UbiKit: Learning to Prototype for Tangible and Ubiquitous Computing

As more and more ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technologies pervade our daily lives, it is becoming increasingly important to train interaction design students to create these technologies. However, teaching students to design ubicomp technologies can be challenging, because creating a prototype, which people can use and students can learn from, usually requires a long setup and development phase. While there are some prototyping kits available, such as Arduino or the Raspberry Pi, they often require relatively steep learning curves before anything sophisticated can be prototyped. For this reason, we created UbiKit, a quick-to-setup, reusable, and affordable toolkit for the rapid design of ubicomp technologies that enable people to co-explore different scenarios and focus on the users. We piloted UbiKit in a Master-level course on ubicomp related topics and reflect on its potential to help streamline the prototyping and overall learning process for students being trained in our research area.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Florian Güldenpfennig

Francisco Nunes

Özge Subasi

Michael Urbanek

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 1-6

Affiliations

[0001]HCI Group, TU Wien, Argentinierstraße 8, Vienna, Austria

[0002]Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, Rua Alfredo Allen 455, Porto, Portugal

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.60

SO-VID: 84ecc25a-9512-487e-bf27-e168eac8860f

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 31st International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference (HCI 2017)

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 31

Conference location: Sunderland, UK

Conference date: 3 - 6 July 2017

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: digital make-believe, with delegates considering our expansive

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.60

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

reference

Arduino 2016 http://www.arduino.cc 15 May 2017
V. BraunV. Clarke 2006 Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 2 77 101
B. Buxton 2007 Sketching User Experiences -Getting the Design Right and the Right Design Morgan Kaufmann San Francisco, CA, USA
E. F. ChurchillA. BowserJ. Preece 2013 Teaching and learning human-computer interaction: past, present, and future. interactions 20 2 44 53
B. s. M. CollectiveD. Shaw 2012 Makey Makey: improvising tangible and nature-based user interfaces Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Z. Obrenovic 2012 Rethinking HCI Education Teaching Interactive Computing Concepts Based on the Experiential Learning Paradigm. interactions 19 3 66 70
Processing 2016 https://processing.org/ 15 May 2017
Raspberry Pi 2016 www.raspberrypi.org/ 15 May 2017
Y. J. ReimerS. A. Douglas 2003 Teaching HCI Design With the Studio Approach Computer Science Education 13 3 191 205
A. SellenY. RogersR. HarperT. Rodden 2009 Reflecting human values in the digital age Commun. ACM 52 3 58 66
L. S. Vygotsky 1978 Mind in society Development of higher psychological processes Harvard University Press Cambridge

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Arduino 2016 http://www.arduino.cc 15 May 2017

[2] V. BraunV. Clarke 2006 Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 2 77 101

[3] B. Buxton 2007 Sketching User Experiences -Getting the Design Right and the Right Design Morgan Kaufmann San Francisco, CA, USA

[4] E. F. ChurchillA. BowserJ. Preece 2013 Teaching and learning human-computer interaction: past, present, and future. interactions 20 2 44 53

[5] B. s. M. CollectiveD. Shaw 2012 Makey Makey: improvising tangible and nature-based user interfaces Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction Kingston, Ontario, Canada

[6] Z. Obrenovic 2012 Rethinking HCI Education Teaching Interactive Computing Concepts Based on the Experiential Learning Paradigm. interactions 19 3 66 70

[7] Processing 2016 https://processing.org/ 15 May 2017

[8] Raspberry Pi 2016 www.raspberrypi.org/ 15 May 2017

[9] Y. J. ReimerS. A. Douglas 2003 Teaching HCI Design With the Studio Approach Computer Science Education 13 3 191 205

[10] A. SellenY. RogersR. HarperT. Rodden 2009 Reflecting human values in the digital age Commun. ACM 52 3 58 66

[11] L. S. Vygotsky 1978 Mind in society Development of higher psychological processes Harvard University Press Cambridge

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