Brief Description

In envisioned smart environments, enabled by future ubiquitous technologies, electronic objects will be able to interconnect and interoperate. How will users make sense of the connections that are made and the information that is exchanged? This Internet of Things could have a life of its own, exchanging digital concepts and values between its members, having an understanding of each other and communicating in their own language. Will it be possible to represent this digital world in the physical reality we live in, providing handles to control and clues to understand, build conceptual models of what is happening in this hidden reality?

Exchanging values between different realities can be viewed in the widest sense. Not only in computer games and other virtual communities we can cross boundaries, also in daily life we are often interfacing with another reality, like the digital reality in many electronic products. As the products and our environments become smarter and more complex, these connections between physical and digital reality are becoming increasingly complex and problematic. Often, we cannot make sense of what is happening in the digital world anymore. As industrial designers it is our job to make sense of this hidden digital world.

Continue reading →