Again picking the most crowded workshop for the afternoon, going with the mainstream (sigh). It's long-time quality blogger and inner-circle LIFTer Nicolas Nova together with Julian Bleecker and Fabien Girardin (), telling us (workshop with 80 people? no way.) about “ Ubiquitous computing: visions, failures and new interaction rituals“.

Ubicomp they define as the “dissemination and deployment of sensors, information processing, wireless communication in everyday objects and the environment”. Of course Mark Weiser and the canonical disappearing computer is quoted as usual, but these perfect visions are -thankfully- not shared by the rather sceptic views of the presenters. Intelligent fridges? Please not. They rather start fromn social practices, not from the idea of perfect immersion with technology. Failures all over the place, overcomplexification and ignorance of consumer expectations. But why do such things happen? Let's talk about failures.

Failures

Actually the audience can participate here, yay. We collect failed technologies on PostIt notes, and cluster them. Why failed what, and what's to learn from these failures?

  • Public transport & ticketing (example: Geneva's ticket system)
    • Design failures all over – too complicated for street environment
    • Consequences: wasted time, image issues
    • Lessons learned: was this an engineer-driven project? or is it the pricing policy?
    • Solution: free transport? Referendum is on the way!
    • Not easy to use – not even easy to learn?
    • What about all those modern mobile ticketing solutions? Pre-pay vs. post-pay?
  • Mobile apps – in general
    • Why is there so little apart from games? What about all these location-based things? Where's all the cool stuff they have in Japan?
    • Is it about the right business models, adapted to the target market's culture?
    • Is is just about reasonable, clear and transparent pricing?
    • What about ergonomy and user experience – can that be a non- issue?
    • Is user education the main problem?
    • Why is reliability still a challenge?
    • Real interoperability? And actual openness? In the telco world?
    • Does going homogenous (iPhone etc.) solve theses issues?

E-books, the classic smart fridge and the notion of “dissappearing technology” where other topics, but it got more and more abstract and academic – nobody felt like actually discussing the mythical cases of the Apple Newton, Betamax or all those other heroic failures.

In the end, the discussion should have been more guided in order to stay concrete and useful – good beginning with card sorting, but not much than escapes into the unconcrete. Do we need a psychological meta-theory, the activity theory as suggested to make steps forward? I would have liked to hear much more about the scepticism of the three organizers, their experiences and failures – but well, I must go ask them :-)

Next venture: the LIFT08 venture night (night? from 5 to 7?), I'll be reporting after dinner, I guess.