applications. To further elaborate the negotiatedaccess process, consider two examples: (1) providing lo-cation awareness and (2) supporting access control thatdistinguishes between casual acquaintances and a moreintimate circle of friends.

Location Awareness. Based on our initial prototypes,we known that members of our community at times wantto reveal their location only to selected others. In our sys-tem, access to location and other information will be con-trollable. Each individual or group to whom one wants toallow access can be provided with a token directly or viastorage in a shared database. Since access to the token canbe tailored, at the same instant location information canbe available to one group (perhaps all those working to-gether to meet a clas or project deadline) and not to others.Notice that negotiations can take into account any infor-mation available in the database at the time of attemptedaccess. This is particularly advantageous because it givesall parties fine-grained control over access. In addition,we will explore automatic overriding of simple access per-missions by contextual factors. For example, a user mightwish to never allow location information to be providedwhen she is in certain locations, or to restrict access to allbut selected individuals or groups during certain times ofthe day.

Inner and Outer Circle Access. In addition tolocation-aware applications, cell phone usage providesdata about another aspect of the need to negotiate accessthat we anticipate to be particularly crucial for ubiqui-tous computing. People frequently use access to their cellphone number to distinguish between an outer circle ofacquaintances and a more intimate inner circle of friends.They do this by simply giving the outer circle only theiroffice phone number, and giving the inner circle their cellphone number. A difficulty arises when there is a need,perhaps involving an urgent matter, for someone from theouter group to reach them via their cell phone. This mo-tivates them to reveal their cell phone number. The sideeffect of doing this is that the inner circle expands, as itwould be socially awkward to ask the person to forget thenumber. Allowing one more person access to the innercircle is at least a nuisance. As this process is repeated

for multiple exceptional circumstances, the advantages ofhaving the inner circle degrades. We will explore the po-tential of our proposed negotiated-access mechanism toavoid degradation of inner-outer circles and to do so in aless socially awkward way.

An additional key benefit of our proposed mechanism isthe ability to provide limited duration access to privilegesof an inner circle. Upon the need for such access, an eventwe expect to be common for ubiquitous computing appli-cations, a filter customized to the particular circumstancescan be created. Access negotiation can then be exercisedvia the associated token at the convenience of the partiesto whom one extends such privileges. For example, a to-ken might permit an instant-messaging-like connection ormake one’s location available to selected others. The to-ken and execution of associated filters determines whetheraccess is granted. Suppose, for example, that it results ina study group for an exam being able to see the locationson campus of other members of the group as an aid togetting together to study for a specific test. After the testtime passes, the token might be automatically deactivatedas a result of the type of token-filter combination used tocreate it. Note that the state of one’s inner versus outercircle can revert to what it was prior to this event. Noticealso that the same mechanism can be used to further refineinner-outer distinctions to create multiple categories. Thisenables individuals to be temporarily recategorized so asto move them either inward to grant additional access oroutward to further restrict access.

Research Issues. We have described a general tech-nique to mediate access to people and coordinate infor-mation sharing. We propose to explore it in a range ofapplications, to assess its ability to assist in solving prob-lems that increasingly arise from people being constantlyavailable for interaction. Key research issues we will ad-dress include: (1) increasing individual control over themanagement of interruptions, (2) supporting privacy viauser-controlled access to personal information, (3) cre-ating an integrated process and interface for specifyingaccess negotiations and filters, (4) sharing the effort re-quired for negotiation in appropriate and effective waysbetween the parties involved, and (5) minimizing the timeneeded for the negotiation process. The costs and benefitsassociated with negotiating access and sharing informa-tion result in a complex trade-off space for designers aswell as users. Our underlying research goal is to betterunderstand the dimensions of this trade-off space in orderto evolve mechanisms and interfaces for specifying andcontrolling access negotiation that are sensitive to privacyand that mesh with natural forms of interaction within ourcommunity.

Our design and implementation efforts for negotiatedaccess services would be aided by a formal language in


which to describe access rights. In the formal security lit-erature, “capabilities” are access rights, or “tickets,” thatcan (possibly) be passed to others; these are defined re-cursively over basic access rights, where a higher leveldefines a right to pass a lower level. Privacy policies arethe converse to capabilities, defining restrictions on ac-cess rights. A classic way to define static privacy policieshas been given by the so-called Goguen-Meseguer secu-rity model [49, 50], which we propose to generalize tomobile capabilities.

B.3.5 Identity and ExpressionThe nomadic, multifaceted, multicultural lifestyles of theUCSD campus student body present unique opportuni-ties for exploring identity and personal expression throughnew media arts, in particular through ActiveCampus. Re-ciprocally, uses for personal expression are fundamentaldrivers of forward-looking system design. The role of newmedia arts in the ActiveCampus environment spans bothsystemic and symbolic structures. Computing Arts facultyand graduate and undergraduate student researchers willhelp shape ActiveCampus into the supportive community-enhancing tool it seeks to be. This will be achieved inthree phases divided across year 1, years 2–3, and years3–4.

Phase One: Identity, Memory, Community. As stu-dent researchers insisted from the start, the identificationof the user with the representation of herself within theActiveCampus, is central to the mission of ActiveCampus.Given the constraints of picturing a vast campus on a PDAscreen, the issue of screen identity must be considered andintegrated into ActiveCampus early on. Avatars (imagesthat stand-in for the user on-screen) will be designed thatshift with each new user viewing mode (e.g., Map, Col-leagues, Community, and Activities) or context such aslocation or time of day (e.g., in class). These dynamicallyshifting “PDAscapes” enable a multiple avatar perspec-tive on the campus. In a further development, avatars willbe designed to evolve through each mode, moving from asimple iconic representation into systems that reflect theproximity or congregation of students with similar inter-ests.

Phase Two: Digital Derive. This phase takes its cuefrom the psycho-geographic mappings of the Situation-ist International (SI), an important artistic movement cen-tered in France in the 1950’s and 60’s. In an early un-derstanding of the implications of “information overflow,”the SI posited the growth of alienation not just from labor,but from life itself [74]. In the interest of reversing a trendtoward the passive reception of spectacles, the Situation-ists re-imagined Paris as a dynamic architecture, one thatwould take into account where and how people moved.Concerned with the place of the individual not only within

ideology, but equally important, within space, SI createdand led a series of “derives” or walking tours of the city.Rather than pointing out sites of historical or architecturalsignificance, these derives sought to aid Parisians in dis-covering new potentialities within their already familiararchitectural environment.

Several areas of ActiveCampus research/production areinspired by this work. A proof-of-concept portion of thisproposed research was integrated into the ActiveCampusExplorer interactive mapping application in preparationfor the Explorientation (Sept. 2002). The integrationof “history” map layers in ActiveCampus reveals cam-pus building/expansion over time, from its rather mod-est beginnings as the Scripps Institute of Oceanography,through its current configuration and beyond to plannedexpansion sites. Rather than perceiving the institutionas a constant, immutable entity, students and communitymembers alike are located “in time”through the applica-tion. This enables the students to experience the campusas a constantly evolving project, one in which they havean influence. For the Explorientation, the history layerswere seeded with digital graffiti in order to encourage in-coming students to research the “trails” of famous (andinfamous) alumni. Indeed, the challenge was so popular,it was taken up by all of the groups in the competition.

As the system evolves, the history layers will be embed-ded with placemarkers, similar to Digital Graffiti but morepermanent, that reveal the underlying histories of the cam-pus. These will be realized as social histories (stories ormemories of places that a user with experience on campuswill annotate) or even natural or political histories of thesites we pass through daily. A student who is killing timewaiting for a large lecture hall to become available canlocate herself several decades back in a seemingly end-less eucalyptus grove and learn that the grove had beenplanted as raw material for the Pacific railroad. In anotherexample, students can observe the relatively rapid expan-sion of the Engineering complex, including the outlines ofbuildings planned through 2012.

Further developing the digital derive, future versions ofActiveCampus will enable the user to graphically track hispath and save his paths in memory to later reflect on hisuse of his environment. Should the user desire, alterna-tive paths could be suggested: a more scenic path, or ashortcut, for instance. With users’ permission, data aboutcampus routes and areas of confluence could be collectedby campus planners and used to improve campus walk-ways and thoroughfares. ActiveCampus users could alsoshare favorite routes through campus by posting their an-notated paths to the ActiveCampus site. Walking throughcampus would in this way be transformed from a hurriedtrudge through a familiar route into an aesthetic intention.


Phase Three: Wondrous Occurrences. The last Phaseof the four year research plan will fully incorporate stu-dent imagination/realization. With ActiveCampus up andrunning, New Media students will work to conceptual-ize and implement network-triggered “occurrences” thatwill extend campus encounters with art beyond the lim-ited display spaces of the gallery and into palms. Drawingfrom PI Jenik’s experience over the last five years creating“Desktop Theater ” (street theater in visual chat rooms onthe internet [66]), and utilizing the ActiveCampus devel-opers’ toolkit [], computing arts graduate and undergradu-ate students will create works that are ephemeral, yet havea lasting impact upon those who encounter them, makingActiveCampus into more than just another campus map.

Charged with creating dramatic or meditative occur-rences that provoke thought or wonder [72] and using Ac-tiveCampus as a “canvas” through which to realize thebest of their ideas, students will have an unprecedentedopportunity to create large-scale public artworks that res-onate within ActiveCampus. Through an already existingclass in the ICAM curriculum, “Virtual Environments,”students will create new ways to interface the real and vir-tual aspects of the system, instigate new language struc-tures, and even experiment with augmented reality gamelayers. In addition to teaching the toolkit, the coursewill engage students in analyzing the ways in which or-ganized space is socially constructed [94], the ways thatfiction is influencing technological developments[24], andthe place of art in a culture focused on efficiency. A keyelement in composing works for the system will be theintegration of the larger campus community not utilizinga networked PDA. Large data screens, placed in key so-cial and public areas of campus, will alternate between a“larger” bird’s-eye view of the ActiveCampus communityand a micro view of a proximal user or users. Here theperformative nature of these social objects can be encoun-tered and even entered by anyone, expanding the projectto another more public realm where it can be understoodand engaged by many.

B.3.6 Digital Cognitive EthnographyOver the past decade, there has been increasing interestin the role of the material and social world in cognitiveprocesses. This has been the case both in the sense thatpatterns in the material and social environment constructcognitive task demands for individuals, and in the sensethat many cognitive processes extend beyond the skin ofthe individual and are played out in interaction with theenvironment. These themes are developed in the emerg-ing fields of distributed cognition [54, 65], embodied cog-nition [16], and situated action [98]. These approachesstress the need to examine human activity in its natu-ral setting or in the wild [65], challenge traditional ap-

proaches to system design [25, 61], and highlight the im-portance of interdisciplinary research.

Ethnography, the fine-grained examination of real-world behavior, can provide improved functional speci-fications for the human cognitive system and thus betterguide system design. Examination of cognition situatedin interactions with the social and material world narrowsthe gap between thought and action. Doing is a kind ofthinking and thinking is doing. Perception and action turnout to be more closely linked than had previously beenthought [17]. The examination of real-world activity canreveal the nature of these linkages [55]. These considera-tions create a demand for ethnographic studies that focuson cognitive processes as they are enacted in naturally sit-uated activity. We call this cognitive ethnography.

A cognitive ethnographer typically makes recordings(audio, video, photographic) of ongoing activity. Thoserecordings are the primary data to be analyzed and ex-plained. The ethnographic understandings derived fromparticipant observation are used to provide warrants forthe interpretations given to the recorded events. As wediscussed earlier (B.2.2), cognitive ethnography has al-ways been a component of this research project and hasproven an invaluable aid to system design. We now seeadditional opportunities to better integrate and exploitethnography in the research we propose here. These in-clude improved data collection, visualization, and analy-sis facilities.

Digital Recording. A new generation of inexpensivedigital recording and storage devices are rapidly chang-ing ethnographic data collection. It is now feasible, interms of storage requirements, to record everything a per-son reads or hears in his lifetime. The move from ana-log to digital recording has other important consequences.Although a digital video, for example, does not providecontent that was not present in traditional video and filmbefore it, what is crucial is that once a record is in dig-ital form it can be combined and juxtaposed with otherkinds of records in the same conceptual and visual space,in ways that were impossible in the past. This makespossible new representations and analyses. Digital mediaalso make it easy to share the coding system underlyingan analysis. This is important, because the application ofcoding systems (which create quantitative data) involveshuman judgment. Making more of the analysis processvisible to the critical audience of peer researchers makesscience stronger. Making it more visible to students learn-ing the techniques improves the training process.

In addition to exploiting the current generation ofrecording and storage devices for ethnographic data col-lection, our proposed architecture provides an unprece-dented opportunity to automatically record detailed histo-ries of the the use of ActiveCampus applications. In fact,


one motivation for this proposal comes from our expe-rience with automatic recording and analysis of activityhistories [60, 82]. In addition, we find Reddy and Dour-ish’s recent arguments [86] of the importance of tempo-rality for computer-supported cooperative work convinc-ing. Studies of experts working in complex environments[65] show that activity histories are frequently incorpo-rated in cognitively important processes. In non-digitalwork environments, the side effects of use often pro-vide resources for the construction of expert performance.Unfortunately, these supports for expert performance aresometimes actively, but mistakenly, designed out of digi-tal work environments[56].

Augmenting the ActiveCampus architecture to recordactivity histories will not only enable applications to har-vest and exploit these histories but also provide a crucialethnographic record of community activities and applica-tion usage that in turn will inform design. In addition,access to activity histories will support a variety of col-laborative filtering [11, 68, 71, 87, 91, 100, 101, 102] ap-plications. Search engines use collaborative filtering to or-der query results. Google [12] is the best known example.Such information ordering speeds search and enables ef-fective use of display space. Given the extremely limiteddisplays of current PDAs, more effective use of the spacehas large potential benefits. We will explore using activ-ity histories to provide automatic personal tailoring of dis-played information. Just as sharing location informationcan be valuable, we expect that linking our much richeractivity data via a negotiated access mechanism will en-able a range of novel applications. For example, an avail-ability application could help one decide whether now isa good time to make a cell phone call or IM connection toa particular friend. Such an application could use locationand other history data to indicate availability or potentiallysuggest a future time (when the friend will be betweenclasses, for example) that might be better, or even placeelectronic graffiti at places appropriate for chatting whenthe intended party arrives there.

Visualization and Analysis. Although we are excitedby the possibilities of new digital facilities for data collec-tion and the application opportunities that recording de-tailed activity histories provide, we expect that cognitiveethnography itself will remain labor-intensive, since pro-longed interaction with a community is required to learnlocal systems of meaning construction (language, action,signification, tools). A number of large computer cor-porations (e.g., Xerox, Microsoft, Intel, Kodak) have at-tempted to bring ethnographic methods into their designcycle, but as yet, the techniques lack maturity. Part ofthis is likely due to the fact that design environments havenever included components to allow automatic collectionof ethnographic data about user activities, nor integrated

Figure 4: Diamond Touch Table. This prototype table, de-veloped at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, will be usedas part of a Digital Ethnographer’s Workbench we are de-veloping. It will allow natural multiperson interactionswith our multiscale visualization and analysis software.

tools to assist analysis. Better data management and anal-ysis tools are crucial. In year one, we propose to includein the ActiveCampus system architecture components tosupport recording of detailed activity histories and to pro-vide negotiated-access facilities (B.3.4) to aid in the con-trol of access to those histories and ensure that communityand individual privacy policies are enforced.

After initial recording facilities are available, we willdevelop multiscale representations for visualizing, navi-gating, and annotating the diverse forms of ethnographicdata that will be collected. Multiscale visualizationspromise to provide particularly effective access to the dif-fering timescales of interest in ethnographic data. Our ex-perience developing three generations of multiscale soft-ware [3, 4, 59, 58] should be especially valuable. Also,as is indicated in one of our letters of support, MitsubishiElectric Research Laboratories is donating a prototype Di-amondTouch table [22] to support our research. This table(Figure 4) is a multi-user touch input device on which wecan project. Not only can it detect multiple, simultane-ous touch events, but it can also identify who is touchingwhere. This should enable natural multiperson interactionwith visualizations and iterative development of analysisfacilities will continue throughout the project.

The work we propose here will advance our longer-term research objective to create an integrated tool suiteto support all phases of digital ethnography. We call thisthe Digital Ethnographer’s Workbench (DEW; http://hci.ucsd.edu/dew). It will include tools for thecollection, management, coding, editing, and analysis ofdigital records of human activity. The creation of DEW isan ambitious goal and extends beyond what we proposehere, but the activity history, negotiated access, and mul-tiscale visualization components we will develop in thisproject promise to provide important steps towards it.

We also expect synergistic interactions with external


collaborators mentioned in B.7.1 and with additional col-laborators here at UCSD. For example, being able to au-tomatically recognize and track activities has the poten-tial to revolutionize ethnographic analysis. While suchrecognition is not a primary focus of the proposed re-search, we anticipate that existing collaborations withMohan Trivedi, Director of the UCSD Computer Visionand Robotics Research Laboratory, Javier Movellan, Di-rector of the UCSD Machine Perception Laboratory, andJochen Triesch, Director of the UCSD Complex Systemsand Cognition Laboratory will greatly benefit our pro-posed work. We see exciting opportunities for patternrecognition techniques that are being developed in theirlaboratories to be applied to the types of ethnographic datawe will be collecting.

B.4 Educational ComponentsB.4.1 Interdisciplinary Multi-Level DesignA key element of our project is the direct participationof undergraduates, not only as users and beneficiariesof ActiveCampus, but also as designers, builders, andfield researchers. This is mutually beneficial to the stu-dents and faculty, as the unique perspectives and activi-ties of students using novel technologies can yield deepinsights. Indeed, the “reckless” inclusion of simple mes-saging and avatars by our student researchers taught thePI’s much about the importance of personal expressionfor ActiveCampus. Thus, we will continue the recruit-ment of promising undergraduates to the project. To sus-tain their participation, we will use independent researchelectives, UCSD’s mentoring programs (including the ex-cellent STEP and and UC LEADS programs for womenand minorities), and the Cal-(IT)2 summer undergraduateinternship program, as well as NSF REU opportunities.

We also propose to bring our interdisciplinary approachinto our undergraduate curricula, assisted by ActiveCam-pus and Sixth College. Building on our experience andsuccess with other efforts [13, 18], we propose a project-centered course across Cognitive Science, Communica-tion, Computer Science, and Visual Arts. Disciplinaryproject courses, while valuable, suffer from a built-in my-opia, with less compelling and less complete results. Insoftware projects, for example, the handling of social is-sues is ad hoc, as time constraints do not permit acquiringand applying the missing expertise. Similarly, in projectsfocusing on cognitive design factors, students don’t havetime to progress beyond initial paper prototypes.

The Departments of Cognitive Science and ComputerScience already coordinate courses in human-computerinteraction. One of the design courses, Cognitive Engi-neering, focuses on contextual design [5] and involves stu-dents in quarter-long design projects. This course, Cogni-tive Science 102C, is the third course in a sequence, pre-

ceeded by courses on Distributed Cognition and Ethno-graphic Methods. As a pilot of our ideas, we encourageda group of of Cogitive Science and Computer Science stu-dents taking PI Hollan’s Cognitive Engineering course touse contextual design critique to improve portions of PIGriswold’s ActiveClass system. This work motivated asubmission to Computer Supported Collaborative Work2003, which is now under review.

Building from this success, we propose to evolve thiscourse and integrate it with capstone design courses ineach department—all taught by the PI’s—to gain a com-mon project focus on the campus’s activities and the inter-disciplinary component. The accessibility of Sixth Col-lege and the open, pervasive architecture of the Active-Campus system will facilitate adopting projects that fulfillthose requirements. The interdisciplinary component willtake two forms.

First, the projects themselves will be interdisciplinary,with each team consisting of students from each disci-pline. The success of a team’s project will depend uponthe interplay of asking questions, creating new possibili-ties for interaction and communication, identifying prob-lems, forming solutions, and measuring their impacts—an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor. We have seenthe benefits of such an approach in the ActiveCampus re-search meetings; the conversations range from scalabilityto freedom of expression. Notably, our engineering stu-dents as a result have developed a more nuanced appreci-ation for which features might be appropriate for Active-Campus.

Second, the course content will be coordinated. Whileeach disciplinary course will retain its core content andstudent constituency, they will run in parallel throughoutthe term. The PI’s will “visit” each other’s classes to dis-cuss interlocking issues and subject matter, providing anexpert’s perspective and supporting a wider engagementof the issues. For example, a computer scientist couldvisit a Communication class to discuss the possibilities oftechnology. A necessary implication of such a discussionis a progressive view of technology and society, as op-posed to the often more phnenomenological perspectivetaken by social scientists. The discussion could confrontthese apparently conflicting perspectives and their impli-cations for technology policy and ethics. Also, a few classmeetings will be held together, such as the ones that kickoff the projects and showcase the finished projects. Build-ing on the successes of the PI visits and the joint meetingsenabled by coordinated scheduling, we plan to eventuallyreplace some of the PI visits with joint class sessions.

Open-ended multi-disciplinary projects require closeoversight. We propose to first prototype this course withour best undergraduates, requiring submission of portfo-lios for acceptance into the course. To scale up, studies


have recommended using course alumni as advisors; theadvisory role itself is a recommended mode of inquiry-based learning [10]. The use of proctors in our introduc-tory and project classes has been a success in our previ-ous efforts, as they are eager to share their knowledge andhave a unique appreciation for the problems the studentsface.

B.5 Summary and ImpactThis project will continue to evolve within a Cal-(IT)2

“living laboratory” ideally suited for investigating ubiq-uitous computing. The proposed effort capitalizes on:(1) special opportunities afforded by Cal-(IT)2 to facili-tate large-scale interdisciplinary research, (2) the estab-lishment of Sixth College, a new residential college witha focus on Culture, Art, and Technology, and (3) a uniqueinterdisciplinary ActiveCampus research team spanningthe departments of Communication, Cognitive Science,Computer Science, and Visual Arts. It will result in: (1) anarchitecture and open infrastructure for supporting ubiq-uitous computing applications, (2) a multimodal toolkit toaid development that is sensitive to the diverse needs ofour community and supports applications spanning frominformal social interaction to the classroom to artistic ex-pression, (3) ethnographic datasets, involving traditionalvideotaping as well as automatic activity recording en-abled by our architecture, (4) a multi-year ethnographicstudy of our community which in turn assists a longer-range objective to develop a Digital Ethnographer’s Work-bench, (5) a novel method for negotiating access that pro-vides facilities to protect privacy and assist in minimizingunwanted interruptions, and (6) interdisciplinary coursesto support the new computational science and engineeringcurriculum required of community-centered design.

Our research and development plan for the next fouryears is hypocycloid in character, consisting of circleswithin circles. Each year we will produce a major re-vision of the underlying infrastructure and applicationsbased on feedback from our user communities and analy-sis of ethnographic data. During each year we will makemultiple cycles within this annual cycle. Each cycle willinvolve feedback from the wider community and contin-ual interaction between the design and ethnographic por-tions of our effort to aid elaboration of both applicationdesign and underlying architecture. In concert with this,we will attempt to codify what we are learning in revisionsof the multi-level interdisciplinary design courses we willbe offering.

B.5.1 Intellectual ImpactBroadly, the intellectual merit of the activity we propose isthe integration of multiple complementary disciplines intoa new kind of computational science that is especially well

suited to the challenges of the modern world, in whichwe can no longer separate our understanding of comput-ers from people, nor technical issues from social issues.We believe that the integration of ethnographic methodsand community-centered design that we propose here isof central importance to research advances in ubiquitouscomputing.

B.5.2 Research and Educational ImpactAdditional impacts of the proposed activity include bothresearch and educational components. First, this projectwill help support the construction and permanent installa-tion of an open research resource that will be available toall interested researchers through Cal-(IT)2. Second, thisinfrastructure and research collaboration will be an en-abling educational resource that we will explore in an in-terdisciplinary, multi-level design course that include stu-dents from Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Com-munication, and Visual Arts. This curriculum innovationwill have its own intrinsic benefits, but what we learn fromit and the associated research should also advance under-standings of design, values, and cognition.

B.5.3 Interdisciplinary ImpactThe ActiveCampus project over the past year has broughtus together as an interdisciplinary research group andhas begun to involve a growing number of students inethnography and community-centered system design. Weare finding wonderful synergies. Our long-range goal isnot only to train a new generation of ethnographers andsystem developers, but to understand how to help eachcommunity listen to and communicate with the other. Adeeper understanding of how to create and sustain effec-tive communication between a community of users, de-signers, and researchers will be one broader interdisci-plinary impact of our proposed community-centered ubiq-uitous computing research.

B.6 Relevant Prior NSF SupportProfessors Hollan and Hutchins are co-PIs, along withDavid Kirsh, on NSF grant KDI–9873156, A DistributedCognition Approach to Designing Digital Work MaterialsFor Collaborative Workspaces. This project is exploringdistributed cognition as a framework for understandingannotation in domains ranging from collaborative scien-tific research to commercial aviation. Both the theoreticalperspective and multiscale annotation software developedin this project promise to facilitate the effort we proposehere. It will end June 30, 2003. Hollan is PI on anotherNSF grant ITR–0113892, Image-Based Access and Orga-nization of Information, ending July 31, 2004. It exam-ines whether spatial and temporal organization of imagescan serve as effective interface components. Of relevance


here is the development of our third generation of mul-tiscale software, Dynapad. This software should be ex-ceedingly valuable for visualizing activity histories andanalyzing other ethnographic data. These two projectshave resulted in over thirty publications and presentations.They have supported four postdoctoral fellows, five grad-uate students, three undergraduate honors theses, and haveresearch experience for a large number of undergraduates.

Professor Goguen was PI of NSF grant CCR–9901002,“Hidden Algebra and Distributed Concurrent Software,”from 15 September 1999 to 31 August 2002. It supportedwork on the BOBJ and Kumo systems, producing 22 pub-lications, including 11 on hidden algebra and applications,e.g., [44, 48, 51, 52], 5 on user interface design, e.g.,[39, 42], and 3 project overviews, e.g., [45, 42]. We are es-pecially proud of the circular coinductive rewriting algo-rithm in BOBJ, which has proved many non-trivial results[53, 43], including correctness of the alternating bit proto-col and the Petersen mutual exclusion algorithm. We arealso proud of Kumo’s web-based proof displays, whichhave attracted attention in the theorem proving commu-nity, where tools are notoriously difficult to use. One stu-dent who was supported by this grant is now an Asst. Pro-fessor at the University of Illinois, and another is a re-searcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

B.7 Management PlanB.7.1 Dissemination of ResultsBeyond the typical channels of dissemination—trainingof graduate students and publication in conferences andjournals—we will pursue three complementary avenues.One, as in our previous projects, we will publish our Ac-tiveCampus and DEW software on the web. In concert,we will expand our web resources to provide a portalfor disseminating information about ubiquitous comput-ing living laboratories. Two, we will archive our relevantdata sets in the UCSD library’s Social Sciences Data Col-lection. The third avenue, involving undergraduates, isdiscussed in the next section.

Relationships with Industry & Academic Labs. Ac-tiveCampus has received much help in getting started, andmore is promised in support of this proposal, including 6TabletPC’s, cost-pricing of wearable computers, and anoffer to spread ActiveCampus beyond UCSD. Letters ofsupport in Section I describe our long-term relationshipswith HP and Microsoft, as well as our emerging relation-ship with Intel and Charmed Technology. Mitsubishi ERLhas christined its relationship with us by providing its Di-amond Touch Table in support of our project (describedin the previous section).

We are also a participant in dedicated video-teleconferencing connections being set up by SaadiLahlou, head of the Laboratory of Design for Cognition

in Paris. This will connect us to his laboratory in Paris,Volker Hartkopf’s lab at CMU, Terry Winograd’s Interac-tivity Lab at Stanford, Norbert Streitz Workplaces of theFuture Lab in Darmstadt, and Carl Jansson’s K2 Lab inStockholm. These connections will facilitate discussingour propose research with this wider community.

B.7.2 Management StructureDay-to-day project management will fall to the primaryPI’s Hollan and Griswold, with back-up provided byJenik. Technical management will be provided by ateam spanning all technical areas of the project: Gris-wold (Computer Science), Hollan and Hutchins (HCI andEthnography), and Jenik (New Media Arts). This groupwill meet on a monthly basis. Cole will oversee theeducational component of the project, drawing from hisvast experience in sustainable educational programs. Fi-nally, Griswold will oversee ActiveCampus infrastructure“leveraging” and instrumentation efforts.

It is crucial that a project of this scope seeks outsideadvice, for example on leveraging the campus’s vast re-sources and how those resources might best be used forboth the project’s and the campus’s benefit. Also, the ex-periences of others who have undertaken similar effortswould be beneficial in highlighting pitfalls and opportuni-ties. We propose two complementary channels for advice.

UbiComp Living Laboratories Workshop. At thestart of the project we will hold an international work-shop on the challenges of building a living laboratory forubiquitous computing, such as the management of hard-ware, supplying research software for public use, humansubjects regulations, and the mechanics of ethnography.This workshop will be sponsored by Cal-(IT)2.

Advisory Board. Subsequent to this workshop, we willform an advisory board consisting of key members ofthe campus and the international community. From thecampus, we plan to recruit Mohan Trivedi (Director ofthe Computer Vision and Robotics Research Laboratoryand Cal-(IT)2 layer leader for Intelligent Transportation),who has built a living laboratory for transportation, andGabriele Wienhausen (Sixth College Provost and Cal-(IT)2 layer leader for Education), a prominent researcherin educationsl technology. We will use our existing andemerging international connections to complete the board.The advisory board will meet twice a year, with localmembers meeting quarterly. Off-campus members can at-tend by teleconference to avoid the costs of travel, withCal-(IT)2 providing the facilities. Between meetings, theboard will be consulted on critical matters.

ITR: COMMUNITY-CENTERED UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING C-1

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